[CONTENTS]
[TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE]

THE VATICAN SWINDLE

ALSO BY ANDRÉ GIDE
STRAIT IS THE GATE

“Deservedly the book which made André Gide famous. It is one of the great classics of French fiction since the death of Flaubert.”—Ernest Boyd in The New Republic.

THE VATICAN SWINDLE

(Les Caves Du Vatican)
Translated from the French of
ANDRÉ GIDE
by Dorothy Bussy
New York ALFRED·A·KNOPF Mcmxxv
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

THE VATICAN SWINDLE

BOOK I: ANTHIME ARMAND-DUBOIS

“Pour ma part, mon choix est fait. J’ai opté pour l’athéisme social. Cet athéisme, je l’ai exprimé depuis une quinzaine d’années, dans une série d’ouvrages....”

—Georges Palante.

Chronique philosophique du Mercure de France (December, 1912).

I

In 1890, during the pontificate of Leo XIII, Anthime Armand-Dubois, unbeliever and freemason, visited Rome in order to consult Dr. X, the celebrated specialist for rheumatic complaints.

“What!” cried Julius de Baraglioul, his brother-in-law. “Is it your body you are going to treat in Rome? Pray Heaven you may realise when you get there that your soul is in far worse case.”

To which Armand-Dubois replied in a tone of excessive commiseration:

“My poor dear fellow, just look at my shoulders.”

Baraglioul was obliging; he raised his eyes and glanced, in spite of himself, at his brother-in-law’s shoulders; they were quivering spasmodically as though laughter, deep-seated and irrepressible, were heaving them; and the sight of this huge half-crippled frame spending the last remnants of its physical strength in so absurd a parody, was pitiable enough. Well, well! They had taken up their positions once and for all. Baraglioul’s eloquence wouldn’t change matters. Time perhaps? Or the secret influence of holy surroundings?... Julius merely said in an infinitely discouraged manner:

“Anthime, you grieve me.” (The shoulders stopped quivering at once, for Anthime was fond of his brother-in-law.) “When I go to see you in Rome three years hence, at the time of the Jubilee, I trust I may find you amended!”

Veronica, at any rate, accompanied her husband in a very different frame of mind. She was as pious as her sister Marguerite and as Julius himself, and this long stay in Rome was the fulfilment of one of her dearest wishes. She was a disappointed, barren woman who filled her monotonous life with trivial, religious observances and, for lack of a child, devoted herself to nursing her spiritual aspirations. She no longer had much hope left, alas! of bringing her Anthime back to the fold. Many years had taught her the obstinacy of which that broad brow was capable, and the power of denial with which it was stamped. Father Flons had warned her:

“Madam,” said he, “the most unyielding wills are the worst. You need hope for nothing but a miracle.”

She had even ceased to mind much. They had no sooner settled in Rome than they arranged their private lives independently of each other—he on his side, she on hers; Veronica in the care of the household and in the pursuit of her devotions, Anthime in his scientific researches. In this way they lived beside each other, close to each other and just able to bear the contact by turning their backs to one another. Thanks to this there reigned a kind of harmony between them; a sort of semi-felicity settled down upon them; the virtue of each found its modest exercise in putting up with the faults of the other.

Their apartment, which they found by the help of an agency, combined, like most Italian houses, unlooked-for advantages with extraordinary inconveniences. It occupied the whole first floor of the Palazzo Forgetti, Via in Lucina, and had the benefit of a fair-sized terrace, where Veronica immediately set to work growing aspidistras—so difficult to grow in Paris apartments. But in order to reach this terrace one had to go through the orangery, which Anthime had immediately seized on for a laboratory, and through which it was agreed she should be allowed to pass at certain stated hours of the day.

Veronica would push open the door noiselessly and then, with her eyes on the ground, would slip furtively by, much as a convert might pass a wall covered with obscene graffiti; at the other end of the room, Anthime, stooping over some villainous operation or other, with his enormous back bulging out of the arm-chair on to which he had hooked his crutch, was a sight she scorned to behold! Anthime, on his side, pretended not to hear her. But as soon as she had passed out again, he would rise heavily from his chair, drag himself to the door, and, with tightened lips and an imperious thrust of his forefinger, would viciously snap to the latch.

This was the time when Beppo, the procurer, would come in at the other door to take his orders.

He was a little ragamuffin of twelve or thirteen years old, without either family or home. It was in front of the hotel in the Via Bocca di Leone, where the couple had stayed for a few days while they were looking for rooms, that Anthime had noticed him, soon after their arrival in Rome. Here Beppo used to attract the attention of passers-by with a grasshopper which lay cowering under a few blades of grass in a little cage made out of twisted rushes. Anthime paid six soldi for the insect and then in his broken Italian gave the boy to understand, as best he could, that he wanted some rats to be taken to the apartment in Via in Lucina, into which he was going to move the next day. Anything that crept or swam or crawled or flew served to experiment on. He was a worker in live flesh.

Beppo was a procurer born; he would have brought to market the eagle or the she-wolf from the Capitol. The profession pleased him—indulged him in his taste for thieving. He was given ten soldi a day; he helped besides in the house. Veronica at first looked on him with no favourable eye; but the moment she saw him crossing himself as he passed the image of the Madonna at the north corner of the house, she forgave him his rags and allowed him to carry water, coal and fire-wood into the kitchen; he used even to carry the basket for Veronica when she went to market—on Tuesdays and Fridays, the days when Caroline, the maid they had brought with them from Paris, was too busy at home.

Beppo disliked Veronica; but he took a fancy to the learned Anthime, who soon, instead of going laboriously down to the court-yard to take over his victims, allowed the boy to come up to his laboratory. There was an entrance to it direct from the terrace, which was connected with the court-yard by a back staircase. Anthime’s heart beat quicker when he heard the light patter of the little bare feet on the tiles. But he would show no sign of it; nothing disturbed him in his work.

The boy used not to knock at the glass door: he scratched; and as Anthime remained bending over his table without answering, he would step forward three or four paces and in his fresh voice fling out a “Permesso?” which filled the room with azure. From his voice one would have taken him for an angel; in reality he was an under-executioner. What new victim was he bringing in the bag which he dropped on to the torture table? Anthime was often too much absorbed to open the bag at once; he threw a hasty glance at it; if he saw it stirring, he was satisfied: rats, mice, sparrows, frogs—all were welcome to this Moloch. Sometimes Beppo brought him nothing; but he came in all the same. He knew that Armand-Dubois was expecting him even empty-handed; and while the boy, standing silent beside the man of science, leaned forward to watch some abominable experiment, I wish I could certify that the man of science experienced no thrill of pleasure—no false god’s vanity—at feeling the child’s astonished look fall, in turn, with terror upon the animal, and with admiration upon himself.

Anthime’s modest pretension, before going on to deal with human beings, was merely to reduce all the animal activities he had under observation, to what he termed “tropisms.” Tropisms! The word was no sooner invented than nothing else was to be heard of; an entire category of psychologists would admit nothing in the world but tropisms. Tropisms! A sudden flood of light emanated from these syllables! Organic matter was obviously governed by the same involuntary impulses as those which turn the flower of the heliotrope to face the sun (a fact which is easily to be explained by a few simple laws of physics and thermochemistry). The order of the universe could at last be hailed as reassuringly benign. In all the motions of life, however surprising, a perfect obedience to the agent could be universally recognised.

With the purpose of wringing from the helpless animal the acknowledgment of its own simplicity, Anthime Armand-Dubois had just invented a complicated system of boxes—boxes with passages, boxes with trap-doors, boxes with labyrinths, boxes with compartments (some with food in them, some with nothing, some sprinkled with a sternutatory powder), boxes with doors of different shapes and colours—diabolical instruments, which a little later became the rage in Germany under the name of Vexierkasten, and were of the greatest use in helping the new school of psycho-physiologists to take another step forward in the path of unbelief. And in order to act severally on one or other of the animal’s senses, on one or other portion of its brain, he blinded some, deafened others, emasculated, skinned or brained them, depriving them of one organ after another, which you would have sworn indispensable, but which the animal, for Anthime’s better instruction, did without.

His paper on “Conditional Reflexes” had just revolutionised the University of Upsal; it had given rise to an acrimonious controversy, in which many of the most distinguished men of science had taken part. In the meantime fresh problems were crowding into Anthime’s mind; leaving his colleagues to indulge in empty verbiage, he pressed forward his investigations in other directions, for he was bold enough to aim at storming God in His most secret strongholds.

He was not content with admitting in a general way that all activity entails expenditure, and that an animal expends simply by the exercise of its muscles or senses. After each expenditure, he asked himself: “How much?.” And if the extenuated sufferer attempted to recuperate, Anthime, instead of feeding him, weighed him. To have added any further elements to the following experiment would have led to excessive complications: six rats which had been bound and kept without food, were placed on the scales every day; two of them were blind, two were one-eyed, and two could see, but the eyesight of the two latter was continually being strained by the turning of a little mechanical mill. After five days’ fast, what did their respective loss of weight amount to? Every day at noon, Armand-Dubois filled in his specially prepared tables with a fresh row of triumphant figures.

II

The Jubilee was at hand. The Armand-Dubois were expecting the Baragliouls from day to day. The morning that the telegram came announcing their arrival for the same evening, Anthime went out to buy himself a neck-tie.

Anthime went out very little—as seldom as possible, because of his difficulty in getting about; Veronica used often to do his shopping for him, or the tradespeople would come themselves to take his orders from his own patterns. Anthime was past the age for worrying about the fashion. But though he wanted his tie to be unobtrusive—a plain bow of black surah—still, he liked choosing it himself. The ends of the dark brown satin spread tie, which he had bought for the journey and worn during his stay at the hotel, were constantly coming out of his waistcoat, which he always wore cut very low. This tie had been replaced by a cream-coloured neckerchief, fastened with a pin, on which he had had mounted a large antique cameo of no particular value. Marguerite de Baraglioul would certainly not consider this neckwear dressy enough; it had been a great mistake to abandon the little ready-made black bows he used habitually to wear in Paris, and particularly foolish not to have kept one as a pattern. What makes would they show him? He would not settle on anything without having seen the principal shirt-makers in the Corso and the Via dei Condotti. For a man of fifty, loose ends were not staid enough; yes, a plain bow made of dull black silk was the thing....

Lunch was not before one o’clock. Anthime came in about twelve with his parcel, in time to weigh his animals.

Though he was not vain, Anthime felt he must try on his tie before starting work. There was a broken bit of looking-glass lying on the table, which he had used on occasion for the purpose of provoking tropisms. He propped it up against a cage and leant forward to look at his own reflection.

Anthime wore his hair en brosse; it was still thick and had once been red; at the present time it was of the greyish yellow of worn silver-gilt; his whiskers, which were cut short and high, had kept the same reddish tinge as his stiff moustache. He passed the back of his hand over his flat cheeks and under his square chin, and muttered: “Yes, yes. I’ll shave after lunch.”

He took the tie out of its envelope and placed it before him; unfastened his cameo pin and then took off his neckerchief. Round his powerful neck, he wore a collar of medium height with turned-down corners. And now, notwithstanding my desire to relate nothing but what is essential, I cannot pass over in silence Anthime Armand-Dubois’ wen. For until I have learnt to distinguish more surely between the accidental and the necessary, what can I demand from my pen but the most rigorous fidelity? And, indeed, who could affirm that this wen had no share, no weight, in the decisions of what Anthime called his free thought? He was more willing to overlook his sciatica; but this paltry trifle was a thing for which he could not forgive Providence.

It had made its appearance, without his knowing how, shortly after his marriage; and at first it had been merely an inconsiderable wart, south-east of his left ear, just where the hair begins to grow; for a long time he was able to conceal this excrescence in the thickness of his hair, which he combed over it in a curl; Veronica herself had not noticed it, till once, in the course of a nocturnal caress, her hand had suddenly encountered it.

“Dear me!” she had exclaimed. “What have you got there?”

And, as though the swelling, once discovered, had no further reason for discretion, it grew in a few months to the size of an egg—a partridge’s—a guinea-fowl’s—and then a hen’s. There it stopped, while his hair, as it grew scantier, exposed it more and more to view between its meagre strands. At forty-six years of age, Anthime Armand-Dubois could have no further pretensions to good looks; he cut his hair close and adopted a style of collar of medium height, with a kind of recess in it, which hid and at the same time revealed the wen. But enough of Anthime’s wen!

He put the tie round his neck. In the middle of the tie was a little metal slide, through which a fastening of tape was passed and then kept in place by a spring clip. An ingenious contrivance—but no sooner was the tape inserted into the slide than it came unsewn and the tie fell on to the operating-table. There was no help for it but to have recourse to Veronica. She came running at the summons.

“Just sew this thing on for me, will you?” said Anthime.

“Machine-made,” she muttered, “rubbishy stuff!”

“It was certainly not sewn on very well.”

Veronica used always to wear, stuck into the left breast of her morning gown, two needles, threaded one with white cotton, the other with black. Without troubling to sit down, she did her mending standing beside the glass door.

She was a stoutish woman, with marked features; as obstinate as himself, but pleasant on the whole and generally smiling, so that a trace of moustache had not hardened her face.

“She has her good points,” thought Anthime, as he watched her plying her needle. “I might have married a flirt who would have deceived me, or a minx who would have deserted me, or a chatterbox who would have deaved me, or a goose who would have driven me mad, or a cross-patch like my sister-in-law.”

“Thank you,” he said, less grumpily than usual, as Veronica finished her work and departed.

With his new tie round his neck, Anthime engrossed himself in his work. No voice was raised; there was silence round him—silence in his heart. He had already weighed the blind rats. But what was this? The one-eyed rats were stationary. He went on to weigh the sound pair. Suddenly he started with such violence that his crutch rolled on the ground. Stupefaction! The sound rats ... he weighed them over again—there was no denying it—since yesterday, the sound rats had gained in weight! A ray of light flashed into his mind.

“Veronica!”

He picked up his crutch and with a tremendous effort rushed to the door.

“Veronica!”

Once more she came running, anxious to oblige. Then, as he stood in the doorway, he asked solemnly:

“Who has been touching my rats?”

No answer. Slowly, articulating each word, as if Veronica had ceased to understand the language, he repeated:

“Someone has been feeding them while I was out. Was it you, may I ask?”

Picking up her courage, she turned towards him, almost aggressively:

“You were letting them die of hunger, poor creatures! I haven’t interfered with your experiment in the least; I merely gave them....”

But at this he seized her by the sleeve and, limping back to the table, dragged her with him. There he pointed to his tables of records.

“Do you see these papers, Madam? For one fortnight I have been noting here my observations on these animals. My colleague Potier is expecting my notes to read to the Académie des Sciences at the sitting of May 17th next. To-day, April 15th, what am I to put down in this row of figures? What can I put down?”

And as she uttered not a word, he began scratching on the blank paper with the square end of his forefinger, as if it were a pen, and continued:

“On that day Madame Armand-Dubois, the investigator’s wife, listening to the dictates of her tender heart, committed—what am I to call it?—the indiscretion—the blunder—the folly ...?”

“No! say I took pity on the poor creatures—victims of an insensate curiosity.”

He drew himself up with dignity:

“If that is your attitude, you will understand, Madam, that I must beg you henceforth to use the back staircase when you go to look after your plants.”

“Do you suppose it’s any pleasure to me to come into your old hole?”

“Then, pray, for the future, refrain from coming into it.”

And, in order to add emphasis to his words with the eloquence of gesture, he seized his records and tore them into little bits.

For a fortnight, he had said; in reality, his rats had been kept fasting for only four days. And his irritation, no doubt, worked itself off with this exaggeration of his grievance, for at table he was able to show an unruffled brow; he pushed equanimity even to the point of holding out to his spouse the right hand of reconciliation. For he was still more anxious than Veronica that the religious and proper Baragliouls should not be offered the spectacle of disagreements, which they would certainly lay to the door of Anthime’s opinions.

At about five o’clock Veronica changed her morning gown for a black cloth coat and skirt and started for the station to meet Marguerite and Julius, who were due to arrive in Rome at six o’clock.

Anthime went to shave; he had consented to exchange his neckerchief for a black bow; that must be sufficient; he disliked ceremony and saw no reason why his sister-in-law’s presence should make him forswear his alpaca coat, his white waistcoat, spotted with blue, his duck trousers and his comfortable black leather slippers without heels, which he used to wear even out of doors, and which were excusable because of his lameness.

He picked up the torn bits of paper, pieced them together, and carefully copied them out while he was waiting for the Baragliouls.

III

The Baragliouls (the gl is pronounced Italian fashion, as in Broglie [the duke of] and in miglionnaire) came originally from Parma. It was a Baraglioul (Alessandro) who, in 1514, married as his second wife Filippa Visconti, a few months after the annexation of the Duchy to the Papal States. Another Baraglioul (also Alessandro) distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, and was assassinated in 1589, in circumstances which still remain mysterious. It would be easy, though not very interesting, to trace the family fortunes up till 1807, the year in which France took over the Duchy of Parma and in which Robert de Baraglioul, Julius’s grandfather, settled at Pau. In 1828 Charles X bestowed on him the title of Count—a title which was destined to be borne with honour by his third son (the two elder died in infancy), Juste-Agénor, whose keen intelligence and diplomatic talents shone with such brilliancy and carried off such triumphant successes in the ambassadorial career.

Juste-Agénor’s second child, Julius, who since his marriage had lived a blameless life, had had several love affairs in his youth. But at any rate he could do himself this justice—he had never placed his affections beneath him. The fundamental distinction of his nature and that kind of moral elegance which was apparent in the slightest of his writings, had always prevented him from giving rein to his desires and from following a path down which his curiosity as a novelist would doubtless have urged him. His blood flowed calmly but not coldly, as many beautiful and aristocratic ladies might have testified.... And I should not have made any allusion to this fact, had not his early novels made it abundantly clear—to which, indeed, their remarkable success in the fashionable world was partly due. The high distinction of the public to which they appealed enabled one of them to appear in the Correspondant and two others in the Revue des Deux Mondes. And thus he found himself, almost without an effort and while he was still young, on the high road to the Academy. Already this destiny seemed marked out for him by his fine presence, by the grave unction of his look and by the pensive paleness of his brow.

Anthime professed great contempt for the advantages of rank, fortune and looks—to Julius’s not unnatural mortification—but he appreciated a certain kindliness of disposition in Julius and a lack of skill in argument so great that free thought was often able to carry off the victory.

At six o’clock Anthime heard his guests’ carriage draw up at the door. He went out to meet them on the landing. Julius came up first. In his hard felt hat and his overcoat with silk revers, he would have seemed dressed for visiting rather than for travelling, had it not been for the plaid shawl he was carrying on his arm; the long journey had not in the least tried him. Marguerite de Baraglioul followed, leaning on her sister’s arm; she, on the other hand, was in a pitiable state; her bonnet and chignon awry, she stumbled upstairs with her face half hidden by her handkerchief, which she was holding pressed up against it like a poultice.

As she drew near Anthime, “Marguerite has a bit of coal dust in her eye,” whispered Veronica.

Julie, their daughter, a charming little girl of nine years old, and the maid, brought up the rear, in silent consternation.

With a person like Marguerite, there was no question of making light of the matter. Anthime suggested sending for an oculist; but Marguerite knew all about the reputation of Italian saw-bones and wouldn’t hear of such a thing for the world. In a die-away voice she murmured:

“Some cold water! Just a little cold water! Oh!”

“Yes, my dear Marguerite,” went on Anthime, “cold water may relieve you for the moment, by bringing down the inflammation, but it won’t cure the evil.” Then, turning to Julius: “Were you able to see what it was?”

“Not very well. As soon as the train stopped and I wanted to look in her eye, Marguerite got into such a state of nerves....”

“Don’t say that, Julius. You were horribly clumsy. Instead of lifting my eyelid properly, you pulled my eyelashes so far back....”

“Shall I have a try?” said Anthime. “Perhaps I shall be able to manage better.”

A facchino brought up the luggage, and Caroline lighted a lamp.

“Come, my dear,” said Veronica, “you can’t do the operation in the passage.” And she led the Baragliouls to their room.

The Armand-Dubois’ apartment was arranged round the four sides of an inner court-yard, on to which looked the windows of a corridor which ran from the entrance hall to the orangery. Into this corridor opened, first, the dining-room, then the drawing-room (an enormous badly furnished corner room, which the Armand-Dubois left unused), then two spare rooms, which had been arranged, the larger for the two Baragliouls and the smaller for Julie, and lastly the Armand-Dubois’ bedroom. All these rooms communicated with each other on the inside. The kitchen and two servants’ rooms were on the other side of the landing....

“Please, don’t all come crowding round,” moaned Marguerite. “Julius, can’t you see after the luggage?”

Veronica made her sister sit down in an arm-chair and held the lamp while Anthime set about his examination.

“Yes, it’s very much inflamed. Suppose you were to take off your bonnet?”

But Marguerite, fearing perhaps that in the disordered state of her hair certain artificial aids might become visible, declared she would take it off later; a plain bonnet with strings wouldn’t prevent her from leaning her head back against the chair.

“So, you want me to remove the mote out of your eye before I take the beam out of my own,” said Anthime, with a kind of snigger. “That seems to me very contrary to the teaching of Scripture.”

“Oh, please don’t make me regret accepting your kindness.”

“I’ll say no more.... With the corner of a clean handkerchief ... I see it.... Good heavens! Don’t be frightened! Look up! There it is!”

And Anthime, with the corner of the handkerchief, removed an infinitesimal speck of dust.

“Thank you! Thank you! I should like to be left alone now. I’ve a frightful headache.”

While Marguerite was resting and Julius unpacking with the maid and Veronica looking after the dinner, Anthime took charge of Julie and led her off to his room. His niece, whom he had left as a tiny child, was hardly recognisable in this tall girl, whose smile had become grave as well as ingenuous. After a little, as he was holding her close to his knee, talking such childish trivialities as he hoped might please her, his eye was caught by a thin silver chain which the child was wearing round her neck. “Medallions!” his instinct told him. An indiscreet jerk of his big forefinger brought them into sight outside her bodice, and, hiding his morbid repugnance under a show of astonishment:

“What are these little things?” he asked.

Julie understood well enough that the question was not a serious one, but why should she take offence?

“What, uncle? Have you never seen any medallions before?”

“Not I, my dear,” he lied; “they aren’t exactly pretty pretty, but I suppose they’re of some use?”

And as even the serenest piety is not inconsistent with innocent playfulness, the child pointed with her finger to a photograph of herself, which she had caught sight of propped up against the glass over the mantelpiece, and said:

“There’s a picture of a little girl there, uncle, who isn’t pretty pretty either. What use can it be to you?”

Surprised at finding a Christian capable of such pointed repartee and doubtless of such good sense too, Uncle Anthime was for a moment taken aback. But he really couldn’t embark on a metaphysical argument with a little girl of nine years old. He smiled. The child made use of her advantage immediately, and, holding out her little sacred images:

“This,” said she, “is my patron saint, St. Julia; and this, the Sacred Heart of Our....”

“And haven’t you got one of God?” interrupted Anthime absurdly.

The child answered with perfect simplicity:

“No, people don’t make any of God. But this is the prettiest—Our Lady of Lourdes. Aunt Fleurissoire gave it to me; she brought it back from Lourdes; I put it round my neck the day that Papa and Mamma offered me to the Virgin.”

This was too much for Anthime. Without attempting for a moment to understand all the ineffable loveliness that such images call up—the month of May, the white and blue procession of children—he gave way to his crazy desire to blaspheme.

“So the Holy Virgin didn’t want to have anything to do with you, since you are still with us?”

The child made no answer. Did she realise already that the best answer to certain impertinences is to say nothing? As a matter of fact, after this senseless question, it was not Julie, it was the unbeliever that blushed; and then, to hide this moment of confusion—this slight qualm which ever secretly accompanies impropriety—the uncle pressed a respectful and atoning kiss on his niece’s candid brow.

“Why do you pretend to be so naughty, Uncle Anthime?”

The child was not to be deceived; at bottom, this impious man of science had a tender heart.

Then why this obstinate resistance?

At that moment Adèle opened the door.

“Madame is asking for Miss Julie.”

Marguerite de Baraglioul, it seems, was afraid of her brother-in-law’s influence and had no wish to leave her daughter alone with him for long. He ventured to say as much to her in a whisper a little later on, as the family were going in to dinner. But Marguerite, with an eye still slightly inflamed, glanced at Anthime:

“Afraid of you? My dear friend, Julie is more likely to convert a dozen infidels like you than to be moved a hair’s breadth by any of your scoffs. No, no! Our faith is not so easily shaken as that. But still, don’t forget that she is a child. She knows that in an age as corrupt as this, and in a country as shamefully governed as ours, nothing but blasphemy can be looked for. Nevertheless, it’s sad that her first experience of offence should come from her uncle, whom we should so much like her to respect.”

IV

Would Anthime feel the calming effect of words so temperate and so wise?

Yes; during the first two courses (the dinner, which was good but plain, did not comprise more than three dishes altogether) and as long as the talk meandered in domestic fashion round about subjects that were not contentious. Out of consideration for Marguerite’s eye, they first talked about eyesight and oculists (the Baragliouls pretended not to notice that Anthime’s wen had grown); then about Italian cooking—out of politeness to Veronica—with allusions to the excellence of her dinner; then Anthime enquired after the Fleurissoires, whom the Baragliouls had recently been to see at Pau, and after the Comtesse de Saint-Prix, Julius’s sister, who was in the habit of spending her holidays in that neighbourhood; and then after the Baragliouls’ charming elder daughter, whom they would have liked to bring with them to Rome, but who could never be persuaded to leave her work at the Hospital for Sick Children, in the Rue de Sèvres, where she went every morning to tend the suffering little ones. Julius then broached the serious subject of the expropriation of Anthime’s property: Anthime, when travelling as a young man for the first time in Egypt, had bought a piece of land, which, owing to its inconvenient situation, had hitherto been of very little value; but there had lately been some question of making the new Cairo-to-Heliopolis railway pass through it. There is no doubt that the Armand-Dubois’ budget, which had suffered from risky speculations, was in great need of this windfall. Julius, however, before leaving Paris, had discussed the affair with Maniton, the consulting engineer of the projected line, and he advised his brother-in-law not to raise his hopes too high—for the whole thing might very well end in smoke. Anthime, for his part, made no mention of the fact that the Lodge, which always backs its friends, was looking after his interests.

Anthime spoke to Julius about his candidature to the Academy and his chances of getting in; he spoke with a smile, for he had very little belief in them; and Julius himself pretended to a calm and, as it were, resigned indifference. What was the use of saying that his sister, the Comtesse de Saint-Prix, had got Cardinal André up her sleeve, and in consequence the other fifteen immortals who always voted with him? Anthime then said a vague word or two of sketchy compliment about Julius’s last novel, On the Heights. As a matter of fact he had thought it an extremely bad book; and Julius, who was not in the least deceived, hurriedly put himself in the right by saying:

“I was quite aware that you wouldn’t like a book of that kind.”

Anthime might have excused the book. But this allusion to his opinions touched him in a sore place; he began to protest that they never in the least influenced his judgment of works of art in general, or of his brother-in-law’s novels in particular. Julius smiled condescendingly, and, in order to change the subject, enquired after his brother-in-law’s sciatica, which he inadvertently called “lumbago.” Ah! why had he not enquired instead about his scientific researches? Then it would have been a satisfaction to answer him. But his “lumbago”! It would be his wen next, most likely! But his brother-in-law, apparently, knew nothing about his scientific researches—he chose to know nothing about them.... Anthime was exasperated and his “lumbago” was hurting him. With a sneering laugh, he answered viciously:

“Am I better? Ha, ha, ha! You’d be very sorry to hear that I was!”

Julius was astonished and begged his brother-in-law to say why such uncharitable feelings should be imputed to him.

“Good heavens! You Catholics aren’t above calling in a doctor when one of you falls ill; but when the patient gets well, it’s no thanks to science—it’s all because of the prayers you said while the doctor was looking after him. You would think it a gross impertinence if a man who didn’t go to church got better.”

“Would you rather remain ill than go to church?” said Marguerite, earnestly.

What made her poke her oar in? As a rule she never took part in conversations of general interest, and as soon as Julius opened his mouth, she would meekly efface herself. This was man’s talk. Pooh! Why should he show her any consideration? He turned to her abruptly:

“My dear girl, kindly understand that if I knew that an instantaneous and certain cure lay to my hand, there—do you hear?—there!” (and he pointed wildly to the salt-cellar) “but that before taking it, I must beg the Principal” (this was his jocose name for the Supreme Being on the days when he was in a bad temper) “or beseech him to intervene—to upset for my sake the established order—the natural order—the venerable order of cause and effect, I wouldn’t take his cure. I wouldn’t! I should say to the Principal: ‘Don’t come bothering me with your miracle! I don’t want it—at any price! I don’t want it!’”

He stressed each word—each syllable. The loudness of his voice matched the fury of his temper. He was frightful.

“You wouldn’t want it? Why not?” asked Julius, very calmly.

“Because it would force me to believe in God—who doesn’t exist,” he cried, banging his fist down on the table.

Marguerite and Veronica exchanged anxious glances, and then both looked towards Julie.

“I think it’s time to go to bed, my darling,” said her mother. “Make haste. We’ll come and say good night to you when you’re in bed.”

The child, terrified by the dreadful words and diabolical appearance of her uncle, fled.

“If I am to be cured, I want to owe it to no one but myself. So there!”

“Then what about the doctor?” ventured Marguerite.

“I pay him for his visits. We are quits.”

“Whilst gratitude to God,” said Julius in his gravest, deepest voice, “would bind you....”

“Yes, brother Julius, and that is why I don’t pray.”

“Others pray for you, my dear.”

This remark came from Veronica, who up till now had said nothing. At the gentle sound of her well-known voice, Anthime started and completely lost all self-control. Contradictions and incoherences came jostling from his lips. “You have no right to pray for a person against his will, to ask for a favour for him without his leave. It’s treachery! You haven’t gained much by it, however. That’s one comfort. It’ll teach you what your prayers are worth. Much to be proud of. I’m sure!... But, after all, perhaps you didn’t go on praying long enough.”

“Don’t be alarmed! I am going on,” Veronica announced in the same gentle voice as before. And then, smiling quietly, as though she stood outside the range of his tempestuous anger, she went on to tell Marguerite that every evening, without missing a single one, she burnt two candles for Anthime and placed them beside the wayside figure of the Madonna standing at the north corner of the house—the same figure in front of which she had once caught Beppo crossing himself. There was a recess in the wall close by, into which the boy used to tuck himself, when he wanted to rest. Veronica could be sure of finding him there at the right time. She couldn’t have managed by herself, as the shrine was too high up—out of the reach of passers-by. But Beppo (he was a slim lad now of about fifteen) by clinging to the stones and to a metal ring that was in the wall, scrambled up and was able to place two candles, already lighted and flaring, beside the holy image.... The conversation insensibly drifted away from Anthime—closed over him, so to speak, as the sisters went on to talk of the simple, touching piety of the common folk, who love most to honour the rudest statues.... Anthime was completely engulfed. What! not content with feeding his rats behind his back, Veronica must needs now burn candles for him! His own wife! And, moreover, mix Beppo up in all this idiotic tomfoolery.... Ha, ha! We’ll soon see!

The blood rushed to Anthime’s head; he choked; his temples drummed a tattoo. With a huge effort he rose, knocking down his chair behind him. He emptied a glass of water on to his napkin and mopped his forehead. Was he going to be ill? Veronica was all concern. He pushed her away brutally, made for the door and slammed it behind him; they heard his halting step, accompanied by the dull thud of his crutch, clatter down the passage.

This abrupt departure left them perplexed and saddened. For a few moments they remained silent.

“My poor dear!” said Marguerite at last. This incident served once again to illustrate the difference between the two sisters. Marguerite’s soul was of that admirable stuff out of which God makes his martyrs. She was aware of it and with all her might yearned to suffer. Life unfortunately offered her little to complain of. Her lot overflowed with blessings, so that she was reduced to seeking occasions for her power of endurance, in the trifling vexations of daily life. She did her best to find thorns in the smoothest path and caught eagerly at anything that had the smallest resemblance to a bramble. It must be admitted that she was an adept in the art of managing to get herself slighted; but Julius seemed continually endeavouring to give her less and less scope for exercising her virtues. Is it to be wondered at, then, that her attitude towards him was always discontented and complaining? How splendid her vocation would have been with a husband like Anthime! She was vexed to see her sister make so little of her opportunities. Veronica, indeed, eluded every grievance; sarcasms and jeers alike slipped off her smiling unruffled smoothness like water off a duck’s back. She had no doubt long ago become reconciled to the solitude of her life; Anthime, moreover, didn’t really treat her badly—she didn’t grudge him speaking his mind. She explained that the reason he spoke so loud was that he found it so difficult to move. His temper would be less violent if his legs were more active; and as Julius asked where he could have gone to, “To the laboratory,” she answered, and when Marguerite added that perhaps it would be as well to go and see whether he hadn’t been taken ill after such a fit of anger, she assured her it was better to let him get over it by himself and not pay too much attention to his outburst.

“Let us finish dinner quietly,” she concluded.

V

No! Uncle Anthime had not stayed in his laboratory.

He had passed rapidly through the room in which the six rats were bringing their long-drawn sufferings to a close. Why did he not linger on the terrace which lay bathed in the glimmer of the western sky? Perhaps the celestial radiance of the evening might have calmed his rebel soul—inclined his.... But no, he stopped his ears to so wise a counsel. He went on, took the difficult winding stairs and reached the court-yard, which he crossed. To us, who know what efforts each painful step cost him, this crippled haste seems tragic. When shall we see him show such savage energy in a good cause? Sometimes a groan escaped his lips; his features were distorted. Where would his impious rage lead him?

The Madonna, who stood in the corner niche, was watching over the house and perhaps interceding for the blasphemer himself. Grace and radiance—whose light was borrowed from Heaven’s own—streamed from her outstretched hands upon the world below. This figure of the Virgin was not one of those modern statues, made out of Blafaphas’ newly invented Roman Plaster, such as the firm of Fleurissoire and Lévichon turn out by the gross. In our eyes the very artlessness of the figure makes it all the more expressive of the people’s simple piety—gives it an added beauty—an enhanced eloquence. The colourless face, the gleaming hands, the blue cloak, were lighted by a lantern, which hung some way in front of the statue; a zinc roof projected over the niche and at the same time sheltered the ex-votos, which were fixed to the wall on each side of it. A little metal door, of which the beadle of the parish kept the key, was within arm’s reach and protected the fastening of the cord to which the lantern was attached. Two candles burnt day and night before the statue. Fresh ones had been placed there that afternoon by Veronica. At the sight of these candles which were burning, he knew, for him, the unbeliever’s wrath blazed out afresh. Beppo, who was munching a crust and a stalk or two of fennel in his hole in the wall, came running to meet him. Without answering his friendly greeting, Anthime seized him by the shoulder and, bending down, whispered something in his ear. What could it have been to make the boy shudder? “No! No!” he protested. Anthime took out a five-lira note from his waistcoat pocket. Beppo grew indignant.... Later on he might steal perhaps—perhaps he might even kill—who knows with what sordid defilement poverty might not smirch his brow? But raise his hand against his protectress?—against the Virgin to whom every night he breathed out a last sigh before he slept, and whom, every morning when he woke, he greeted with his first smile? Anthime might try in turn entreaties, blows, bribes, threats; nothing would make him yield.

But don’t let us exaggerate. It was not precisely the Virgin that was the object of Anthime’s fury. It was more particularly Veronica’s candles that enraged him. But Beppo’s simple soul could make nothing of such distinctions; and, moreover, the candles had by now been consecrated; no one had the right to extinguish them.

Anthime, exasperated by this resistance, pushed the boy away. He would act alone. Setting his shoulder against the wall, he seized his crutch by the lower end and, swinging it backwards, hurled it with terrific violence into the air. The wooden missile rebounded from the inside wall of the niche and fell noisily to the ground, bringing with it some fragment or other of broken plaster. He picked up his crutch and stepped back to look at the niche.... Hell and fury! The two candles were still burning! But what was this? The statue’s right hand had disappeared and in its place there was nothing to be seen but a piece of black iron rod.

For a moment he gazed with disillusioned eyes at the melancholy result of his handiwork. That it should end in such a ludicrous assault!...

Fie! Oh, fie! He turned to look for Beppo; the boy had vanished. Darkness was closing in; Anthime was alone; but what was this he caught sight of, lying on the pavement?—The fragment which he had brought down with his crutch; he picked it up—it was a little plaster hand, which with a shrug of his shoulders he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.

Shame on his brow and rage in his heart, the iconoclast went up again to his laboratory; he wanted to work but the abominable effort he had just made had shattered him. He had no heart for anything but sleep. He would certainly not say good night to anyone before he went to bed. And yet, just as he was entering his room, a sound of voices stopped him. The door of the next room was open and he stole into the darkness of the passage.

Little Julie in her night-gown, like some tiny familiar angel, was kneeling on her bed; at the head of the bed, full in the light of the lamp, Veronica and Marguerite were both on their knees; a little further off, Julius, with one hand on his heart and the other covering his eyes, was standing in an attitude at once devout and manly; they were listening to the child’s prayers. The deep silence in which the scene was wrapped brought back to Anthime’s recollection a certain tranquil, golden evening on the banks of the Nile. Like the blue smoke that had risen that evening into the pureness of the sky, the little girl’s innocent prayer rose straight to Heaven.

Her prayers were no doubt drawing to a close; the child had gone through all the usual formula, and was praying now in her own words, out of the fullness of her heart; she prayed for the little orphans, for the sick, for the poor, for sister Genevieve, for Aunt Veronica, for Papa, for dear Mamma’s eye to be well soon.... As he listened, Anthime’s heart grew sore within him; from the threshold of the door where he was standing, he called out in a voice that was meant to be ironical, and loud enough to be heard at the other end of the room:

“And is God not to be asked anything for Uncle Anthime?”

And then, to everyone’s astonishment, the child, in an extraordinarily steady voice, went on:

“And please, dear God, forgive Uncle Anthime his sins.”

These words struck home to the very depths of the atheist’s heart.

VI

That night Anthime had a dream. There was a knock at his bedroom door—not the door into the passage, nor the door into the next room; the knock was at another door, which he had not noticed in his waking hours and which led straight into the street. That was why he was frightened, and at first, instead of answering, lay low. There was a faint light which made the smallest objects in the room visible—a sort of dim effulgence, such as a night-light gives—but there was no night-light. As he was trying to make out where this light could come from, there was a second knock.

“What do you want?” he cried in a trembling voice.

At the third knock, he fell into a kind of daze; an extraordinary feeling of yielding—in which every trace of fear was swallowed up—paralysed him. (He called it afterwards a tender resignation.) He suddenly felt both that he was incapable of resistance and that the door was going to open. It opened noiselessly and for a moment he saw nothing but a dark alcove, which at first was empty, but in which, as he gazed, there appeared, as in a shrine, the figure of the Holy Virgin. At first he took the small white form for his little niece Julie, dressed as he had just seen her, with her bare feet showing below her night-gown; but a second later he recognised her whom he had insulted; I mean that her appearance was the same as the wayside statue’s; he could even make out the injury to her right arm; and yet the pale face was still more beautiful, still more smiling than before. Without seeming to walk exactly, she came gliding towards him, and when she was close up against his bedside:

“Dost thou think, thou who hast hurt me,” she asked, “that I have need of my hand to cure thee?” And with this she raised her empty sleeve and struck him.

It seemed to him that it was from her that this strange effulgence emanated. But when the iron rod suddenly pierced his side he felt a stab of frightful pain and woke up in the dark.

Anthime was perhaps a quarter of an hour before coming to his senses. He felt in his whole body a strange kind of torpor—of stupefied numbness—and then a tingling which was almost pleasant, so that he doubted now whether he had really felt any pain in his side; he could not make out where his dream had begun or ended, and whether he was awake now or whether he had dreamt then. He pinched himself, felt himself all over, put his arm out and finally struck a match. Veronica was asleep beside him with her face to the wall.

Then, untucking the sheets and flinging aside the blankets, he let the tips of his bare feet slide down, till they rested on his slippers. His crutch was there, leaning beside the bedside table; without taking it, he raised himself by pushing with his hands against the bed; then he thrust his feet well into the leather slippers; then, stood bolt upright on his legs; then, still doubtful, with one arm stretched in front of him and one behind, he took a step—two steps alongside the bed—three steps; then across the room.... Holy Virgin! Was he ...?

Noiselessly and rapidly he slipped into his trousers, put on his waistcoat, his coat.... Stop, my pen! What rashness is yours? What matters the cure of a paralysed body, what matter all its clumsy agitations, in comparison with the flutterings of a newly liberated soul, when first she tries her wings?

When, a quarter of an hour later, Veronica, disturbed by some kind of presentiment, awoke, she became uneasy at feeling that Anthime was not beside her; she became still more uneasy when, having struck a match, she saw his crutch (which of necessity never left him) still standing by the bedside. The match went out between her fingers, for Anthime had taken the candle with him when he left the room; Veronica hastily slipped on a few things as best she could in the dark, and then in her turn leaving the room, she followed the thread of light which shone from beneath the laboratory door.

“Anthime, are you there, my dear?”

No answer. Veronica, listening with all her might and main, heard a singular noise. Then, sick with anxiety, she pushed open the door. What she saw transfixed her with amazement.

Her Anthime was there, straight in front of her. He was not sitting; he was not standing; the top of his head was on a level with the table and in the full light of the candle, which he had placed upon it; Anthime, the learned man of science, Anthime the atheist, who for many a long year had bowed neither his stiff knee nor his stubborn will (for it was remarkable how in his case body and soul kept pace with each other)—Anthime was kneeling!

He was on his knees, was Anthime; he was holding in his two hands a little fragment of plaster, which he was bathing with his tears, and covering with frantic kisses. At first he took no notice of her, and Veronica, astounded at this mystery, was afraid either to withdraw or to go forward and was already on the point herself of falling on her knees in the doorway opposite her husband, when, oh, miracle! he rose without an effort, walked towards her with a steady step, and, catching her in his arms:

“Henceforth,” he said, as he pressed her to his heart and bent his face towards hers, “henceforth, my dearest, we will pray together.”

VII

The conversion of the unbeliever could not long remain a secret. Julius de Baraglioul did not delay a single day before communicating the news to Cardinal André in France, who spread it abroad amongst the conservative party and the higher clergy; while Veronica announced it to Father Anselm, so that it soon reached the ears of the Vatican.

Doubtless Armand-Dubois had been the object of special mercy. It would perhaps be imprudent to affirm that the Virgin had actually appeared to him, but even if he had seen her only in a dream, his cure was still a matter of fact—incontrovertible, demonstrable and assuredly miraculous. Now if perhaps in Anthime’s opinion it was enough that he should have been cured, in the Church’s it was not. A public recantation was demanded of him, which was to be accompanied by a ceremony of unusual splendour.

“What!” said Father Anselm to him a few days later, “in the course of your errors you have propagated heresy by all the means in your power, and now you would elude the duty of allowing Heaven to dispose of you for its own high purposes of instruction and example? How many souls have been turned aside from the true Light by the false glimmers of your misguided science? It lies with you now to bring them back to the fold, and you hesitate? It lies with you? Nay! It is your strict duty. I will not insult you by supposing that you do not feel it.”

No! Anthime would not elude his duty. But he could not help fearing its consequences. He had heavy pecuniary interests in Egypt which, as we have seen, were in the hands of the freemasons. What could he do without the help of the Lodge? And how could he hope to be assisted by the very institution he was flouting? Formerly he had expected fortune at their hands, and now he saw himself absolutely ruined.

He confided as much to Father Anselm, and Father Anselm, who had not been aware of Anthime’s high rank as a freemason, rejoiced at the thought that his recantation would be all the more striking. Two days later Anthime’s high rank was no longer a secret for any of the readers of the Osservatore and the Santa Croce.

“You are ruining me,” said Anthime.

“On the contrary, my son,” answered Father Anselm, “we are bringing you salvation. As for your material needs, take no thought for them. The Church will provide. I have dwelt at length upon your case to Cardinal Pazzi, who is going to speak to Rampolla about it. I may tell you, moreover, that the Holy Father himself is informed of your recantation. The Church understands what you have sacrificed for her sake, and will undertake that you do not suffer. Don’t you think, though, that upon this occasion you have over-estimated” (and he smiled) “the value of the freemasons’ influence? Not but what I know well enough that they must be reckoned with only too seriously. Never mind! Have you calculated the amount that their hostility may cost you? Tell it me roughly” (he raised his left forefinger to his nose with good-humoured slyness) “and fear nothing.”

Ten days after the celebration of the Jubilee, Anthime’s recantation took place in the Gesù, attended by every circumstance of excessive pomp. It is not for me to relate this ceremony, which was described in all the Italian papers of the time. Father T., the Jesuit General’s socius, pronounced one of his most remarkable orations on this occasion. “The freemason’s sick and tormented soul had doubtless come near to madness and the very extremity of his hatred had foreboded the coming of Love.” The preacher recalled Saul of Tarsus and pointed out that Anthime’s act of iconoclasm showed a surprising analogy to the stoning of St. Stephen. The reverend father’s eloquence swelled and rolled through the aisle, as the thronging surges of the tide roll through the vaults of some sounding cavern, and Anthime thought the while of his niece’s childish treble, and in his secret heart he thanked her for having called down upon her infidel uncle’s sins the merciful attention of her whom henceforth he would serve alone.

From that day onwards, Anthime, absorbed by more elevated preoccupations, scarcely noticed the noise that was made about his name. Julius de Baraglioul suffered in his stead and never opened a paper without a beating heart. The first enthusiasm of the orthodox press was answered by the vituperation of the liberal organs. An important article in the Osservatore—“A New Victory for the Church”—was met by a diatribe in the Tempo Felice—“Another Fool.” Finally the Dépeche de Toulouse headed Anthime’s usual page, which he had sent in the day before his cure, with a few gibing introductory remarks. Julius, in his brother-in-law’s name, wrote a short, dignified letter in reply, to inform the Dépeche that it need no longer consider “the convert” as one of its contributors. The Zukunft was beforehand with Anthime and politely thanked him for his services, intimating that there would be no further use for them. He accepted these blows with that serenity of countenance which is the mark of the truly devout soul.

“Fortunately the columns of the Correspondant will be open to you,” snarled Julius.

“But, my dear fellow, what in the world could I write in them?” objected Anthime benevolently. “None of my former occupations has any further interest for me.”

Then silence closed down over the affair. Julius had been obliged to return to Paris.

Anthime, in the meanwhile, pressed by Father Anselm, had obediently quitted Rome. The withdrawal of the Lodge’s assistance had been rapidly followed by the ruin of his worldly fortunes; and the applications which Veronica, confident of the Church’s support, had urged him to make, merely resulted in wearing out the patience of the influential members of the clergy and finally in setting them against him. He was advised in a friendly way to go to Milan. There he was to await the long-since promised compensation and any scraps which might fall from a celestial bounty that had grown in the meantime singularly lukewarm.

BOOK II: JULIUS DE BARAGLIOUL

“Puisqu’il ne faut jamais ôter le retour à personne.”

—Retz, VIII, p. 93.

I

On March 30th, at twelve o’clock at night, the Baragliouls got back to Paris and went straight to their apartment in the Rue de Verneuil.

While Marguerite was getting ready for the night, Julius, with a small lamp in his hand and slippers on his feet, went to his study—a room to which he never returned without pleasure; it was soberly decorated and furnished; one or two Lépines and a Boudin hung on the walls; in one corner a marble bust of his wife by Chapu, which stood on a revolving pedestal, made a patch of whiteness that was somewhat glaring; in the middle of the room stood an enormous Renaissance table, littered with books, pamphlets and prospectuses which had been accumulating during his absence; in a salver of cloisonné enamel lay a few visiting-cards with their corners turned down, and well in sight, apart from the others and leaning against a bronze Barye, there was a letter addressed in a handwriting which Julius recognised as his old father’s. He immediately tore open the envelope and read as follows:

“My dear Son,

“I have been growing much weaker lately. It is impossible to misunderstand the nature of the warnings which tell me I must be preparing to depart; and indeed I have not much to gain by delaying longer.

“I know that you are returning to Paris to-night and I count on you for doing me a service without delay. In order to make some arrangements, of which I shall shortly inform you, it is necessary for me to know whether a young man called Lafcadio Wluiki (pronounced Louki—the w and i are hardly sounded) is still living at No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard.

“I should be much obliged if you would be so good as to call at this address and ask to see the said young man. (A novelist like you will easily be able to invent some excuse for introducing yourself.) I want to know:

“1. What the young man is doing;

“2. What he intends to do—whether he is ambitious, and, if so, in what way?

“3. Lastly, tell me shortly what seem to you to be his means of existence, his abilities, his inclinations and his tastes....

“Don’t try to see me for the present; I am in an unsociable mood. You can give me the information I ask just as well by letter. If I am inclined to talk or if I feel the final departure is at hand, I will let you know.

“Yours affecˡʸ,

“Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul.

“P.S. Don’t let it appear that you come from me. The young man knows nothing of me and must continue to know nothing.

“Lafcadio Wluiki is now nineteen—a Roumanian subject—an orphan.

“I have looked at your last book. If after that you don’t get into the Academy, such rubbish is unpardonable.”

There was no denying it, Julius’s last book had not been well received. In spite of his fatigue, the novelist ran his eye over a bundle of newspaper cuttings, in which he found his name mentioned with scant indulgence. Then he opened a window and breathed for a moment the misty night air. Julius’s study windows looked on to the gardens of an Embassy—pools of lustral shadow, where eyes and mind could cleanse themselves from the squalor of the streets and from the meannesses of the world. The pure and thrilling note of a blackbird held him listening a moment or two.... Then he went back to the bedroom where Marguerite was already asleep.

As he was afraid of insomnia he took from the chest of drawers a bottle of orange-flower water which he frequently used. Ever careful to observe conjugal courtesy, he had taken the precaution of lowering the wick of the lamp, before placing it where it would be least likely to disturb the sleeper; but a slight tinkling of the glass as he put it down after he had finished drinking, reached Marguerite, where she lay plunged in unconsciousness; she gave an animal grunt and turned to the wall. Julius, glad of an excuse for considering her awake, drew near the bed and asked as he began to undress:

“Would you like to hear what my father says about my book?”

“Oh, my dear, your poor father has no feeling for literature. You’ve told me so a hundred times,” murmured Marguerite whose one desire was to go on sleeping. But Julius’s heart was too full.

“He says it’s unpardonable rubbish.”

There was a long silence, during which Marguerite sank once more into the depths of slumber. Julius was already resigning himself to uncompanioned solitude, when, making a desperate effort for his sake, she rose again to the surface:

“I hope you’re not going to be upset about it.”

“I am taking it with perfect calm, as you can see,” answered Julius at once. “But at the same time I really don’t think it’s my father’s place to speak so—especially not my father’s—and especially not about that book, which in reality is nothing from first to last but a monument in his honour.”

Had not Julius, indeed, retraced in this book the old diplomat’s truly representative career? As a companion picture to the turbulent follies of romanticism, had he not glorified the dignified, the ordered, the classic calm of Juste-Agénor’s existence in its twofold aspect, political and domestic?

“Fortunately, you didn’t write it to please him.”

“He insinuates that I wrote On the Heights in order to get into the Academy.”

“Well! and if you did! Even if you did get into the Academy by writing a fine book! What then?” And she added with contemptuous pity: “Let’s hope, at any rate, that the reviews will set him right.”

Julius exploded.

“The reviews! Good God! The reviews!” he exclaimed, and then turning furiously upon Marguerite as if it were her fault, added with a bitter laugh:

“They do nothing but abuse me.”

At last Marguerite was effectually awakened.

“Is there a great deal of criticism?” she asked with solicitude.

“Yes, and a great deal of crocodile praise too.”

“Oh, how right you are to despise all those wretched journalists! Think of what M. de Vogué wrote to you the day before yesterday: ‘A pen like yours defends France like a sword!’”

“‘Threatened as France is with barbarism, a pen like yours defends her better than a sword!’” corrected Julius.

“And when Cardinal André promised you his vote the other day, he declared that you had the whole Church behind you.”

“A precious lot of good that’ll do me!”

“Oh, my dear Julius!”

“We’ve just seen in Anthime’s case what the protection of the clergy is worth.”

“Julius, you’re getting bitter. You’ve often told me you didn’t work for the hope of reward—nor for the sake of other people’s approval—that your own was enough. You’ve even written some splendid things to that effect.”

“I know, I know,” said Julius impatiently.

With such a rankling pain at his heart, this soothing syrup was of no avail. He went back to his dressing-room.

Why did he let himself go in this lamentable fashion before his wife? His was not the kind of trouble which could be comforted by the coddling of a wife; pride—shame—should make him hide it in his heart. “Rubbish!” All the time he was brushing his teeth, the word throbbed in his temples and played havoc amongst his noblest thoughts. After all, what did his last book matter? He forgot his father’s phrase—or at any rate he forgot it was his father’s. For the first time in his life awful questionings beset him. He, who up to that time had never met with anything but approval and smiles, felt rising within him a doubt as to the sincerity of those smiles, as to the value of that approval, as to the value of his works, as to the reality of his thought, as to the genuineness of his life. He returned to the bedroom, absent-mindedly holding his tooth-glass in one hand and his tooth-brush in the other; he placed the glass, which was half full of rose-coloured water, on the chest of drawers, and put the brush in the glass; then he sat down at a little satin-wood escritoire, where Marguerite did her writing. He seized his wife’s pen-holder and, taking a sheet of paper, which was tinted mauve and delicately perfumed, began:

“My dear Father,

“I found your note awaiting me on my return home this evening. Your errand shall be punctually performed to-morrow morning. I hope to be able to manage the matter to your satisfaction, and by so doing to give you a proof of my devoted attachment.”

For Julius was one of those noble natures whose true greatness flowers amid the thorns of humiliation. Then, leaning back in his chair, he remained a few moments, pen in hand, trying to turn his sentence:

“It is a matter of grief to me that you, of all people in the world, should be the one to suspect my disinterestedness, which ...”

No! Perhaps:

“Do you think that literary honesty is less dear to me than ...”

The sentence wouldn’t come. Julius, who was in his night things, felt that he was catching cold; he crumpled up the paper, took up his tooth-glass and went back with it to his dressing-room, at the same time throwing the crumpled letter into the slop-pail.

Just as he was getting into bed, he touched his wife upon the shoulder:

“And what do you think of my book?” he asked.

Marguerite half opened a glazed and lifeless eye. Julius was obliged to repeat his question. Turning partly round, Marguerite looked at him. His eyebrows raised under a network of wrinkles, his lips contracted, Julius was a pitiable object.

“What’s the matter, dear? Do you really think your last book isn’t as good as the others?”

That was no sort of answer. Marguerite was eluding the point.

“I think the others are no better than this. So there!”

“Oh, well then!...”

And Marguerite, losing heart in the face of these monstrosities, and feeling that all her tender arguments were wasted, turned round towards the dark and once more slept.

II

Notwithstanding a certain amount of professional curiosity and the flattering illusion that nothing human was alien to him, Julius had rarely derogated from the customs of his class and he had very few dealings except with persons of his own milieu. This was from lack of opportunity rather than of taste. As he was preparing next morning to start for his visit, Julius realised that his get-up was not exactly what it should have been. His overcoat, his spread tie, even his Cronstadt hat had something or other proper, staid, respectable about them.... But, after all, it was perhaps better that his dress should not encourage the young man to too prompt a familiarity. It would be more suitable to engage his confidence by way of conversation. And as he bent his steps towards the Impasse Claude-Bernard, Julius turned over in his mind the manner in which he should introduce himself and pursue his enquiries, running through all the precautions and pretexts that would be necessary.

What in the world could Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul have to do with this young man Lafcadio? The question buzzed importunate in Julius’s mind. He was certainly not going to allow himself any curiosity on the subject of his father’s life just at the very moment he had finished writing it. He did not wish to know any more than his father chose to tell him. During the last few years the Count had grown taciturn, but he had never practised concealment. As Julius was crossing the Luxembourg Gardens he was overtaken by a shower.

In front of the door of No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard a fiacre was drawn up, in which Julius as he passed caught sight of a lady whose hat was a trifle large and whose dress was a trifle loud.

His heart beat as he gave his name to the porter of the lodging-house; it seemed to the novelist that he was plunging into an unknown sea of adventure; but as he went upstairs the place looked so common, everything in it was so second-rate, that he was filled with disgust; there was nothing here to kindle his curiosity, which flickered out and was succeeded by repugnance.

On the fourth floor an uncarpeted passage, which was lighted only by the staircase, turned at right angles a few steps from the landing; there were shut doors on each side of this passage; the door at the end was ajar and a small shaft of light came from it. Julius knocked; there was no answer; he timidly pushed the door open a little further; there was no one in the room. Julius went downstairs again.

“If he isn’t there, he won’t be long,” the porter had said.

The rain was falling in torrents. In the hall, opposite the staircase, was a waiting-room, into which Julius made a half-hearted attempt to enter; but its rancid smell and God-forsaken appearance drove him out and made him reflect that he might just as well have opened the door upstairs more decidedly and, without more ado, have waited for the young man in his own room. Julius went up again.

As he turned down the passage for the second time, a woman came out of the room that was next-door to the end one. Julius collided with her and apologised.

“You are looking for ...?”

“Monsieur Wluiki lives here, doesn’t he?”

“He’s gone out.”

“Oh!” said Julius in a tone of such annoyance that the woman asked:

“Is it very urgent?”

Julius had prepared himself solely for an encounter with the unknown Lafcadio and he was taken aback; yet here was a fine opportunity; this woman was perhaps in a position to give him a great deal of information about the young man; if only he could get her to talk....

“There was something I wanted to ask him about.”

“On whose behalf, may I ask?”

“Does she suspect I come from the police?” thought Julius.

“My name is Vicomte Julius de Baraglioul,” said he, rather pompously and slightly raising his hat.

“Oh, Monsieur le Comte, I really must beg you to excuse me for not having.... The passage is so very dark! Please, be so good as to come in.” (She pushed open the door of the end room.) “Lafcadio’s certain to be back in a moment. He was only going as far as the.... Oh! excuse me!”

And as Julius was going in, she brushed in front of him and darted towards a pair of ladies’ drawers, which were very indiscreetly spread out to view on a chair, and which, after an attempt at concealment had proved ineffectual, she endeavoured to make at any rate less conspicuous.

“I’m afraid the place is very untidy....

“Never mind! Never mind!” said Julius indulgently. “I’m quite accustomed to....”

Carola Venitequa was a rather large-sized, not to say plump young person; but her figure was good and she was wholesome-looking; her features were ordinary but not vulgar and not unattractive; she had gentle eyes like an animal’s and a voice that bleated. She was dressed for going out and had on a little soft felt hat, a shirt blouse, a sailor tie and a man’s collar and white cuffs.

“Have you known M. Wluiki long?”

“I might perhaps give him a message,” she remarked without answering.

“Well, I wanted to know whether he was very busy.”

“It depends.”

“Because if he had any free time, I thought of asking him to do a small job for me.”

“What sort of job?”

“Well, that’s just it, you see.... To begin with, I should have liked to know the kind of pursuits he’s engaged in.”

The question lacked subtlety. But Carola’s appearance was not of the sort to invite subtlety. In the meantime the Comte de Baraglioul had recovered his self-possession; he was seated in the chair which Carola had cleared, and Carola was leaning on the table close to him, just beginning to speak, when a loud disturbance was heard in the passage; the door opened noisily and the woman Julius had noticed in the carriage made her appearance.

“I was sure of it,” she said, “when I saw him going upstairs.”

Carola drew away a little from Julius and answered quickly:

“Nothing of the kind, my dear—we were just talking. My friend, Bertha Grand-Marnier—Monsieur le Comte ... there now! I’m so sorry! I’ve forgotten your name.”

“It’s of no consequence,” said Julius, rather stiffly, as he pressed the gloved hand which Bertha offered him.

“Now, introduce me,” said Carola....

“Look here, dearie, we’re an hour late already,” went on the other, after having introduced her friend. “If you want to talk to the gentleman, let him come with us; I’ve got a carriage.”