“Suppose it were true,” he said to himself, “that the Presence were real, as Hyacinthe and that miserable priest attest—No, decidedly, I have had enough. I am through. The occasion is timely for me to break with this creature whom from our very first interview I have only tolerated, and I’m going to seize the opportunity.”
Below, in the dive, he had to face the knowing smiles of the labourers. He paid, and without waiting for his change, he fled. They reached the rue de Vaugirard and he hailed a cab.
As they were whirled along they sat lost in their thoughts, not looking at each other.
“Soon?” asked Mme. Chantelouve, in an almost timid tone when he left her at her door.
“No,” he answered. “We have nothing in common. You wish everything and I wish nothing. Better break. We might drag out our relation, but it would finally terminate in recrimination and bitterness. Oh, and then—after what happened this evening, no! Understand me? No!”
And he gave the cabman his address and huddled himself into the furthest corner of the fiacre.
XX
“He doesn’t lead a humdrum life, that canon!” said Des Hermies, when Durtal had related to him the details of the Black Mass. “It’s a veritable seraglio of hystero-epileptics and erotomaniacs that he has formed for himself. But his vices lack warmth. Certainly, in the matter of contumelious blasphemies, of sacrilegious atrocities, and sensual excitation, this priest may seem to have exceeded the limits, to be almost unique. But the bloody and investuous side of the old sabbats is wanting. Docre is, we must admit, greatly inferior to Gilles de Rais. His works are incomplete, insipid; weak, if I may say so.”
“I like that. You know it isn’t easy to procure children whom one may disembowel with impunity. The parents would raise a row and the police would interfere.”
“Yes, and it is to difficulties of this sort that we must evidently attribute the bloodless celebration of the Black Mass. But I am thinking just now of the women you described, the ones that put their heads over the chafing-dishes to drink in the smoke of the burning resin. They employ the procedure of the Aissaouas, who hold their heads over the braseros whenever the catalepsy necessary to their orgies is slow in coming. As for the other phenomena you cite, they are known in the hospitals, and except as symptoms of the demoniac effluence they teach us nothing new. Now another thing. Not a word of this to Carhaix, because he would be quite capable of closing his door in your face if he knew you had been present at an office in honour of Satan.”
They went downstairs from Durtal’s apartment and walked along toward the tower of Saint Sulpice.
“I didn’t bring anything to eat, because you said you would look after that,” said Durtal, “but this morning I sent Mme. Carhaix—in lieu of desserts and wine—some real Dutch gingerbread, and a couple of rather surprising liqueurs, an elixir of life which we shall take, by way of appetizer, before the repast, and a flask of crême de céléri. I have discovered an honest distiller.”
“Impossible!”
“You shall see. This elixir of life is manufactured from Socotra aloes, little cardamom, saffron, myrrh, and a heap of other aromatics. It’s inhumanly bitter, but it’s exquisite.”
“I am anxious to taste it. The least we can do is fête Gévingey a little on his deliverance.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Yes. He’s looking fine. We’ll make him tell us about his cure.”
“I keep wondering what he lives on.”
“On what his astrological skill brings him.”
“Then there are rich people who have their horoscopes cast?”
“We must hope so. To tell you the truth, I think Gévingey is not in very easy circumstances. Under the Empire he was astrologer to the Empress, who was very superstitious and had faith—as did Napoleon, for that matter—in predictions and fortune telling, but since the fall of the Empire I think Gévingey’s situation has changed a good deal for the worse. Nevertheless he passes for being the only man in France who has preserved the secrets of Cornelius Agrippa, Cremona, Ruggieri, Gauric, Sinibald the Swordsman, and Tritemius.”
While discoursing they had climbed the stair and arrived at the bell-ringer’s door.
The astrologer was already there and the table was set. All grimaced a bit as they tasted the black and active liqueur which Durtal poured.
Joyous to have all her family about her, Mama Carhaix brought the rich soup. She filled the plates.
When a dish of vegetables was passed and Durtal chose a leek, Des Hermies said, laughing, “Look out! Porta, a thaumaturge of the late sixteenth century, informs us that this plant, long considered an emblem of virility, perturbs the quietude of the most chaste.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said the bell-ringer’s wife. “And you, Monsieur Gévingey, some carrots?”
Durtal looked at the astrologer. His head still looked like a sugar-loaf, his hair was the same faded, dirty brown of hydroquinine or ipecac powders, his bird eyes had the same startled look, his enormous hands were covered with the same phalanx of rings, he had the same obsequious and imposing manner, and sacerdotal tone, but he was freshened up considerably, the wrinkles had gone out of his skin, and his eyes were brighter, since his visit to Lyons.
Durtal congratulated him on the happy result of the treatment.
“It was high time, monsieur, I was putting myself under the care of Dr. Johannès, for I was nearly gone. Not possessing a shred of the gift of voyance and knowing no extralucid cataleptic who could inform me of the clandestine preparations of Canon Docre, I could not possibly defend myself by using the laws of countersign and of the shock in return.”
“But,” said Des Hermies, “admitting that you could, through the intermediation of a flying spirit, have been aware of the operations of the priest, how could you have parried them?”
“The law of countersigns consists, when you know in advance
