"Ah! Torturer!" exclaimed the patient.

"Remember," said the vicar, "that our Lord forgave His torturers."

"They were not barbarous," said the abbe.

"That's a wicked word," said the vicar.

"You must not torment a dying man for his jokes," said my good master.

"But I suffer horribly; that man a.s.sa.s.sinates me and I die twofold. The first time was by the hands of a Jew."

"What does he mean?" asked the vicar.

"It is best, reverend sir," said the barber, "not to trouble yourself about it. You must never want to hear the talk of a patient. They are only dreams."

"Coquebert," said the vicar, "you don't speak well. Patients'

confessions must be listened to, and some Christians who never in all their lives said a good word may, at the end, p.r.o.nounce words which open Paradise to them."

"I spoke temporally only," said the barber.

"Monsieur le Cure," I said, "the Abbe Coignard, my good master, does not wander in his mind, and it is but too true that he has been murdered by a Jew of the name of Mosaide."

"In that case," replied the vicar, "he has to see a special favour of G.o.d, who willed that he perishes by the hand of a nephew of those who crucified His Son. The behaviour of Providence is always admirable. M.

Coquebert, can I go to my vineyard?"

"You can, sir," replied the barber. "The wound is not a good one, but yet not of the kind by which one dies at once. It's one of those wounds which play with the wounded like a cat with a mouse, and with such play time may be gained."

"That's well," said the vicar. "Let's thank G.o.d, my son, that He lets you live, but life is precarious and transitory. One must always be ready to quit it."

My good tutor replied earnestly:

"To be on the earth without being of it, to possess without being in possession, for the fashion of this world pa.s.ses away."

Picking up his shears and his basket, the vicar said:

"Better than by your cloak and shoes, which I see on yonder cupboard, I recognise by your speech that you belong to the Church and lead a holy life. Have you been ordained?"

"He is a priest," I said, "a doctor of divinity and a professor of eloquence."

"Of which diocese?" queried the vicar.

"Of Seez in Normandy, a suffragan of Rouen."

"An important ecclesiastical province," said the vicar, "but less important by antiquity and fame than the diocese of Reims, of which I am a priest."

And he went away. M. Jerome Coignard pa.s.sed the day easily. Jahel wanted to remain the night with him. At about eleven o'clock I left the house of M. Coquebert and went in search of a bed at the inn of M. Gaulard.

I found M. d'Asterac in the market place. His shadow in the moonlight covered nearly all the surface. He laid his hands on my shoulder as he was wont to do, and said with his customary gravity:

"It's time for me to a.s.sure you, my son, that I have accompanied Mosa'ide for nothing else than this. I see you cruelly tormented by the goblins. Those little spirits of the earth have attacked you, deceiving you with all sorts of phantasmagoria, seducing you by a thousand lies, and finally forcing you to fly from my house."

"Alas! sir," I replied, "it's quite true that I left your house in apparent ingrat.i.tude, for which I beg your pardon. But I have been persecuted by the constables, and not by goblins. And my dear tutor has been murdered. That's not a phantasmagoria."

"Do not doubt," the great man answered, "that the unhappy abbe has been mortally wounded by the Sylphs, whose secrets he has revealed. He has stolen from a sideboard some stones, which were the work of the Sylphs, and which they left unfinished, and still very different from diamonds in brilliancy as well as in purity.

"It was that avidity, and the indiscreet p.r.o.nouncing of the name of Agla, which has angered them. You must know, my son, that it is impossible for philosophers to arrest the vengeance of this irascible people.

"I have heard from a supernatural voice, and also from Criton's reports, of the sacrilegious larceny M. Coignard committed by which he flattered himself to find out the art by which Salamanders, Sylphs, and Gnomes ripen the morning dew and insensibly change it into crystals and diamonds."

"Alas! sir, I a.s.sure you he thought of no such thing, and that it was that horrible Mosa'ide who stabbed him with a stiletto on the road."

My words very much displeased M. d'Asterac, who urged me in the most pressing manner never to repeat them again.

"Mosaide," he further said, "is a good enough cabalist to reach his enemies without going to the trouble of running after them. Know, my son, that, had he wanted to kill M. Coignard, he could have done it easily from his own room by a magic operation. I see that you're still ignorant of the first elements of the science. The truth is that this learned man, informed by the faithful Criton of the flight of his niece, hired post-horses to rejoin her and eventually carry her back to his house, which he certainly would have done, had he discovered in the mind of that unhappy girl the slightest idea of regret and repentance. But, finding her corrupted by debauchery, he preferred to excommunicate and curse her by the globes, the wheels and the beasts of Ezekiel. That is precisely what he has done under my eyes in the calashr where he lives alone, so as not to partake of the bed and table of Christians."

I kept mute, astonished by such dreams, but this extraordinary man talked to me with an eloquence which troubled me deeply.

"Why," he said, "do you not let yourself be enlightened by the counsels of philosophers? What kind of wisdom do you oppose to mine? Consider that yours is less in quant.i.ty without differing in essence. To you as well as to me nature appears as an infinity of figures, which have to be recognised and cla.s.sified, and which form a sequence of hieroglyphics.

You can easily distinguish some of those signs to which you attach a sense, but you are too much inclined to be content with the vulgar and the literal, and you do not search enough for the ideal and the symbolic. And withal the world is comprehensible only as a symbol, and all you see in the universe is naught but an illuminated writing, which vulgar men spell without understanding it. Be afraid, my son, to imitate the universal bray in the style of the learned ones who congregate in the academies. Rather receive of me the key of all knowledge."

For a moment he stopped speaking, and then continued in a more familiar tone:

"You are persecuted, my son, by enemies less terrible than Sylphs. And your Salamander will not have any difficulty in freeing you from the goblins as soon as you request her to do so. I repeat that I came here with Mosa'ide for no other purpose than to give you this good advice, and to press you to return to me and continue your work. I quite understand that you want to a.s.sist your unhappy master till the end. You have full license to do it. But afterwards do not fail to return to my house. Adieu! I'll return this very night to Paris with that great Mosaide whom you have accused so unjustly."

I promised him all he wanted, and crawled into my miserable bed, where I fell asleep, weighed down as I was by fatigue and suffering.

CHAPTER XX

Illness of M. Jerome Coignard

The next morning, at daybreak, I returned to the surgeon's house, and there found Jahel at the bedside of my dear tutor, sitting upright on a straw chair, with her head wrapped up in her black cape, attentive, grave and docile, like a sister of charity. M. Coignard, very red, dozed.

"The night was not a good one," she said to me in a whisper. "He has talked, he sang, he called me Sister Germaine, and has made proposals to me. I am not offended, but it is a proof that his mind wanders."

"Alas!" I exclaimed, "if you had not betrayed me, Jahel, to ramble about the country in company with a gallant, my dear master would not lie in bed stabbed in his breast."

"It is the misery of our friend," she replied, "that causes me bitter regrets. As for the rest, it is not worth while to think of it, and I cannot understand, Jacques, how you can occupy your mind with it just now."

"I think of it always."

"For my part, I hardly think of it. You are the cause of three-fourths of your own unhappiness."

"What do you mean by that, Jahel?"

"I mean, my friend, that I have given the cloth, but that you do the embroidery, and that your imagination enriches far too much the plain reality. I give you my oath that the present hour I cannot remember the quarter of what causes you grief, and you meditate over it so obstinately that your rival is more present to your mind than I am myself. Do not think of it any more, and let me give the abbe a cooling drink, for he wakes up."

At this very moment M. Coquebert approached the bedside, his instrument-case in hand, dressed the wound anew, and said aloud that the wound was on the best way to heal up. But taking me aside he said: