“Monsieur Arcade,” said Madame des Aubels, “withdraw, I implore you. It makes me horribly shy to be in this position before two men. I assure you I am not accustomed to it.”
XI
Recounts in what manner the angel, attired in the cast-off garments of a suicide, leaves the youthful Maurice without a heavenly guardian.
“Reassure yourself, Madame,” replied the apparition, “your position is not as risky as you say. You are not confronted with two men, but with one man and an angel.”
She examined the stranger with an eye which, piercing the gloom, was anxiously surveying a vague but by no means negligible indication, and asked:
“Monsieur, is it quite certain that you are an angel?”
The apparition prayed her to have no doubt about it, and gave some precise information as to his origin.
“There are three hierarchies of celestial spirits, each composed of nine choirs; the first comprises the Seraphim, Cherubim, and the Thrones; the second, the Dominations, the Virtues, and the Powers; the third, the Principalities, the Archangels, and the Angels properly so called. I belong to the ninth choir of the third hierarchy.”
Madame des Aubels, who had her reasons for doubting this, expressed at least one:
“You have no wings.”
“Why should I, Madame? Am I bound to resemble the angels on your holy-water stoups? Those feathery oars that beat the waves of the air in rhythmic cadences are not always worn by the heavenly messengers on their shoulders. Cherubim may be apterous. That all too beautiful angelic pair who spent an anxious night in the house of Lot compassed about by an Oriental horde—they had no wings! No, they appeared just like men, and the dust of the road covered their feet, which the patriarch washed with pious hand. I would beg you to observe, Madame, that according to the Science of Organic Metamorphosis created by Lamarck and Darwin, the wings of birds have been successively transformed into forefeet in the case of quadrupeds and into arms in the case of the Linnaean primates. And you may remember, Maurice, that by a rather annoying reversion to type, Miss Kate, your English nurse, who used to be so fond of giving you a whipping, had arms very like the pinions of a plucked fowl. One may say, then, that a being possessing both arms and wings is a monster and belongs to the department of Teratology. In Paradise we have Cherubim and Kerûbs in the shape of winged bulls, but those are the clumsy inventions of an inartistic god. It is nevertheless true, quite true, that the Victories of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Athenian Acropolis are beautiful, and possess both arms and wings; it is also true that the Victory of Brescia is beautiful, with her outstretched arms and her long wings folded on her mighty loins. It is one of the miracles of Greek genius to have known how to create harmonious monsters. The Greeks never err. The Moderns always.”
“Yet on the whole,” said Madame des Aubels, “you have not the look of a pure Spirit.”
“Nevertheless, I am one, Madame, if ever there was one. And it ill becomes you, who have been baptised, to doubt it. Several of the Fathers, such as St. Justin, Tertullian, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria thought that the Angels were not purely spiritual, but possessed a body formed of some subtle material. This opinion has been rejected by the Church; hence I am merely Spirit. But what is spirit and what is matter? Formerly they were contrasted as being two opposites, and now your human science tends to reunite them as two aspects of the same thing. It teaches that everything proceeds from ether and everything returns to it, that the same movement transforms the waves of air into stones and minerals, and that the atoms scattered throughout illimitable space, form, by the varying speed of their orbits, all the substance of this material world.”
But Madame des Aubels was not listening. She had something on her mind, and to put an end to her suspense, she asked:
“How long have you been here?”
“I came with Maurice.”
“Well—that’s a nice thing!” said she, shaking her head. But the Angel continued with heavenly serenity:
“Everything in the Universe is circular, elliptical, or hyperbolic, and the same laws which rule the stars govern this grain of dust. In the original and native movement of its substance, my body is spiritual, but it may affect, as you perceive, this material state, by changing the rhythm of its elements.”
Having thus spoken he sat down in a chair on Madame des Aubels’ black stockings.
A clock struck outside.
“Good heavens, seven o’clock!” exclaimed Gilberte. “What am I to say to my husband? He thinks I am at that tea-party in the Rue de Rivoli. We are dining with the La Verdelières tonight. Go away immediately, Monsieur Arcade. I must get ready to go. I have not a second to lose.”
The Angel replied that he would have willingly obeyed Madame des Aubels had he been in a state to show himself decently in public, but that he could not dream of appearing out of doors without any clothes. “Were I to walk naked in the street,” he added, “I should offend a nation attached to its ancient habits, habits which it has never examined. They are the basis of all moral systems. Formerly,” he added, “the angels, in revolt like myself, manifested themselves to Christians under grotesque and ridiculous appearances, black, horned, hairy, and cloven-footed. Pure stupidity! They were the laughingstock of people of taste. They merely frightened old women and children and met with no success.”
“It is true he cannot go out as he is,” said Madame des Aubels with justice.
Maurice tossed his pyjamas and his slippers to the celestial messenger. Regarded as outdoor habiliments they were not adequate. Gilberte pressed her lover to run
