“And vice versa, what?”
And I added, to myself, “pack of fools!”
It was, however, indeed a sight to see my uncle when he had a freemason to dinner.
On meeting they shook hands in a mysterious manner that was irresistibly funny; one could see that they were going through a series of secret mysterious pressures. When I wished to put my uncle in a rage, I had only to tell him that dogs also have a manner which savours very much of freemasonry, when they greet one another on meeting.
Then my uncle would take his friend into a corner to tell him something important, and at dinner they had a peculiar way of looking at each other, and of drinking to each other, in a manner as if to say: “We belong to it, don’t we?”
And to think that there are millions on the face of the globe who are amused at such monkey tricks! I would sooner be a Jesuit.
Now in our town there really was an old Jesuit who was my uncle’s pet aversion. Every time he met him, or if he only saw him at a distance, he used to say: “Dirty skunk!” And then, taking my arm, he would whisper to me:
“Look here, that fellow will play me a trick some day or other, I feel sure of it.”
My uncle spoke quite truly, and this was how it happened, through my fault moreover.
It was close on Holy Week, and my uncle made up his mind to give a dinner on Good Friday, a real dinner with chitterlings and saveloy sausage. I resisted as much as I could, and said:
“I shall eat meat on that day, but at home, quite by myself. Your manifesto, as you call it, is an idiotic idea. Why should you manifest? What does it matter to you if people do not eat any meat?”
But my uncle would not be persuaded. He asked three of his friends to dine with him at one of the best restaurants in the town, and as he was going to pay the bill, I had certainly, after all, no scruples about manifesting.
At four o’clock we took a conspicuous place in the Café Pénelope, the most frequented restaurant in the town, and my uncle in a loud voice described the menu.
We sat down at six o’clock, and at ten o’clock we had not finished. Five of us had drunk eighteen bottles of fine wines, and four of champagne. Then my uncle proposed what he was in the habit of calling: “The archbishop’s feat.” Each man put six small glasses in front of him, each of them filled with a different liqueur, and then they had all to be emptied at one gulp, one after another, while one of the waiters counted twenty. It was very stupid, but my uncle thought it was very suitable to the occasion.
At eleven o’clock he was as drunk as a fiddler, so we had to take him home in a cab and put him to bed, and one could easily foresee that his anticlerical demonstration would end in a terrible fit of indigestion.
As I was going back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a cheerful Machiavelian drunkenness which quite satisfied all my sceptical instincts, an idea struck me.
I arranged my necktie, put on a look of great distress, and went and rang loudly at the old Jesuit’s door. As he was deaf he made me wait a longish while, but at length he appeared at his window in a cotton nightcap and asked what I wanted.
I shouted out at the top of my voice:
“Make haste, reverend father, and open the door; a poor, despairing, sick man is in need of your spiritual ministrations.”
The good, kind man put on his trousers as quickly as he could and came down without his cassock. I told him in a breathless voice that my uncle, the freethinker, had been taken suddenly ill. Fearing it was going to be something serious he had been seized with a sudden fear of death, and wished to see a priest and talk to him; to have his advice and comfort, to make up with the Church, and to confess, so as to be able to cross the dreaded threshold at peace with himself; and I added in a mocking tone:
“At any rate, he wishes it, and if it does him no good it can do him no harm.”
The old Jesuit, who was startled, delighted, and almost trembling, said to me:
“Wait a moment, my son, I will come with you.”
But I replied: “Pardon me, Father, if I do not go with you; but my convictions will not allow me to do so. I even refused to come and fetch you, so I beg you not to say that you have seen me, but to declare that you had a presentiment—a sort of revelation of his illness.”
The priest consented, and went off quickly, knocked at my uncle’s door, was soon let in, and I saw the black cassock disappear within that stronghold of Freethought.
I hid under a neighbouring gateway to wait for events. Had he been well, my uncle would have half murdered the Jesuit, but I knew that he would be unable to move an arm, and I asked myself, gleefully, what sort of a scene would take place between these antagonists—what fight, what explanation would be given, and what would be the issue of this situation, which my uncle’s indignation would render more tragic still?
I laughed till I had to hold my sides, and said to myself, half aloud: “Oh! what a joke, what a joke!”
Meanwhile it was getting very cold. I noticed that the Jesuit stayed a long time, and thought: “They are having an explanation, I suppose.”
One, two, three hours passed, and still the reverend Father did not come out. What had happened? Had my uncle died in a fit when he saw him, or had he killed
