My father turned round to the priest, who was picking a bone:
"It is as I had the honour to say to your reverence! For each reading and writing lesson that Capuchin friar gives to my child, I pay him with a goblet of wine and a fine piece of meat, hare, rabbit, goose, or a tender poulet or a capon. He is a drunkard and evil liver!"
"Don"t doubt about that," said the priest.
"But if ever he dares to come over my threshold again, I"ll drive him out with a broomstick."
"And you"ll do well by it," said the priest; "that Capuchin is an a.s.s, and he taught your son rather to bray than to talk. You"ll act wisely by throwing into the fire that "Life of St Catherine," that prayer for the cure of chilblains and that history of the bugbear, with which that monk poisoned your son"s mind. For the same price you paid for Friar Ange"s lessons, I"ll give him my own; I"ll teach him Latin and Greek, and French also, that language which Voiture and Balzac have brought to perfection. And in such way, by a luck doubly singular and favourable, this Jacquot Tournebroche will become learned and I shall eat every day."
"Agreed!" said my father. "Barbara, bring two goblets. No business is concluded without the contracting parties having a drink together as a token of agreement. We will drink here. I"ll never in my life put my legs into the _Little Bacchus_ again, so repugnant have that cutler and that monk become to me."
The priest rose and, putting his hands on the back of his chair, said in a slow and serious manner:
"Before all, I thank G.o.d, the Creator and Conserver of all things, for having guided me into this hospitable house. It is He alone who governs us and we are compelled to recognise His providence in all matters human, notwithstanding that it is foolhardy and sometimes incongruous to follow Him too closely. Because being universal He is to be found in all sorts of encounters, sublime by the conduct which He keeps, but obscene or ridiculous for the part man takes in it and which is the only part where they appear to us. And therefore one must not shout, in the manner of Capuchin monks and goody-goody women, that G.o.d is to be seen in every trifle. Let us praise the Lord; pray to Him to enlighten me in the teachings I"ll give to that child, and for the rest let us rely on His holy will, without searching to understand it in all its details."
And raising his goblet, he drank deeply.
"This wine," he said, "infilters into the economy of the human body a sweet and salutary warmth. It is a liquor worthy to be sung at Teos and at the Temple by the princes of bacchic poets, Anacreon and Chaulieu. I will anoint with it the lips of my young disciple."
He held the goblet under my chin and exclaimed:
"Bees of the Academy, come, come and place yourselves in harmonious swarms on the mouth of Jacobus Tournebroche, henceforth consecrated to the Muses."
"Oh! Sir Priest," said my mother, "it is a truth that wine attracts the bees, particularly sweet wine. But it is not to be wished that those nefarious flies should place themselves on the mouth of my Jacquot, as their sting is cruel. One day in biting into a peach a bee stung me on the tongue, and I had to suffer fiendish pains. They would be calmed only by a little earth, mixed up with spittle, which Friar Ange put into my mouth in reciting the prayer of St Comis."
The priest gave her to understand that he spoke of bees in an allegorical sense only. And my father said reproachfully: "Barbe, you"re a holy and worthy woman, but many a time I have noticed that you have a peevish liking to throw yourself thoughtlessly into serious conversation like a dog into a game of skittles."
"Maybe," replied my mother. "But had you followed my counsels better, Leonard, you would have done better. I may not know all the sorts of bees, but I know how to manage a home and understand the good manners a man of a certain age ought to practise, who is the father of a family and standard-bearer of his guild."
My father scratched his ear, and poured some wine for the priest, who said with a sigh:
"Certainly, in our days, knowledge is not as much honoured in our kingdom of France, as it had been by the Romans, although degenerated at the time when rhetoric brought Eugenius to the Emperor"s throne. It is not a rarity in our century to find a clever man in a garret without fire or candle. _Exemplum ut talpa_--I am an example."
Thereafter he gave us a narration of his life, which I"ll report just as it came out of his own mouth--that is, as near it as the weakness of my age allowed me to hear distinctly and hereafter keep in my memory. I believe I have been able to restore it after the confidences he gave me at a later time, when he honoured me with his friendship.
CHAPTER III
The Story of the Abbe"s Life
"As you see me," he said, "or rather as you do not see me, young, slender, with ardent eyes and black hair, I was a teacher of liberal arts at the College of Beauvais under Messrs Dugue, Guerin, Coffin and Baffier. I had been ordained, and expected to make a big name in letters. But a woman upset my hopes. Her name was Nicole Pigoreau and she kept a bookseller"s shop at the _Golden Bible_ on the square near the college. I went there frequently to thumb the books she received from Holland and also those bipontic editions ill.u.s.trated with notes, comments and commentaries of great erudition. I was amiable and Mistress Pigoreau became aware of it, which was my misfortune.
"She had been pretty, and still knew how to be pleasing. Her eyes spoke.
One day the Cicero, Livy, Plato and the Aristotle, Thucydides, Polybius and Varro, the Epictetus, Seneca, Boethius and Ca.s.siodorus, the Homer, aeschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and Terence, the Diodorus of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, St John Chrysostom and St Basil, St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus, Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure, Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain, G.o.defroy, Mezeray, Maimbourg, Fabricius, Father Lelong and Father Pitou, all the poets, all the historians, all the fathers, all the doctors, all the theologians, all the humanists, all the compilers, a.s.sembled high and low on the walls, became witnesses to our kisses.
""I could not resist you," she said to me; "don"t conceive a bad opinion of me."
"She expressed her love for me in singular raptures. Once she made me try on neck and wrist bands of fine lace, and finding them suit me well she insisted on my accepting them. I did not want to. But on her becoming irritated by my refusal, which she considered an offence against love, I finally consented to accept them, afraid to offend her.
"My good fortune lasted till I was to be replaced by an officer. I became spiteful over it, and in the ardour of avenging myself I informed the College Regents that I did not go any longer to the _Golden Bible_, for fear of seeing there expositions rather offensive to the modesty of a young clerical. To say the truth, I had not to congratulate myself on this contrivance. Madame Pigoreau, becoming aware of my sayings, publicly accused me of having robbed her of a set of lace neck and wrist bands. Her false complaint reached the ears of the College Regents, who had my boxes searched; therein was found the garment, a matter of considerable value. I was expelled from college and had, like Hippolyte and Bellerophon, to put up with the wiles and wickedness of woman.
"Finding myself in the streets with my few rags and my copybooks, I ran great risk of starving, when, dressed in my clerical suit, I recommended myself to a Huguenot gentleman, who employed me as secretary and dictated to me libels on our religion."
"Ah!" exclaimed my father, "that was wrong of your reverence. An honest man ought not to lend his hand to such abominations. And as far as I am concerned, although ignorant, and of a working condition, I cannot bear the smell of Colas" cow."
"You"re quite right, my host," continued the priest. "It is the worst point in my life. The very one I am most sorry for. But my man was a Calvinist. He employed me to write against Lutherans and Socinians only; these he could not stand at all, and, I a.s.sure you, he compelled me to treat them worse than ever it was done at the Sorbonne."
"Amen," said my father. "Lambs graze together while wolves devour one the other."
The priest continued his narrative:
"Besides, I did not remain for long with that gentleman, who made more fuss about the letters of Ulric von Hutten than of the harangues of Demosthenes, and in whose house water was the only drink. Afterwards I followed various callings, but all without success. I became a pedlar, a strolling player, a monk, a valet, and at last, by resuming my clerical garb, I became secretary to the Bishop of Seez and edited the catalogue of the precious MSS. contained in his library. This catalogue consists of two volumes in folio, which were placed in his gallery, bound in red morocco, with his crest on and the edges gilded. I venture to say it was a good work.
"It would have depended on myself alone to get old and grey in studies and peace with the right reverend prelate, but I became enamoured of the waiting-maid of the bailiff"s lady. Do not blame me severely. Dark she was, buxom, vivacious, fresh. St Pacomus himself would have loved her.
One day she took a seat in the stage coach to travel to Paris in quest of luck. I followed her. But I did not succeed as well as she did. On her recommendation I entered the service of Mistress de Saint Ernest, an opera dancer, who, aware of my talents, ordered me to write after her dictation a lampoon on Mademoiselle Davilliers, against whom she had some grievance. I was a pretty good secretary, and well deserved the fifty crowns she had promised me. The book was printed at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Key, with an allegoric frontispiece, and Mademoiselle Davilliers received the first copy of it just when she went on the stage to sing the great aria of Armida.
"Anger made her voice hoa.r.s.e and shaky. She sang false and was hooted.
Her song ended, she ran as she was, in powder and hoop petticoats, to the Intendant of the Privy Purse, who could not refuse her anything.
She fell on her knees before him, shed abundant tears and shouted for vengeance. And soon it became known that the blow was struck by Mistress de Saint Ernest.
"Questioned, hard pressed, sharply threatened, she denounced me as the author, and I was put into the Bastille, where I remained four years.
There I found some consolation in reading Boethius and Ca.s.siodorus.
"Since then I have kept a public scrivener"s stall at the Cemetery of the Saints Innocent, and lend to servant girls in love a pen, which should rather have described the ill.u.s.trious men of Rome and commented on the writings of the holy fathers. I earn two farthings for every love letter, and it is a trade by which I rather die than live. But I do not forget that Epictetus was a slave and Pyrrho a gardener.
"Just now, unexpectedly, I have been paid a whole crown for an anonymous letter. I have not had anything to eat for two days. Therefore I at once looked out for a cook-shop. From outside in the street I perceived your illuminated sign and the fire of your chimney throwing joyful flaming lights on the windows. On your threshold I smelt delicious odours. I came in, and now, my dear host, you have the history of my life."
"I have become aware that it is the life of a good man," said my father, "and with the exception of Colas" cow there is hardly anything to complain of. Give me your hand! We are friends, what"s your name?"
"Jerome Coignard, doctor of divinity, master of arts."
CHAPTER IV
The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard--I receive Lessons in Latin Greek and Life.
The marvellous in the affairs of mankind is the concatenation of effects and causes. M. Jerome Coignard was quite right in saying: "To consider that strange following of bounds and rebounds wherein our destinies clash, one is obliged to recognise that G.o.d in His perfection is in want neither of mind nor of imagination nor comic force; on the contrary He excels in imbroglio as in everything else, and if after having inspired Moses, David and the Prophets He had thought it worth while to inspire M. le Sage or the interluders of a fair, He would dictate to them the most entertaining harlequinade." And in a similar way it occurred that I became a Latinist because Friar Ange was taken by the watch and put into ecclesiastical penance for having knocked down a cutler under the arbour of the _Little Bacchus_. M. Jerome Coignard kept his promise. He gave me lessons and, finding me tractable and intelligent, he took pleasure in instructing me in the ancient languages.
In but a few years he made me a tolerably good Latinist.
In memory of him I have conceived a grat.i.tude which will not come to an end but with my life. The obligation I am under to him is easily to be conceived when I say that he neglected nothing to shape my heart and soul, together with my intellect. He recited to me the "Maxims of Epictetus," the "Homilies of St Basil" and the "Consolations of Boethius." By beautiful extracts he opened to me the philosophy of the Stoics, but he did not make it appear in its sublimity without showing its inferiority to Christian philosophy. He was a subtle theologian and a good Catholic. His faith remained whole on the ruins of his most beloved illusions, of his most cherished hopes. His weaknesses, his errors, his faults, none of which he ever tried to dissemble or to colour, have never shaken his confidence in the Divine goodness. And to know him well, it must be known that he took care of his eternal salvation on occasions when, to all appearance, he cared the least about it. He imbued me with the principles of an enlightened piety. He also endeavoured to attach me to virtue as such, and to render it to me, so to say, homely and familiar by examples drawn from the life of Zeno.