CHAPTER XVII - La Bas [DOWN THERE]

216

Toward the end of the afternoon Durtal --quit work and went up to the towers of Saint Sulpice.

He found Carhaix in bed in a chamber connecting with the one in which they were in the habit of dining. These rooms were very similar, with their walls or unpapered stone, and with their vaulted ceilings, only, the bedroom was darker. The window opened its half-wheel not on the place Saint Sulpice but on the rear of the church, whose roof prevented any light from getting in. This cell was furnished with an iron bed, whose springs shrieked, with two cane chairs, and with a table that had a shabby covering of green baize. On the bare wall was a crucifix of no value, with a dry palm over it. That was all. Carhaix was sitting up in bed reading, with books and papers piled all around. him. His eyes were more watery and his face paler than usual. His beard, which had not been shaved for several days, grew in grey clumps on his hollow cheeks, but his poor features were radiant with an affectionate, affable smile.

To Durtal's questions he replied, "It is nothing. Des Hermies gives me permission to get up tomorrow. But what a frightful medicine!" and he showed Durtal a potion of which he had to take a teaspoonful every hour.

"What is it he's making you take?"

But the bell-ringer did not know. Doubtless to spare him the expense, Des Hermies himself always brought the bottle.

"Isn't it tiresome lying in bed?"

"I should say! I am obliged to entrust my bells to an assistant who is no good. Ah, if you heard him ring! It makes me shudder, it sets my teeth on edge."

217

"Now you mustn't work yourself up," said his wife. "In two days you will be able to ring your bells yourself."

But he went on complaining. "You two don't under-stand. My bells are used to being well treated. They're like domestic animals, those instruments, and they obey only their master. Now they won't harmonize, they jangle. I can hardly recognize their voices."

"What are you reading?" asked Durtal, wishing to change a subject which he judged to be dangerous.

"Books about bells I Ah, Monsieur Durtal, I have some inscriptions here of truly rare beauty. Listen," and he opened a worm-bored book, "listen to this motto printed in raised letters on the bronze robe of the great bell of Schaffhausen, 'I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the thunder;' And this other which figured on an old bell in the belfry of Ghent, 'My name is Roland. When I tell, there is a fire; when I peal, there is a tempest in Flanders.'

"Yes," Durtal agreed, "there is a certain vigour about that one."

"Ah," said Carhaix, seeming not to have heard the other's remark, "it's ridiculous. Now the rich have their names and titles inscribed on the bells which they give to the churches, but they have so many qualities and titles that there is no room for a motto. Truly, humility is a forgotten virtue in our day."

"If that were the only forgotten virtue I" sighed Durtal.

"Ah!" replied Carhaix, not to be turned from his favourite subject, "and if this were the only abuse! But bells now rust frqm inactivity. The metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. Formerly these magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. The canonical hours were sounded, Matins and Laudes before daybreak, Prime at dawn, Tierce at nine o'clock, Sexte at noon, Nones at three, and then Vespers and Compline. Now we announce the, curate's mass, ring three angeluses, morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a Salute, and on certain days

218

launch a few peals for prescribed ceremonies. And that's all. It's only in the convents where the bells do not sleep, for these, at least, the night offices are kept up."

"You mustn't talk about that," said his wife, straightening the pillows at his hack. "If you keep working yourself up, you will never get well."

"Quite right," he said, resigned, "but what would you have? I shall still be a man with a grievance, whom nothing can pacify," and he smiled at his wife who was bringing him a spoonful of the potion to swallow.

The doorbell rang. Mme. Carhaix went to answer" it and a hilarious and red-faced priest entered, crying in a great voice, "It's Jacob's ladder, that stairway! I climbed and climbed and climbed, and I'm all out of breath," and he sank, puffing, into, an armchair.

"Well, my friend," he said at last, coming into the bed-room, "I learned from the beadle that you were ill, and I came to see how you were getting on."

Durtal examined him. An irrepressible gaiety exuded from this sanguine, smooth-shaven face, blue from the razor.

Carhaix introduced them. They exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on Durtal's.

Durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbe' for coming up to see them. it was evident that for this pair, who were not ignorant of the sacrileges and scandalous self-indulgences of the clergy, an ecclesiastic was a man elect, a man so superior that as soon as he arrived nobody else counted.

Durtal took his leave, and as he went downstairs he thought, "That jubilant priest sickens me. Indeed, a gay priest, physician, or man of letters must have an infamous soul, because they are the ones who see clearly into human misery and console it, or heal it, or depict it. If after that they can act the' clown-they are unspeakable! Though I'll admit that thoughtless persons deplore the sadness of the

219

novel of observation and its resemblance to the life it represents. These people would have it jovial, smart, highly col-ured, aiding them, in their base selfishness, to forget the hag-ridden existences of their brothers.

"Truly, Carhaix and his wife are peculiar. They bow under the paternal despotism of the priests-and there are moments when that same despotism must be no joke-and revere them and adore them. But then these two are sim-ple believers, with humble, unsmirched souls. I don't know the priest who was there, but he is rotund and rubicund, he shakes in his fat and seems bursting with joy. Despite the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was gay - spoiling him for me -- I have difficulty in persuading myself that this abbe' is an elevated being. It's all right to say that the best thing for him is to be mediocre; to ask how, if he were other-wise, he would make his flock understand him; and add that if he really had superior gifts he would be hated by his col-leagues and persecuted by his bishop."

While conversing thus disjointedly with himself Durtal had reached the base of the tower. He stopped under the porch. "I intended to stay longer up there," thought he. "It's only half-past five. I must kill at least half an hour before dinner."

The weather was almost mild. The clouds had been swept away. He lighted a cigarette and strolled about the square, musing. Looking up he hunted for the bell-ringer's window and recognized it. Of the windows which opened over the portico it alone had a curtain.

"What an abominable construction," he thought, con-templating the church. "Think. That cube flanked by two towers presumes to invite comparison with the facade of Notre Dame.. What a jumble," he continued, examining the details. "From the foundation to the first story are Ionic columns with volutes, then from the base of the tower to the summit are Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves. What significance can this salmagundi of pagan orders have

220

on a Christian church? And as a rebuke to the over-ornamented bell tower there stands the other tower unfinished, looking like an abandoned grain elevator, but the less hide-ous of the two, at that.

"And it took five or six architects to erect this indigent heap of stones. Yet Servandoni and Oppenord and their ilk were the real major prophets, the ....zekiels of building. Their work is the work of seers looking beyond the eighteenth century to the day of transportation by steam. For Saint Sulpice is not a church, it's a railway station!

"And the interior of the edifice is not more religious, nor artistic than the exterior, The only thing in it that pleases me is good Carhaix's aerial cave." Then he looked about him. "This square is very ugly, but how provincial and homelike it is! Surely nothing could equal the hideousness of that seminary, which exhales the rancid, frozen odour of a hospital. The fountain with its polygonal basins, its sauce-pan urns, its lion-headed spouts, its niches with prelates in them, is no masterpiece. Neither is the city hall, whose ad-ministrative style is a cinder in the eye. But on this square, as in the neighbouring streets, Servandoni, Garanciere, and Ferrou, one respires an atmosphere compounded of benign silence and mild humidity. You think of a clothes-press that hasn't been open for years, and, somehow, of incense. This square is in perfect harmony with the houses in the decayed streets around here, with the shops where religious parapher-nalia are sold, the image and ciborium factories, the Catholic bookstores with books whose covers are the colour of apple seeds, macadam, nutmeg, bluing.

"Yes, it's dilapidated and quiet."

The square was then almost deserted. A few women were going up the church steps, met by mendicants who murmured paternosters as they rattled their tin cups. An ec-clesiastic, carrying under his arm a book bound in black cloth, saluted white-eyed women. A few dogs were running about. Children were chasing each other or jumping rope.

221

The enormous chocolate-coloured Ia Villette omnibus and. the little honey-yellow bus of the Auteuil line went past, almost empty. Hackmen were standing beside their hacks on the sidewalk, or in a group around a comfort station, talking. There were no crowds, no noise, and the great trees gave the square the appearance of the silent mall of a little town.

"Well," said Durtal, considering the church again, "I really must go up to the top of the tower some clear day." Then he shook his head. "What for? A bird's-eye view of Paris would have been interesting in the Middle Ages, but now! I should see, as from a hill top, other heights, a net-work. of grey streets, the whiter arteries of the boulevards, the green plaques of gardens and squares, and, away in the distance, files of houses like lines of dominoes stood up on end, the black dots being windows.

"And then the edifices emerging from this jumble of roofs, Notre Dame, la Sainte Chapelle, Saint Severin, Saint Etienne du Mont, the Tour Saint Jacques, are put out of countenance by the deplorable mass of newer edifices. And I am not at 41 eager to contemplate that specimen of the art of the maker of toilet articles which l'Opera is, nor that bridge arch, l'arc de la Triomphe, nor that hollow chandelier, the Tour Eiffel! It's enough to see them separately, from the ground, as you turn a street corner. Well, I must go and dine, for I have an engagement with Hyacinthe and I must be back before eight."

He went to a neighbouring wine shop where the dining-room, depopulated at six o'clock, permitted one to illuminate in tranquillity, while eating fairly sanitary food and drinking not too dangerously coloured wines. He was thinking of Mme. Chantelouve, but more of Docre. The mystery of this priest haunted him. What could be going on in the soul of a man who had had the figure of Christ tattooed on his heels the better to trample Him?

What hate the act revealed! Did Docre hate God for

222

not having given him the blessed ecstasies of a saint, or more humanly for not having raised him to the highest ecclesiastical dignities? Evidently the spite of this priest was inordinate and his pride unlimited. He seemed not displeased to be an object of terror and loathing, for thus he was some-body. Then, for a thorough-paced scoundrel, as this man seemed to be, what delight to make his enemies languish in slow torment by casting spells on them with perfect impunity.

"And sacrilege carries one out of oneself in furious transports, in voluptuous delirium, which nothing can equal. Since the Middle Ages it has been the coward's crime, for human justice does not prosecute it, and one can commit it with impunity, but it is the most extreme of excesses for a believer, and Docre believes in Christ, or he wouldn't hate Him so.

"A monster ! And what ignoble relations he must have had with Chantelouve's wife l Now, how shall I make her speak up? She gave me quite clearly to understand, the other day, that she refused to explain herself on this topic. Mean-while, as I have not intention of submitting to her young girl follies tonight, I will tell her that I am not feeling well, and that absolute rest and quiet are necessary."

He did so, an hour later when she came in.

She proposed a cup of tea, and when he refused, she embraced him and nursed him like a baby. Then withdrawing a little, "You work too hard. You need some relaxation. Come now, to pass the time you might court me a little, because up to now I have done it all. No? That idea does not amuse him. Let us try something else. Shall we play hide-and-seek with the cat? He shrugs his shoulders. Well, since there is nothing to change your grouchy expression, let us talk. What has become of your friend Des Hermies?"

"Nothing in particular."

"And his experiments with Mattei medicine?"

223

"I don't know whether he continues to prosecute them or not."

"Well, I see that the conversational possibilities of that topic are exhausted. You know your replies are not very encouraging, dear."

"But," he said, "everybody sometimes gets so he doesn't answer questions at great length. I even know a young woman who becomes excessively laconic when interrogated on a certain subject."

"Of a canon, for instance."

"Precisely."

She crossed her legs, very coolly. "That young woman undoubtedly had reasons for keeping still. But perhaps that young woman is really eager to oblige the person who cross-examines her; perhaps, since she last saw him, she has gone to a great deal of trouble to satisfy his curiosity."

"Look here, Hyacinthe darling, explain yourself," he said, squeezing her hands, an expression of joy on his face.

"If I have made your mouth water so as not to have a grouchy face in front of my eyes, I have succeeded remarkably."

He kept still, wondering whether she was making fun of him or whether she really was ready to tell him what he wanted to know.

"Listen," she said. "I hold firmly by my decision of the other night. I will not permit you to become acquainted with Canon Docre. But at a settled time I can arrange, without your forming any relations with him, to have you be present at the ceremony you most desire to know about."

"The Black Mass?"

"Yes. Within a week Docre will have left Paris. If once, in my company, you see him, you will never see him afterward. Keep your evenings free all this week. When the time comes I will notify you. But you may thank me, dear, because to be useful to you I am disobeying the commands of my confessor, whom I dare not see now, so I am damning myself."

224

He kissed her, then, "Seriously, that man is really a monster?"

"I fear 50. In any case I would not wish anybody the misfortune of having him for an enemy."

"I should say not, if he poisons people by magic, as he seems to have done Gevingey."

"And he probably has. I should not like to be in the astrologer's shoes."

"You believe in Docre's potency, then. Tell me, how does he operate, with the blood of mice, with broths, or with oil?"

"So you know about that! He does employ these substances. In fact, he is one of the' very few persons who know how to manage them without Poisoning themselves. It's as dangerous as working with explosives. Frequently, though, when attacking defenceless persons, he uses simpler recipes. He distils extracts of poison and adds sulfuric acid to fester the wound, then he dips in this compound the point of a lancet with which he has his victim pricked by a flying spirit or a larva. It is ordinary, well-known magic, that of Rosicrucians and tyros."

Durtal burst out laughing. "But, my dear, to hear you, one would think death could be sent to a distance like a letter."

"Well, isn't cholera transmitted by letters? Ask the sanitary corps. Don't they disinfect all mail in the 'time of epidemics?"'

"I don't contradict that, but the case is not the same."

"It is too, because it is the question of transmission, in-visibility, distance, which astonishes you."

"What astonishes me more than that is to 'hear of the Rosicrucians actively satanizing. I confess that 'I had never considered them as anything more than harmless suckers and funereal fakes."

"But all societies are composed of suckers and the wily leaders who exploit them. That's the case of the Rosicru-

225

cians. Yes, their leaders privately attempt crime. One does not need to be erudite or intelligent to practice the ritual of spells. At any rate, and I affirm this, there is among them a former man of letters whom I know. He lives with a married woman, and they pass the time, he and she, trying to kill the husband by sorcery."

"Well, it has its advantages over divorce, that system has."

She pouted. "I shan't say another word. I think you are making fun of me. You don't believe in anything - - "

"Indeed. I was not laughing at you. I haven't very precise ideas on this subject. I admit that at first blush all this seems improbable, to say the least. But when I think that all the efforts of modern science do but confirm the discoveries of the magic of other days, I keep my mouth shut. It is true," he went on after a silence, - "to cite only one fact-that people can no longer laugh at the stories of women being changed into cats in the Middle Ages. Recently 'there was brought to M. Charcot a little girl who - 'suddenly got down on her hands and knees and ran and jumped around, scratching and spitting and arching her back. So that metamorphosis is possible. No, one cannot too often repeat it, the truth is that we know nothing and have no right to deny anything. But to return to your Rosicrucians. Using purely chemical formulae, they get along without sacrilege?"

"That is as much as to say that their venefices- supposing they know how to prepare them well enough to ac-complish their purpose, though I doubt that-are easy to defeat. Yet I don't mean to say that this group, one member of which is an ordained priest, does not make use of contaminated Eucharists at need."

"Another nice priest I But since you are so well informed, do you know how spells are conjured away?"

"Yes and no. I know that when the poisons are sealed by sacrilege, when the operation is performed by a master, Docre or one of the princes of magic at Rome, it is not at

226

all easy-nor healthy-to attempt to apply an antidote. Though I have heard of a certain abbe at Lyons who, practically alone, is succeeding right now in these difficult cures."

"Dr. Johannes!"

"You know him!"

"No. But Gevingey, who has gone to seek his medical aid, has, told me of him."

"Well, I don't know how he goes about it, but I know that spells which are not complicated with sacrilege are usually evaded by the law of return., The blow is sent back to him who struck it. There are, at the present time, two churches, one in Belgium, the other in France, where, when one prays before a statue of the Virgin, the spell which has been cast on one flies off and goes and strikes one's adversary.'

"Rats!"

"One of these churches is at Tougres, eighteen kilometers from Liege, and the name of it is Notre Dame de Retour. The other is the church of l'Epine, 'the thorn,' a little vfllage near Chalons. This church was built long ago to conjure away the spells produced with the aid of the thorns which grew in that country and served to pierce images cut in the shape of hearts."

"Near Chalons," said Durtal, digging in his memory, "it does seem to me now that Des Hermies, speaking of bewitchment by the blood of white mice, pointed out that village as the habitation of certain diabolic circles."

"Yes, that country in all times has been a hotbed of Satanism."

"You are mighty well up on these matters. Is it Docre who transmitted this knowledge to you?"

"Yes, I owe him the little I am able to pass on to you. He took a fancy to me and even wanted to make me his pupil. I refused, .and am glad now I 'did, for I am much more wary than I was then of being constantly in state of mortal sin."

"Hare you ever attended the Black Mass?"

227

"Yes. And I warn you in advance that you will regret having seen such terrible things. It is a memory that persists and horrifies, even - especially - when one does not personally take part in the offices."

He looked at her. She was pale, and her filmed eyes blinked rapidly.

"It's your own wish," she continued. "You will have no complaint if the spectacle terrifies you or wrings your heart."

He was almost dumbfounded to see how sad she was and with what difficulty she spoke.

"Really. This Docre, where did he come from, what did he do formerly, how did he happen to become a master Satanist?"

"I don't know very much about him. I know he was a supply priest in Paris, then confessor of a queen in exile. There were terrible stories about him, which, thanks to his influential patronage, were hushed up under the Empire. He was interned at La Trappe, then driven out of the priest-hood, excommunicated by Rome. I learned in addition that he had several times been accused of poisoning, but had always been acquitted because the tribunals had never been able to get any evidence. Today he lives I don't know how, but at ease, and he travels a good deal with a woman who serves as voyant. To all the world he is a scoundrel, but he is learned and perverse, and then he is so charming."

"Oh," he said, "how changed your eyes and voice are! Admit that you are in love with him."

"No, not now. But why should I not tell you that we were mad about each other at one time?"

"And now?"

"It is over. I swear it is. We have remained friends and nothing more."

"But then you often went to see him. What kind of a place did he have? At least it was curious and heterodoxically arranged?"

228

"No, it was quite ordinary, but very comfortable and' clean. He had a chemical laboratory and an immense library. The only curious book he showed me was an office of the Black Mass on parchment. There were admirable illuminations, and the binding was made of the tanned skin of a child who had died unbaptized. Stamped into the cover, in the shape of a fleuron, was a great host consecrated in a Black Mass."

"What did the manuscript say?"

"I did not read it."

They were silent, Then she took his hands.

"Now you are yourself again. I knew I should cure you of your bad humour. Admit that I am awfully good-natured not to have got angry at you.

"Got angry? What about?"

"Because it is not very flattering to a woman to be able' to entertain a man only by telling him about another one."

"Oh, no, it isn't that way at all," he said, kissing her eyes tenderly.

"Let me go now," she said, very low, "this enervatel me, and I must get home. It's late."

She sighed and fled, leaving him amazed and wondering in what weird activities the life of that woman had been passed.

"I had to occupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the
Middle Ages to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." j-k h
[I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI] [VII] [VIII] [IX]
[X] [XI] [XII] [XIII] [IVX] [XV] [XVI]
[XVII] [XVIII] [XIX] [XX] [XXI] [XXII]
ricky's La Bas index page.

Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]