The Queen Pedauque by Anatole France
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Anatole France >> The Queen Pedauque
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"Abbe," said M. d'Anquetil, "I have not read your Polyaenus, and do
not think I ever shall read him. But like every true gentleman, I
have been to the wars. I have served the king for eighteen months.
It is the noblest of all professions. I'll tell you exactly what war
is. I may tell the secret of it, as nobody is present to listen but
yourself, some bottles, yonder gentleman whom I intend to kill very
shortly, and that girl, who begins to undress herself."
"Yes," said Catherine, "I undress, and will keep only my chemise on,
because I feel too hot."
"Well then," M. d'Anquetil continued, "whatever may be printed of it
in the gazettes, war consists, above all things, of stealing the
pigs and chickens of peasants. Soldiers in the fields have no other
occupation."
"You are right," said M. Coignard, "and in days of yore it was the
saying in Gaul that the soldier's best friend was Madame Marauding.
But I beg of you not to kill my pupil, Jacques Tournebroche."
"Ouf!" exclaimed Catherine, arranging the lace of her chemise on her
bosom. "Now I feel easier."
"Abbe," replied M. d'Anquetil, "honour compels me to do it."
But my kind-hearted tutor went on:
"Sir, Jacques Tournebroche is very useful to me for the translation,
I have undertaken, of Zosimus the Panopolitan. I would give you many
thanks not to fight him before the finishing touch has been given to
that grand work."
"To the deuce with your Zosimus," said M. d'Anquetil. "To the deuce
with him! Do you hear, abbe! I'll send him to the deuce, as a king
would do with his first mistress."
And he sang:
"Pour dresser un jeune courrier
Et l'affermir sur l'etrier
Il lui fallait une routiere
Laire lan laire."
"What's that Zosimus?"
"Zosimus, sir, Zosimus of Panopolis, was a learned Greek, who
flourished at Alexandria in the third century of the Christian era,
and wrote treatises on the spagyric art."
"Do you fancy it matters to me? Why do you translate it?
"Battons le fer quand il est chaud
Dit-elle, en faisant sonner haut
Le nom de sultan premiere
Laire lan laire."
"Sir," said my dear tutor, "I quite agree with you; there is no
practical utility in it, and by it the course of the world will not
be changed in the slightest. But making clearer by annotations and
comments this treatise, which that Greek compiled for his sister
Theosebia--"
Catherine interrupted him by singing in a high-pitched voice:
"Je veux en depit des jaloux
Qu'on fasse duc mon epoux
Lasse de le voir secretairev
Laire lan laire."
And my tutor continued:
"--I contribute to the treasure of knowledge gathered by erudite
men, and bring forward one stone of my own for a monument to true
history, which is a better one than the chronicles of war and
treaties; for, sir, the nobility of man--"
Catherine continued to sing:
"Je sais bien qu'on murmurera
Que Paris nous chansonnera
Mais tant pis pour le sot vulgaire
Laire lan laire."
And my dear tutor went on:
"--is thought. And concerning that, it is not indifferent to know
what idea the Egyptians had formed of the nature of metals and the
qualities of the primitive substance."
The Abbe Jerome Coignard, having come to the end of his discourse,
emptied a big glass of wine, while Catherine sang:
"Par l'epee ou par le fourreau
Devenir due est toujours beau
Il n'importe le maniere
Laire lan laire."
"Abbe," said M. d'Anquetil, "you do not drink, and in spite of such
abstinence you lose your reason. In Italy, during the War of
Succession, I was under the orders of a brigadier who translated
Polybius. But he was an idiot. Why translate Zosimus?"
"If you want my true reason," replied the abbe, "because I find some
sensuality in it."
"That's something like!" protested M. d'Anquetil. "But in what can
M. Tournebroche, who at this moment is caressing my mistress, assist
you?"
"With the knowledge of Greek I have given him."
M. d'Anquetil turned round to me and said:
"What, sir, you know Greek! You are not then a gentleman?"
"No, sir," I replied, "I am not. My father is the banner-bearer of
the Guild of Parisian Cooks."
"Well, under such conditions it is impossible for me to kill you.
Kindly accept my excuses. But, abbe, you don't drink. You imposed
upon me. I believed you to be a real good tippler, and wished you to
become my chaplain as soon as I could set up my own establishment."
However, M. Coignard did drink all that the bottle contained, and
Catherine, inclining to me, whispered in my ear:
"Jacques, I feel that I shall never love anyone but you."
These words, spoken by a really fine woman clad in no other wrapper
than a chemise, troubled me to the extreme. Catherine ended by
fuddling me entirely, by making me drink out of her own glass, an
action passing unobserved in the confusion of a supper which had
overheated the heads of us all.
M. d'Anquetil knocked off the neck of a bottle on the corner of the
table and filled our bumpers; from this moment on, I cannot give a
reliable account of what was said and done around me. One incident I
remember: Catherine treacherously emptying her glass into her
lover's neck, between the nape and the collar of his coat; and M.
d'Anquetil retorting by pouring the contents of two or three bottles
over the girl. Wearing nothing beyond her chemise, it changed
Catherine into a kind of mythological figure of a humid species like
nymphs and naiads. She cried herself into a rage and twisted in
convulsions.
At that very moment, in the silence of the night, we heard knocks at
the house door. We became suddenly motionless and dumb, like people
bewitched.
The knocks soon redoubled in strength and frequency. M. d'Anquetil
was the first to break the silence by questioning himself aloud,
swearing horribly the while, who the deuce the pesterers could be.
My good tutor, to whom the most ordinary circumstances often
inspired admirable maxims, rose and said with unction and gravity:
"What does it matter whose hand knocks so violently at closed doors
for a vulgar, perhaps ridiculous, reason? Do not let us seek to
know, and consider them as knocking on the door of our hardened and
corrupted souls. At each knock let us say to ourselves: This one is
to give us notice to amend and think on the salvation we neglect in
the turmoil of our pleasures, that other one is to remind us of
eternity. In that way we shall draw the utmost profit out of an
incident which, after all, is as paltry as it is frivolous."
"You're humorous, abbe," said M. d'Anquetil; "to judge by the
sturdiness of their knocks, they'll burst the door open."
And as a fact the knocker resounded like thunder.
"They are robbers," exclaimed the soaked girl. "Jesus! We shall be
massacred; it is our chastisement for having sent away the little
friar. Many times I have told you. M. d'Anquetil, that misfortune
comes to houses from which a Capuchin has been driven.'
"Hear the stupid!" replied M. d'Anquetil. "That damned monk makes
her believe any imbecility he chooses to dish her up. Thieves would
be more polite, or at least more discreet. I rather think it is the
watch."
"The watch! Worse and worse," said Catherine.
"Bah!" M. d'Anquetil exclaimed, "we'll lick them."
My dear tutor took the precaution to put one bottle in one of his
pockets, and as an equipoise another bottle in the other pocket. The
house shook all over from the furious knocks. M. d'Anquetil, whose
military qualities were aroused by the knocker's onslaught, after
reconnoitring, exclaimed:
"Ah! Ah! Ah! Do you know who knocks? It is M. de la Gueritude with
his full-bottomed periwig and two big flunkeys carrying lighted
torches."
"That's not possible," said Catherine, "at this very moment he is in
bed with his old woman."
"Then it is his ghost," said M. d'Anquetil. "And the ghost also
wears his periwig, which is so ridiculous that any self-respecting
spectre would refuse to copy it."
"Do you speak the truth, and not jeer at me?" asked Catherine." Is
it really M. de la Gueritude?"
"It's himself, Catherine, if I may believe my own eyes/'
"Then I am lost!" exclaimed the poor girl. "Women are indeed
unhappy! They are never left in peace. What will become of me? Would
you not hide, gentlemen, in some of the cupboards?"
"That could be done," said M. Jerome Coignard, "as far as we are
concerned, but how are we to hide all those empty bottles, mostly
smashed, or at least broken necked; the remains of that demijohn M.
d'Anquetil threw at me; that tablecloth; those plates, candelabra
and mademoiselle's chemise, which in its soaked state is nothing but
a transparent veil encircling her beauty?"
"It is true," said Catherine, "yonder idiot has drenched my chemise,
and I am catching cold. But listen. Perhaps M. d'Anquetil could hide
in the top room, and I would make the abbe my uncle and Jacques my
brother."
"No good at all," said M. d'Anquetil. "I'll go myself and kindly ask
M. de la Gueritude to have supper with us."
We urged him, all of us--my tutor, Catherine and I--to keep quiet;
we entreated him, hung on his neck. It was useless. He got hold of a
candelabra and descended the stairs. Trembling we followed him. He
unlocked the door. M. de la Gueritude was there, exactly as M.
d'Anquetil had described him, with his periwig, between two flunkeys
bearing torches. M. d'Anquetil saluted with the utmost correctness
and said:
"Accord us the favour to come in, sir. You'll find some persons as
amiable as singular. Tournebroche, to whom Mam'selle Catherine
throws kisses from the window, and a priest who believes in God."
Wherewith he bowed respectfully.
M. de la Gueritude was of the dry sort, very tall, and little
inclined to the enjoyment of a joke. That of M. d'Anquetil provoked
him strongly, and his anger rose when he saw my good tutor, one
bottle in hand and two peeping out of his pockets, and by the look
of Catherine with her wet chemise sticking to her body.
"Young man," he said in an icy fit of passion to M. d'Anquetil, "I
have the honour to know your father, of whom I will inquire, not
later than to-morrow, the name of the town to which the king shall
send you to meditate over the shame of your behaviour and
impertinence. That worthy nobleman, to whom I have lent some money I
do not reclaim, can refuse me nothing. And our well-beloved Prince,
who is in precisely the same position as your father, has always a
kindness for me. Consider it a matter done. I have settled, thank
God, others more difficult. Now as to that lady yonder, of whom
neither repentance nor improvement can be expected. I'll say to-
morrow before noon, two words to the Lieutenant of Police, whom I
know to be well disposed, to send her to the spittel. I have nothing
else to say to you. This house is my property, I have paid for it
and I intend to enter when I like." Then, turning to his flunkeys,
and pointing out my tutor and myself with his walking stick, he
said:
"Throw these two drunkards out."
M. Jerome Coignard was commonly of an exemplary forbearance, and he
used to say that he owed his gentleness to the vicissitudes of life;
chance having treated him as the sea treats the pebbles--that is,
polishing them by means of the rolling of flood and ebb. He could
easily stand insults, as much by Christian spirit as by philosophy.
But what helped him best thereto was his deep-rooted contempt of
mankind, not excepting himself. However, for once he lost all
measure and forgot all prudence.
"Hold your tongue, vile publican," he shouted and brandished a
bottle like a crowbar. "If yonder rascals dare to approach me I'll
smash their heads, to teach them respect for my cloth, which proves
in an ample way my sacred calling."
In the faint glimmer of the torches, shiny from sweat, his eyes
starting out of their sockets, his coat unbuttoned, and his big
belly half out of his breeches, he looked a fellow not easy to be
got rid of. The lackeys hesitated.
"Out with him, out with him," shouted M. de la Gueritude; "out with
this bag of wine! Can't you see that all you have to do is to push
him in the gutter, where he'll remain till the scavengers throw him
into the dustcart? I would throw him out myself were I not afraid to
pollute my clothes."
My good tutor flew into a passion, and shouted in a voice worthy to
sound in a church:
"You odious money-monger, infamous partisan, barbarous evildoer, you
pretend this house to be yours? So that everyone may know it belongs
to you, inscribe on the door the gospel word _Aceldema_, which
in our language means Bloodmoney. And then we'll let the master
enter his dwelling. Thief, robber, murderer, write with the piece of
charcoal I throw in your face, write with your own filthy hand, on
the floor, your title deed. Bloodmoney of the widow and orphans,
bloodmoney of the just. _Aceldema_. If not, out with you, man
of quantities! We'll remain."
M. de la Gueritude had never in his life heard anything of this
sort, and thought he had to deal with a madman, as one might easily
suppose, and, more for defence than attack, he raised his big stick.
My good tutor, out of his senses, threw a bottle at the head of the
contractor, who fell headlong on the floor, howling, "He has killed
me!" And as he was swimming in red wine he really looked as though
murdered. Both the flunkeys wanted to throw themselves on the
murderer, and one of them, a burly fellow, tried to grasp him, when
M. Coignard gave the fellow such a butt that he rolled in the stream
beside the financier.
Unluckily he rose quickly, and, arming himself with a still burning
torch, jumped into the passage, where bad luck awaited him. My good
master was no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M.
d'Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who
received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not
stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky
knave's stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may
be to attack a gentleman. Now M. Coignard had not got twenty yards
away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the
limbs of a daddy-longlegs, ran after him, shouting for the guard.
"Stop him! Stop him!" The footman ran faster than the abbe, and we
could see him, at the corner of the Rue Saint Guillaume, extending
his arms to catch M. Coignard by the collar of his gown. But my dear
tutor, who had more than one trick, veering abruptly, got behind the
fellow, tripped him up, and sent him on to a stone post, where he
got his head broken. It was done before M. d'Anquetil and I, running
to the abbe's assistance, could reach him. We could not leave M.
Coignard in this pressing danger.
"Abbe," said M. d'Anquetil, "give me your hand. You're a gallant
man."
"I really cannot help thinking," my good master replied, "that I
have been somewhat murderously inclined; but I am not cruel enough
to be proud of it. I am quite satisfied so long as I am not
reproached too vehemently. Such violence does not lie in my habits,
and as you can see, sir, I am better fitted to lecture from the
chair of a college on belles-lettres than I am to fight with lackeys
at the corner of a street."
"Oh!" replied M. d'Anquetil, "that's not the worst of the whole
business. I fully believe you have knocked the Farmer-general on the
head."
"Is it true?" questioned the abbe.
"As true as that I have perforated with my sword yonder scoundrel's
tripes."
"Under such circumstances we ought to ask pardon of God, to whom
alone we are responsible for the blood shed by us, and secondly to
hasten to the nearest fountain, there to wash ourselves, because I
perceive that my nose is bleeding."
"Right you are, abbe," said M. d'Anquetil; "for the blackguard now
dying in the gutter has cut my forehead. What an impertinence!"
"Forgive him," said the abbe, "as you wish to be forgiven yourself."
At the place where the Rue de Bac loses itself in the fields, we
fortunately found along the wall of a hospital a little bronze
Triton, shooting a spirt of water into a stone tub. We stopped to
wash and drink, for our throats were dry.
"What have we done," said my master, "and how could I have lost my
temper, usually so peaceable? True men must not be judged by their
deeds, which depend on circumstances, but rather, on the example of
God our Father, by their secret thoughts and their deepest
intentions."
"And Catherine," I asked, "what has become of her through this
horrible adventure?"
"I left her," was M. d'Anquetil's answer, "breathing into the mouth
of her financier, to revive him. But she had better save her breath.
I know La Gueritude. He is pitiless. He'll send her to the spittel,
perhaps to America. I am sorry for her. She was a fine girl. I did
not love her, but she was mad after me. And, an extraordinary state
of things, I am now without a mistress."
"Don't bother," said my good tutor. "You'll soon find another, not
different, or hardly differing in essentials, from her. What you
look for in a woman, as it appears to me, is common to all females."
"It is clear," said M. d'Anquetil, "that we are in danger: I of
being sent to the Bastille, you, abbe, together with your pupil,
Tournebroche, who certainly has not killed anybody, of being
hanged."
"That's but too true," said my good master. "We have to look out for
safety. Perhaps it will be necessary to leave Paris, where, no
doubt, we shall be wanted; and even to fly to Holland. Alas! I
foresee that there I shall write lampoons for ballet girls with that
same hand which has been employed to annotate right amply the
alchemistic treatises of Zosimus the Panopolitan."
"Listen to me, abbe," said M. d'Anquetil, "I have a friend who will
hide us at his country seat for any length of time. He lives within
four miles of Lyons, in a country horrid and wild, where nothing is
to be seen but poplars, grass and woods. There we must go. There
we'll wait till the storm is over. We'll pass the time hunting and
shooting. But we must at once find a post-chaise or, better still, a
travelling coach."
"I know where to get that," said the abbe. "At the _Red Horse_
hotel, at the Circus of the Bergeres, you can have good horses, as
well as all sorts of vehicles. I made the acquaintance of the
landlord at the time I was secretary to Madame de Saint Ernest. He
liked to oblige people of quality. I am not quite sure if he is
still alive, but he ought to have a son like himself. Have you
money?"
"I have with me a rather large sum," replied M. d'Anquetil, "and I
am glad of it, as I cannot dream of going home, where the constables
will not fail to be on the lookout to arrest and conduct me to the
Chatelet. I forgot my servants, whom I left in Catherine's house,
and I do not know what has become of them. I thrashed them, and
never paid their wages, and withal I am not sure of their fidelity.
In whom can you have confidence? Let's be off at once for the Circus
of the Bergeres."
"Sir," said the abbe, "I'll make you a proposal, hoping it may be
agreeable to you. We are living, Tournebroche and I, in an
alchemistic and ramshackle castle at the Cross of the Sablons, where
we can easily stay for a dozen hours without being seen by anyone.
There we will take you and wait quietly till our carriage is ready.
The advantage is that the Sablons is very near the Circus of the
Bergeres."
M. d'Anquetil had nothing against the abbe's proposal, and so we
resolved in front of the Triton, who blew the water out of his fat
cheeks, to go first to the Cross of the Sablons, and to hire, later
on, at the _Red Horse_ hotel, a travelling coach for our
journey to Lyons.
"I want to inform you, gentlemen," said my dear tutor, "that of the
three bottles I took care to carry with me, one was broken on the
head of M. de la Gueritude, another one was smashed in my pocket
during my flight. They are both regretted. The third, against all
hope, has been preserved. Here it is!"
Pulling it out of his pocket, he placed it on the edge of the
fountain.
"That's well," sail M, d'Anquetil. "You have some wine, I have dice
and cards in my pocket. We can play."
"It is true," said my good master, "that is a pleasant pastime. A
pack of cards is a book of adventure, of the kind called romances.
It is so far superior to other books of a similar kind that it can
be made and read at the same time, and that it is not necessary to
have brains to make it, nor knowledge of reading to read it. It is a
marvellous work, also, in that it offers a regular and new sense
every time its pages are shuffled. It is a contrivance never to be
too much admired, because out of mathematical principles it extracts
thousands on thousands of curious combinations, and so many singular
affinities that it is believed, contrary to all truth, that in it
are discoverable the secrets of hearts, the mystery of destinies and
the arcanum of the future. What I have said is particularly
applicable to the tarot of the Bohemians, which is the finest of all
games, piquet not excepted. The invention of cards must be ascribed
to the ancients, and as far as I am concerned--I have, to speak
candidly, no kind of documentary evidence for my assertion--I
believe them to be of Chaldean origin. But in their present
appearance the piquet cards cannot be traced further back than to
King Charles VII., if what is said in a learned essay, that I
remember to have read at Seez, is true, that the queen of hearts is
an emblematical likeness of the beautiful Agnes Sorel, and that the
queen of spades is, under the name of Pallas, no other than that
Jeanne Dulys, better known as Joan of Arc, who by her bravery re-
established the business of the French monarchy and was afterwards
boiled to death by the English, in a cauldron, shown for two
farthings at Rouen, where I have seen it in passing through that
city. Certain historians pretend that she was burnt alive at the
stake. It is to be read in the works of Nicole Gilles and in
Pasquier that St Catherine and St Margaret appeared to her.
Certainly it was not God who sent these saints to her, because there
is no person of any learning and solid piety who does not know that
Margaret and Catherine were invented by Byzantine monks, whose
abundant and barbarous imaginations have altogether muddled up the
martyrology. It is a ridiculous impiety to pretend that God made two
saints who never existed appear to Jeanne Dulys. However, the
ancient chroniclers were not afraid to publish it. Why have they not
said that God sent to the Maid of Orleans the fair Yseult, Melusine,
Berthe the Bigfooted, and all the other heroines of the romances of
chivalry the existence of whom is not more fabulous that that of the
two virgins, Catherine and Margaret? M. de Valois, in the last
century, rose with full reason against these clumsy fables, as much
opposed to religion as error is to truth. It is desirable that an
ecclesiastic learned in history undertook to show the distinction
between real saints and saints such as Margaret, Luce or Lucie,
Eustache, and perhaps Saint George, about whom I have my doubts.
"If on a future day I should be able to retire to some beautiful
abbey, possessing a rich library, I will devote to this task the
remainder of a life, half worn out in frightful tempests and
frequent shipwrecks. I am longing for a harbour of refuge, and I
have the desire and the taste for a chaste repose suitable to my age
and profession."
While M. Coignard was holding this memorable discourse, M.
d'Anquetil, without listening to the abbe's words, was seated on the
edge of the fountain, shuffling the cards and swearing like a
trooper, because it was too dark to play a game of piquet.
"You are right," said my good master; "it is a bad light, and I am
somewhat displeased over it, less because I cannot play cards than
because I have a desire to read a few pages of the 'Consolations' of
Boethius, of which I always carry a small edition, so as to have it
handy when something unfortunate overcomes me, as has been the case
this day. It is a cruel disgrace, sir, for a man of my calling to be
a homicide, and liable at any moment to be locked up in one of the
ecclesiastical prisons. I feel that a single page of that admirable
book would strengthen my heart, crushed by the very idea of the
officer."
Having spoken, he let himself gently slide over the edge of the
basin, so deep that the best part of his body went into the water.
But not taking the slightest notice, and hardly feeling it, he took
the Boethius out of his pocket--it was really there--and putting his
spectacles on, wherein one glass only remained, and that one cracked
in three places, he looked in the little book for the page most
appropriate for his present situation. He doubtless would have found
it, and extracted from it new strength, if the rotten state of his
barnacles, the tears that came into his eyes, and the feeble light
which came from the sky, had permitted him to search for it. Very
soon he had to confess that he was unable to see a wink, and became
angry with the moon, who showed her pointed sickle on the edge of a
cloud. He reproached her and heaped bitter invectives on her. He
shouted:
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