"If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and the n.o.bles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may heaven"s curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to unchain such a storm!"
"So, then, you, Anselm, a subordinate to my authority, you refuse the commission that I charge you with?"
"I swear to you upon the salvation of my soul, you are staking your life at a terrible game! May I not have to dispute your bleeding remains from the popular fury in order to give them Christian burial!"
CHAPTER V.
BOURGEOIS AND ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNEUR.
The Bishop of Laon had long remained steeped in revery. The tone of conviction, the imposing authority of the archdeacon"s character, left a profound impression upon the man. Though there was no crime he would recoil at in the satisfaction of his pa.s.sions, yet he fervently clung to life. Accordingly, his blind contempt for the common people notwithstanding, he wavered for a moment in his projects, and, recalling to memory the triumphant revolts, that under similar circ.u.mstances, had in recent years been witnessed in other Communes of Gaul, he was lost in sombre, silent perplexity, when the sudden entry of Black John awoke him from his quandary.
"Patron," said Black John, breaking into the room with a malefic grin, "one of the bourgeois dogs has himself walked into the trap. We are holding him, as well as his female, who, by Mahomet, is of the comliest.
If the husband is a mastiff, the wife is a dainty greyhound, worthy of a place in the ecclesiastical kennels!"
"Quit your jokes!" remarked the bishop with impatience. "What is the matter now? Speak up!"
"A minute ago there was a rap at the main gate. I was in the yard with the serfs who are exercising in arms. I peeped through the wicket and saw a burly fellow, with a casque that fell over his nose, and bursting in his steel corselet, and as incommoded by his sword as a dog to whose tail a kettle has been tied. A young and pretty woman accompanied him.
"What do you want?" said I to the man. "To speak with the seigneur bishop, and on the spot, too, on grave matters." To hold one of these dogs of communiers in p.a.w.n, struck me as timely. After sending one of the men to see through the loopholes in the tower whether the bourgeois was alone, I opened the door. Oh, you would have laughed," Black John proceeded, "had you seen the good man embrace his wife before crossing the threshold of the palace, as though he were stepping into Lucifer"s house, and heard his wife say: "I shall wait for you here; my uneasiness will be shorter than if I had remained at the Town Hall." By Mahomet! I said to myself, my patron is too fond of receiving pretty penitents to leave this charmer outside; and taking her up like a feather I carried her into the yard. I had a good mind to shut the gate in the husband"s face, but I considered it was better to keep him too here. His little wife, furious like a cat in love, screamed and scratched my face when I took her up in my arms, but after she was allowed to join her gander of a husband, she put on airs of bravery and spat in my face. They are both in the next room. Shall they be brought in?"
The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of the bishop"s hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic, that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm.
The bishop jumped up, crying out: "By heaven! By the Pope"s navel! That bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!"
"His wife too?" asked the negro, opening the door. "She will act as a counter-irritant to your worship," and without waiting for his master"s answer, the negro vanished.
"Take care!" Anselm said, more and more alarmed. "Take care what you are about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!"
"We have had enough remonstrances!" cried out Gaudry with haughty impatience. "You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!"
"It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of your soul, for the sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to extinguish!"
"What!" exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; "What! That conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those d.a.m.ned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?"
The prelate had just p.r.o.nounced these execrable words, when Ancel Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon.
Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: "Here have you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a grotesque appearance!"
The Councilman and his wife, who drew close to him, looked at each other, unable to understand the words of the bishop. No less alarmed than her husband, two distinct sentiments seemed to fill Simonne"s mind--fear of some danger to Ancel and horror for Gaudry.
"Well, now, seigneur Councilman, august elective magistrate of the ill.u.s.trious Commune of Laon!" said the prelate in a jeering and contemptuous accent. "You wanted to see me. Here I am. What do you want?"
"Seigneur bishop, I have had no ambition, and so I haven"t, of coming here. I"m merely fulfilling a duty. This month I"m the judicial Councilman. As such, I am charged with the trials. It is in that capacity that I have come here to fill my office."
"Oh, oh! Greetings to you, seigneur prosecutor!" replied the prelate sneeringly, bowing before the baker. "May we at least know the subject of the process?"
"Certes, seigneur bishop, seeing the action is against yourself and against John, your African servant, I shall inform you of the charge."
"And while my husband is fulfilling a judicial mission," pertly put in Simonne, "he shall also demand justice and indemnity for the insults hurled at me by the n.o.ble dame of Haut-Pourcin, the wife of one of the episcopals of the city, so please your seigneur bishop!"
"By heaven, my negro John was right, I have never seen a prettier creature!" observed the dissolute bishop, attentively examining the baker"s wife, whom until that instant he had taken little notice of; and seeming to reflect for a moment he asked: "How long have you been married, little darling? Answer your bishop truthfully!"
"Five years, monseigneur."
"My good man," resumed Gaudry addressing the Councilman, "you must have ransomed your wife from the right of the first night at the time when the canon of Amaury was charged with its supervision?"
"Yes, seigneur," answered the baker, while his wife, casting down her eyes, blushed with shame at hearing the bishop refer to that infamous right of the bishop of Laon, who, before the establishment of the Commune had the right to demand "first wedding night of the bride"--a galling shame, that, occasionally, the husband managed to redeem with a money payment.
"That miserable beggar of old Amaury!" exclaimed the prelate with a cynical outburst of laughter. "It was all in vain for me to tell him: "When a bride and bridegroom come to announce at church their approaching wedding, inscribe on a separate roll the names of the brides that are comely enough to induce me to exact from them the amorous tax of nature." But there were none of these according to Amaury; and yet I have before my eyes a striking proof of his fraudulence or his blindness. Almost all the brides were homely, according to him!"
"Happily, seigneur bishop, those evil days are gone by," answered Ancel, hardly able to restrain his indignation. "Those days will never return when the honor of husbands and wives was at the mercy of bishops and seigneurs!"
"Brother," put in the archdeacon, painfully affected by the words of the bishop, and addressing Ancel, "believe me, the Church herself blushes at that monstrous right, that prelates enjoy when they are at once temporal seigneurs."
"What I do know, Father Anselm," the baker answered with judicial deliberateness and raising his head, "is that the Church does not forbid the ecclesiastics to use that monstrous right, we see them using it and deflowering young brides."
"By the blood of Christ!" cried out the bishop, while the archdeacon remained silent, unable to gainsay the baker; "that right proves better than any argument how absolutely the body of the serf, the villein or the non-n.o.ble va.s.sal is the absolute and undisputed property of the lay or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, so far from blushing at that right, the Church claims it back for its own seigneurs, and excommunicates those who dare contest it."
The archdeacon, not daring to contradict the bishop, seeing the bishop spoke the truth, lowered his head in mute pain. The Councilman resumed with a mixture of sly good nature and firmness: "I am, seigneur bishop, too ignorant in matters of theology to discuss the orthodoxy of a right that honorable folks speak of only with indignation in their hearts and shame on their brows. But, thanks be to G.o.d, since Laon has become an enfranchised Commune, that abominable right has been abolished, along with many others. Among the latter is the right of demanding goods without money, and of taking some one else"s horse without paying for it. This, seigneur bishop, leads me to the matter that has brought me here."
"You, then, mean to start a process against me?"
"I am fulfilling my functions. An hour ago, Peter the Fox, tenant farmer of Colombaik the Tanner, deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen a.s.sembled at the Town Hall that you, Bishop of Laon, kept, against all right, a horse belonging to the said Colombaik, and that you refuse to pay the price demanded by the owner."
"Is that all?" the bishop asked laughing. "Have I committed no other sin? Have you no other charges to bring against me?"
"Germain the Strong, master carpenter of the suburb of Grande-Cognee, supported by two witnesses, has deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen that, while pa.s.sing before the gate of the episcopal palace, he was first insulted and then stabbed in the arm by Black John, a domestic of your household, which const.i.tutes a grave crime."
"Well, then, seigneur justiciary," said the bishop still laughing, "Condemn me, brave Councilman. Formulate your judgment and sentence."
"Not yet," coldly answered the baker. "The suit must first be entered; then the witnesses must be heard; next comes the judgment; and fourth its enforcement. Everything in its order."
"Just see! I am instructed! Let it be, I shall be patient. Yet I am curious to see how far your audacity will lead you, communier of Satan.
Go ahead and to work!"
"My audacity is that of a man who fulfills his duty."
"An honest man, who dares not allow himself to be intimidated," put in Simonne with deftness; "a man who will know how to cause the rights of the Commune to be respected, who is not troubled by disdain. A man of sense and of action."
"I love to see your rogish face," replied the bishop, turning to the young woman; "it gives me the necessary humor to listen to this loafer, I swear it by your round and plump throat, by your beautiful black eyes, and by your secret charms!"
"And I swear by the poor eyes of Gerhard of Soisson, whom you have so cruelly deprived of sight, that the sight of you is odious to me, Bishop of Laon! You, whose hands are still red with the blood of Bernard des Bruyeres, whom you murdered in your own church!" And uttering these imprudent words, drawn from her by an impulse of generous indignation, the baker"s wife brusquely turned her back upon the bishop.
Enraged at hearing himself reproached in such a manner for two of his crimes, the Bishop of Laon became livid with rage, and half rising from his seat, whose arms he clutched convulsively, he cried out: "Miserable serf! I shall teach you to control your viper"s tongue!--"
"Simonne!" said the Councilman to his wife in a tone of earnest reproof, interrupting the prelate. "You should not speak that way. Those past crimes belong before the bar of G.o.d, not of the Commune, as are the misdemeanors that I am prosecuting. The bishop is summoned to answer only the two charges that I have preferred."
"I shall save you half your trouble!" cried out Gaudry in a towering rage, and dropping his jeering tone towards the Councilman. "I declare that I am keeping a farmer"s horse; I declare that my negro John stabbed a clown of the city this morning. Now, then, decide, you stupid brute!"