“Do you want them to know that …” she exclaimed.
She pointed to the Angel and was silent.
Young d’Esparvieu went out to seek a clothes-shop.
Meanwhile, Gilberte, who could not delay any longer for fear of causing a horrible society scandal, turned on the light and dressed before the Angel. She did it without any awkwardness, for she knew how to adapt herself to circumstances; and she took it that in such an unheard-of encounter in which heaven and earth were mingled in unutterable confusion it was permissible to retrench in modesty.
Moreover, she knew that she possessed a good figure and had garments as dainty as the fashion demanded. As the apparition’s sense of delicacy would not permit him to don Maurice’s pyjamas, Gilberte could not help observing by the lamplight that her suspicions were well-founded, and that angels have the same appearance as men. Curious to know if the appearance were real or imaginary she asked the child of light if Angels were like monkeys, who, to win women, merely lack money.
“Yes, Gilberte,” replied Arcade, “Angels are capable of loving mortals. It is the teaching of the Scriptures. It is said in the Seventh Book of Genesis, ‘When men became numerous on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives all those which pleased them.’ ”
“Good heavens,” cried Gilberte all at once, “I shall never be able to fasten my dress; it hooks down the back.”
When Maurice entered the room he found the Angel on his knees tying the shoes of the woman taken in flagrante delicto.
Taking her muff and her bag off the table she said:
“I have not forgotten anything? No. Good night, Monsieur Arcade. Good night, Maurice. I shall not forget today.” And she vanished like a dream.
“Here,” said Maurice, throwing the Angel a bundle of clothes.
The young man, having seen some dismal rags lying among clarinettes and clyster-pipes in the window of a secondhand shop, had bought for nineteen francs the cast-off suit of some wretched sable-clad mortal who had committed suicide. The Angel, with native majesty, took the garments and put them on. Worn by him, they took on an unexpected elegance. He took a step to the door.
“So you are leaving me,” said Maurice. “It’s settled, then? I very much fear that, some day, you will bitterly regret this hasty action.”
“I must not look back. Adieu, Maurice.”
Maurice timidly slipped five louis into his hand.
“Adieu, Arcade.”
But when the Angel had passed through the door, and all that was to be seen of him in the doorway was his uplifted heel, Maurice called him back.
“Arcade! I never thought of it! I have no guardian angel now!”
“Quite true, Maurice, you have one no longer.”
“Then what will become of me? One must have a guardian angel. Tell me—are there not grave drawbacks—is there no danger in not having one?”
“Before replying, Maurice, I must ask you if you wish me to speak to you according to your belief, which formerly was my own, according to the teaching of the Church and the Catholic faith, or according to natural philosophy.”
“I don’t care a straw for your natural philosophy. Answer me according to the religion I believe in, and which I profess, and in which I wish to live and die.”
“Very well, my dear Maurice. The loss of your guardian angel will probably deprive you of certain spiritual succour, of certain celestial grace. I am expressing to you the unvarying opinion of the Church on the matter. You will lack an assistance, a support, a consolation which would have guided and confirmed you in the way of salvation. You will have less strength to avoid sin, and as it was you hadn’t much. In fact, in spiritual matters, you will be without strength and without joy. Adieu, Maurice; when you see Madame des Aubels, please remember me to her.”
“You are going?”
“Farewell.”
Arcade disappeared, and Maurice in the depths of an armchair sat for a long time with his head in his hands.
XII
Wherein it is set forth how the angel Mirar, when bearing grace and consolation to those dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Champs Élysées in Paris, beheld a music-hall singer named Bouchotte and fell in love with her.
Through streets filled with brown fog, pierced with white and yellow lights, where horses exhaled their smoking breath and motors radiated their rapid searchlights, the angel made his way, and, mingling with the black flood of foot-passengers which rolled unceasingly along, proceeded across the town from north to south till he came to the lonely boulevards on the left bank of the river. Not far from the old walls of Port Royal, a small restaurant flings night by night athwart the pavement the clouded rays of its streaming windows. Coming to a halt there, Arcade entered a room full of warm, savoury odours, pleasing to the unfortunate beings faint with cold and hunger. Glancing round him he beheld Russian Nihilists, Italian Anarchists, refugees, conspirators, revolutionaries from every quarter of the globe, picturesque old faces with tumbled masses of hair and beard that swept downwards even as the torrent and the waterfall sweep over their rocky bed. There were young faces of virginal coldness, expressions sombre and wild, pale eyes of infinite sweetness, drawn faces, and, in a corner, there were two Russian women, one extremely lovely, the other hideous, but both resembling each other in their indifference to ugliness and to beauty. But failing to find the face he sought, for there were no angels in the room, he sat down at a small vacant marble table.
Angels, when driven by hunger, eat as do the animals of this earth, and their food,
