That same day Monsieur l"Abbe Patouille came to offer the wounded man good counsel and consolation. He exhorted him to break with his bad companions and to be reconciled to his family.
He drew a picture of the sorrowful father, the mother in tears, ready to receive their long-lost child with open arms. Renouncing with manly effort a life of profligacy and deluding joys, Maurice would recover his peace and strength of mind, he would free himself from devouring chimeras, and shake off the Evil Spirit.
Young d"Esparvieu thanked Abbe Patouille for all his kindness, and made a protestation of his religious feelings.
"Never," said he, "have I had such faith. And never have I been in such need of it. Just imagine, Monsieur l"Abbe, I have to teach my guardian angel his catechism all over again, for he has quite forgotten it!"
Monsieur l"Abbe Patouille heaved a deep sigh, and exhorted his dear child to pray, there being no other resource but prayer for a soul a.s.sailed by the Devil.
"Monsieur l"Abbe," asked Maurice, "may I introduce my guardian angel to you? Do stay a moment; he has gone to get me some cigarettes."
"Unhappy child!"
And Abbe Patouille"s fat cheeks drooped in token of affliction. But almost immediately they plumped up again, as a sign of light-heartedness. For in his heart there was matter for rejoicing. Public opinion was improving.
The Jacobins, the Freemasons, the Coalitionists were everywhere in disgrace. The Smart Set led the way. The Academie Francaise was of the right way of thinking. The number of Christian schools was increasing by leaps and bounds. The young men of the Quartier Latin were submitting to the Church, and the ecole Normale exhaled the perfume of the seminary. The Cross was gaining the day; but money was wanted,--more money, always money.
After six weeks" rest, Maurice was allowed by his doctor to take a drive. He wore his arm in a sling. His mistress and his friend went with him. They drove to the Bois, and took a gentle pleasure in looking upon the gra.s.s and the trees. They smiled on everything and everything smiled on them. As Arcade had said, their faults had made them better.
By the unlooked-for ways of jealousy and anger, Maurice had attained to calm and kindliness. He still loved Gilberte and he loved her with an indulgent love. The angel still desired her as much as ever, but having once possessed her, his desire had lost the sting of curiosity. Gilberte forbore trying to please, and thereby pleased the more. They drank milk at the Cascade, and found it good. They were all three innocent. Arcade forgot the injustice of the old tyrant of the world. But he was soon to be reminded of it.
On entering his friend"s house, he found Zita awaiting him, looking like a statue in ivory and gold.
"You excite my pity," she said to him. "The day is at hand the like of which has never dawned since the beginning of Time, and perhaps will never dawn again before the Sun enters with all its train into the constellation of Hercules. We are on the eve of surprising Ialdabaoth in his palace of porphyry, and you, who are burning to deliver the heavens, who were so eager to enter in triumph into your emanc.i.p.ated country,--you suddenly forget your n.o.ble purpose and fall asleep in the arms of the daughters of men. What pleasure can you find in intercourse with these unclean little animals, composed, as they are, of elements so unstable that they may be said to be in a state of constant evanescence?
O Arcade! I was indeed right to distrust you. You are but an intellectual; you do but feel idle curiosity. You are incapable of action."
"You misjudge me, Zita," replied the angel. "It is the nature of the sons of heaven to love the daughters of men. Corruptible though it be, the material part of women and of flowers charms the senses none the less. But not one of these little animals can make me forget my hatred and my love, and I am ready to rise up against Ialdabaoth."
Zita expressed her satisfaction at seeing him in this resolute mood. She urged him to pursue the accomplishment of this vast undertaking with undiminished ardour. Nothing must be hurried or deferred.
"A great action, Arcade, is made up of a mult.i.tude of small ones; the most majestic whole is composed of a thousand minute details. Let us neglect nothing."
She had come to take him to a meeting where his presence was required.
They were to take a census of the revolutionaries.
She added but one word:
"Nectaire will be there."
When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking in attraction. She failed to please him because she was perfectly beautiful and because true beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita inspired him with antipathy when he learned that she was an angel in revolt and that she had come to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.
The poor child tried to retain his companion by all the means that his wit and the circ.u.mstances afforded him. If his guardian angel would only remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent boxing-match, to a "revue" where he would witness the apotheosis of Poincare, or, lastly, to a certain house he knew of where he would behold women remarkable for their beauty, talents, vices, or deformities. But the angel would not allow himself to be tempted, and said he was going with Zita.
"What for?"
"To plot the conquest of the skies."
"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of---- but there, I proved to you that it was neither possible nor desirable."
"Good night, Maurice."
"You are going? Well, I will accompany you."
And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade and Zita all the way to Clodomir"s restaurant at Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an arbour in the garden.
Prince Istar and Theophile were already there, with a little creature who looked like a child, and was, in fact, a j.a.panese angel.
"We are only waiting for Nectaire," said Zita.
And at that moment the old gardener noiselessly appeared. He took his seat, and his dog lay down at his feet. French cooking is the best in the world. It is a glory that will transcend all others when humanity has grown wise enough to put the spit above the sword. Clodomir served the angels, and the mortal who was with them, with a soup made of cabbages and bacon, a loin of pork and kidneys cooked in wine, thereby proving himself a real Montmartre cook, and showing that he had not been spoilt by the Americans, who corrupt the most excellent _chefs_ of the City of Restaurants.
Clodomir brought forth some Bordeaux, which, though unrecorded among the renowned vintages of Medoc, gave evidence by its choice and delicate aroma of the high n.o.bility of its origin. We must not omit to chronicle that, after this wine and many others had been drunk, the cellarman, in solemn state, produced a Burgundy choice and rare, full-bodied yet not heavy, generous yet delicate, rich with the true Burgundian mellowness, a n.o.ble and, withal, a somewhat heady wine, that brought delight alike to mind and sense.
"Hail to thee, Dionysus, greatest of the G.o.ds!" cried old Nectaire, raising his gla.s.s on high. "I drink to thee who wilt restore the Golden Age, and give again to mortal men, who will become heroes as of old, the grapes which the Lesbians used to cull, long since, from the vines of Methymna; who wilt restore the vineyards of Thasus, the white cl.u.s.ters of Lake Mareotis, the storehouses of Falernus, the vines of the Tmolus, and the wine of Phanae, of all wines the king. And the juice thereof shall be divine, and, as in old Silenus" day, men shall grow drunk with Wisdom and with Love."
When the coffee was served, Prince Istar, Zita, Arcade, and the j.a.panese angel took it in turns to give an account of the forces a.s.sembled against Ialdabaoth. Angels, in exchanging eternal bliss for the sufferings of an earthly life, grow in intelligence, acquire the means of going astray and the faculty of self-contradiction. Consequently their meetings, like those of men, are tumultuous and confused. Did one of them deal in figures, the others immediately called them in question.
They could not add one number to another without quarrelling, and arithmetic itself, subjected to pa.s.sion, lost its cert.i.tude. The Kerub, who had brought with him the pious Theophile, waxed indignant when he heard the musician praising the Lord, and rained down such blows on his head as would have felled an ox. But the head of a musician is harder than a bucranium, and the blows which Theophile received did not avail to modify that angel"s notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita"s pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.
"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed young Maurice"s guardian angel. "I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then, Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the demiurge, if he had any brains!"
It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.
"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their depths thereby."
Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:
"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite s.p.a.ces. Beneath the breath of Eros--the first of the G.o.ds,--plants, animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the silent skies.
"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this one--whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads--has lasted or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the Infinite."
As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits, the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion"s belt was shattered; the Pole Star forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose incandescent flame had lit up the far horizon, grew blue, then red, flickered, and suddenly died out. The shaken constellations formed new signs which were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations the magic flute had compressed into one brief moment the life and the movement of this universe which seems unchanging and eternal both to men and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed their immemorial aspect.
Nectaire had vanished. Clodomir asked his guests if they were pleased with the cabbage soup which, in order that it might be strong, had been kept simmering for twenty-four hours on the fire, and he sang the praises of the Beaujolais which they had drunk.
The night was mild. Arcade, accompanied by his guardian angel, Theophile, Prince Istar, and the j.a.panese angel, escorted Zita home.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
HOW A DREADFUL CRIME PLUNGES PARIS INTO A STATE OF TERROR
The city was asleep. Their footsteps rang loudly on the deserted pavement. Having reached the corner of the Rue Feutrier, half-way up Montmartre, the little company halted before the dwelling of the beautiful angel. Arcade was talking about the Thrones and Dominations with Zita, who, her finger on the bell, could not make up her mind to ring. Prince Istar was tracing the mechanism of a new sort of bomb on the pavement with the end of his stick, and bellowed so loudly that he woke the sleeping citizens and stirred into activity the amatory pa.s.sions of the neighbouring Pasiphaes. Theophile was singing the barcarole from the second act of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_ at the top of his voice. Maurice, his arm in a sling, was fencing left-handed with the j.a.panese, striking sparks from the pavement, and crying "A hit! a hit!" in a piercing voice.
Meanwhile Inspector Grolle at the corner of the next street was dreaming. He had the bearing of a Roman legionary and displayed all the characteristics of that proudly servile race, who, ever since men first took to building cities, have been the mainstay of Empires and the support of ruling houses. Inspector Grolle was very strong, but very tired. He suffered from an arduous profession and from lack of food. He was a man devoted to duty, but still a man, and he was unable to resist the wiles, the charms, and the blandishments of the gay ladies whom he met in swarms in the shadows along the empty streets and round about pieces of waste ground; he loved them. He loved like a soldier under arms. It tired him, but courage conquered fatigue. Though he had not yet reached the middle of Life"s way, he longed for sweet repose and peaceful country pursuits. At the corner of the Rue Muller, on this mild night, he stood lost in thought. He was dreaming of the house where he was born, of the little olive wood, of his father"s bit of ground, of his old mother, bent with long and heavy labour, whom he would never see again. Roused from his reverie by the nocturnal tumult, Inspector Grolle turned the corner of the street, and looked rather unfavourably at the band of loiterers, wherein his social instinct suspected enemies of law and order. He was patient and resolute. After a lengthy silence, he said, with awe-inspiring calm:
"Move on, there!"
But Maurice and the j.a.panese angel were fencing and heard nothing. The musician heard nothing but his own melodies. Prince Istar was absorbed in the explanation of explosive formulae. Zita was discussing with Arcade the greatest enterprise that had ever been conceived since the solar system issued from its original nebula,--and thus they all remained unconscious of their surroundings.