“What a horrible priest!” cried Mme. Carhaix, indignant.
“Yes, he celebrated another kind of mass, too, that abbé did. It was called—hang it—it’s unpleasant to say—”
“Say it, Monsieur des Hermies. When people have as great a hatred for that sort of thing as we here, they need not blink any fact. It isn’t that kind of thing which is going to take me away from my prayers.”
“Nor me,” added her husband.
“Well, this sacrifice was called the Spermatic Mass.”
“Oh!”
“Guibourg, wearing the alb, the stole, and the maniple, celebrated this mass with the sole object of making pastes to conjure with. The archives of the Bastille inform us that he acted thus at the request of a lady named Des Oeillettes:
“This woman, who was indisposed, gave some of her blood; the man who accompanied her stood patiently beside the bed where the scene took place, and Guibourg gathered up some of his semen into the chalice, then added powdered blood and some flour, and after sacrilegious ceremonies the Des Oeillettes woman departed bearing her paste.”
“My heavenly Saviour!” sighed the bell-ringer’s wife, “what a lot of filth.”
“But,” said Durtal, “in the Middle Ages the mass was celebrated in a different fashion. The altar then was the naked buttocks of a woman; in the seventeenth century it was the abdomen, and now?”
“Nowadays a woman is hardly ever used for an altar, but let us not anticipate. In the eighteenth century we shall again find abbés—among how many other monsters—who defile holy objects. One Canon Duer occupied himself specially with black magic and the evocation of the devil. He was finally executed as a sorcerer in the year of grace . There was another who believed in the Incarnation of the Holy Ghost as the Paraclete, and who, in Lombary, which he stirred up to a feverish pitch of excitement, ordained twelve apostles and twelve apostolines to preach his gospel. This man, abbé Beccarelli, like all the other priests of his ilk, abused both sexes, and he said mass without confessing himself of his lecheries. As his cult grew he began to celebrate travestied offices in which he distributed to his congregation aphrodisiac pills presenting this peculiarity, that after having swallowed them the men believed themselves changed into women and the women into men.
“The recipe for these hippomanes is lost,” continued Des Hermies with almost a sad smile. “To make a long story short, Beccarelli met with a very miserable end. He was prosecuted for sacrilege and sentenced, in , to row in the galleys for seven years.”
“These frightful stories seem to have taken away your appetite,” said Mme. Carhaix. “Come, Monsieur des Hermies, a little more salad?”
“No, thanks. But now we’ve come to the cheese, I think it’s time to open the wine,” and he uncapped one of the bottles which Durtal had brought.
“It’s a light Chinon wine, but not too weak. I discovered it in a little shop down by the quay,” said Durtal.
“I see,” he went on after a silence, “that the tradition of unspeakable crimes has been maintained by worthy successors of Gilles de Rais. I see that in all centuries there have been fallen priests who have dared commit sins against the Holy Ghost. But at the present time it all seems incredible. Surely nobody is cutting children’s throats as in the days of Bluebeard and of abbé Guibourg.”
“You mean that nobody is brought to justice for doing it. They don’t assassinate now, but they kill designated victims by methods unknown to official science—ah, if the confessionals could speak!” cried the bell-ringer.
“But tell me, what class of people are these modern covenanters with the Devil?”
“Prelates, abbesses, mission superiors, confessors of communities; and in Rome, the centre of present-day magic, they’re the very highest dignitaries,” answered Des Hermies. “As for the laymen, they are recruited from the wealthy class. That explains why these scandals are hushed up if the police chance to discover them.
“Then, let us assume that the sacrifices to the Devil are not preceded by preliminary murders. Perhaps in some cases they aren’t. The worshippers probably content themselves with bleeding a foetus which had been aborted as soon as it became matured to the point necessary. Bloodletting is supererogatory anyway, and serves merely to whet the appetite. The main business is to consecrate the host and put it to an infamous use. The rest of the procedure varies. There is at present no regular ritual for the black mass.”
“Well, then, is a priest absolutely essential to the celebration of these offices?”
“Certainly. Only a priest can operate the mystery of Transubstantiation. I know there are certain occultists who claim to have been consecrated by the Lord, as Saint Paul was, and who think they can consummate a veritable sacrifice just like a real priest. Absurd! But even in default of real masses with ordained celebrants, the people possessed by the mania of sacrilege do none the less realize the sacred stupration of which they dream.
“Listen to this. In there existed at Paris an association composed of women, for the most part. These women took communion several times a day and retained the sacred wafer in their mouths to be spat out later and trodden underfoot or soiled by disgusting contacts.”
“You are sure of it?”
“Perfectly. These facts were revealed by a religious journal, Les annales de la sainteté, and the archbishop of Paris could not deny them. I add that in women were likewise enrolled at Paris to practise this odious commerce. They were paid so much for every wafer they brought in. That explains why they presented themselves at the sacred table of different churches every day.”
“And that is not the half of it! Look,” said Carhaix, in his turn, rising and taking from his bookshelf a blue brochurette. “Here is a review, La voix de la septaine, dated
