initial commit of ebook 32596HEADmain

28 files changed, 28242 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/32596-8.txt b/32596-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f47d2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8444 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Revolt of the Angels
+
+Author: Anatole France
+
+Editor: Frederic Chapman
+
+Translator: Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32596]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note                                         |
+  |                                                            |
+  | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in        |
+  | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of   |
+  | this document.                                             |
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
+IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
+EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE REVOLT
+OF THE ANGELS
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+A TRANSLATION BY
+MRS. WILFRID JACKSON
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+
+NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+
+MCMXXIV
+
+
+Copyright, 1914,
+by
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A
+
+
+
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     CONTAINING IN A FEW LINES THE HISTORY OF A FRENCH FAMILY
+     FROM 1789 TO THE PRESENT DAY
+
+
+Beneath the shadow of St. Sulpice the ancient mansion of the d'Esparvieu
+family rears its austere three stories between a moss-grown fore-court
+and a garden hemmed in, as the years have elapsed, by ever loftier and
+more intrusive buildings, wherein, nevertheless, two tall chestnut trees
+still lift their withered heads.
+
+Here from 1825 to 1857 dwelt the great man of the family, Alexandre
+Bussart d'Esparvieu, Vice-President of the Council of State under the
+Government of July, Member of the Academy of Moral and Political
+Sciences, and author of an _Essay on the Civil and Religious
+Institutions of Nations_, in three octavo volumes, a work unfortunately
+left incomplete.
+
+This eminent theorist of a Liberal monarchy left as heir to his name his
+fortune and his fame, Fulgence-Adolphe Bussart d'Esparvieu, senator
+under the Second Empire, who added largely to his patrimony by buying
+land over which the Avenue de l'Impératice was destined ultimately to
+pass, and who made a remarkable speech in favour of the temporal power
+of the popes.
+
+Fulgence had three sons. The eldest, Marc-Alexandre, entering the army,
+made a splendid career for himself: he was a good speaker. The second,
+Gaétan, showing no particular aptitude for anything, lived mostly in the
+country, where he hunted, bred horses, and devoted himself to music and
+painting. The third son, René, destined from his childhood for the law,
+resigned his deputyship to avoid complicity in the Ferry decrees against
+the religious orders; and later, perceiving the revival under the
+presidency of Monsieur Fallières of the days of Decius and Diocletian,
+put his knowledge and zeal at the service of the persecuted Church.
+
+From the Concordat of 1801 down to the closing years of the Second
+Empire all the d'Esparvieus attended mass for the sake of example.
+Though sceptics in their inmost hearts, they looked upon religion as an
+instrument of government.
+
+Mark and René were the first of their race to show any sign of sincere
+devotion. The General, when still a colonel, had dedicated his regiment
+to the Sacred Heart, and he practised his faith with a fervour
+remarkable even in a soldier, though we all know that piety, daughter of
+Heaven, has marked out the hearts of the generals of the Third Republic
+as her chosen dwelling-place on earth.
+
+Faith has its vicissitudes. Under the old order the masses were
+believers, not so the aristocracy or the educated middle class. Under
+the First Empire the army from top to bottom was entirely irreligious.
+To-day the masses believe nothing. The middle classes wish to believe,
+and succeed at times, as did Marc and René d'Esparvieu. Their brother
+Gaétan, on the contrary, the country gentleman, failed to attain to
+faith. He was an agnostic, a term commonly employed by the modish to
+avoid the odious one of freethinker. And he openly declared himself an
+agnostic, contrary to the admirable custom which deems it better to
+withhold the avowal.
+
+In the century in which we live there are so many modes of belief and of
+unbelief that future historians will have difficulty in finding their
+way about. But are we any more successful in disentangling the condition
+of religious beliefs in the time of Symmachus or of Ambrose?
+
+A fervent Christian, René d'Esparvieu was deeply attached to the liberal
+ideas his ancestors had transmitted to him as a sacred heritage.
+Compelled to oppose a Jacobin and atheistical Republic, he still called
+himself Republican. And it was in the name of liberty that he demanded
+the independence and sovereignty of the Church.
+
+During the long debates on the Separation and the quarrels over the
+Inventories, the synods of the bishops and the assemblies of the
+faithful were held in his house. While the most authoritatively
+accredited leaders of the Catholic party: prelates, generals, senators,
+deputies, journalists, were met together in the big green drawing-room,
+and every soul present turned towards Rome with a tender submission or
+enforced obedience; while Monsieur d'Esparvieu, his elbow on the marble
+chimney-piece, opposed civil law to canon law, and protested eloquently
+against the spoliation of the Church of France, two faces of other days,
+immobile and speechless, looked down on the modern crowd; on the right
+of the fire-place, painted by David, was Romain Bussart, a
+working-farmer at Esparvieu in shirt-sleeves and drill trousers, with a
+rough-and-ready air not untouched with cunning. He had good reason to
+smile: the worthy man laid the foundation of the family fortunes when he
+bought Church lands. On the left, painted by Gérard in full-dress
+bedizened with orders, was the peasant's son, Baron Emile Bussart
+d'Esparvieu, prefect under the Empire, Keeper of the Great Seal under
+Charles X, who died in 1837, churchwarden of his parish, with couplets
+from _La Pucelle_ on his lips.
+
+René d'Esparvieu married in 1888 Marie-Antoinette Coupelle, daughter of
+Baron Coupelle, ironmaster at Blainville (Haute Loire). Madame René
+d'Esparvieu had been president since 1903 of the Society of Christian
+Mothers. These perfect spouses, having married off their eldest daughter
+in 1908, had three children still at home--a girl and two boys.
+
+Léon, the younger, aged seven, had a room next to his mother and his
+sister Berthe. Maurice, the elder, lived in a little pavilion comprising
+two rooms at the bottom of the garden. The young man thus gained a
+freedom which enabled him to endure family life. He was rather
+good-looking, smart without too much pretence, and the faint smile which
+merely raised one corner of his mouth did not lack charm.
+
+At twenty-five Maurice possessed the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Doubting
+whether a man hath any profit of all his labour which he taketh under
+the sun he never put himself out about anything. From his earliest
+childhood this young hopeful's sole concern with work had been
+considering how he might best avoid it, and it was through his remaining
+ignorant of the teaching of the _École de Droit_ that he became a doctor
+of law and a barrister at the Court of Appeal.
+
+He neither pleaded nor practised. He had no knowledge and no desire to
+acquire any; wherein he conformed to his genius whose engaging fragility
+he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately telling him that it was
+better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.
+
+As Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille expressed it, Maurice had received from
+Heaven the benefits of a Christian education. From his childhood piety
+was shown to him in the example of his home, and when on leaving college
+he was entered at the _École de Droit_, he found the lore of the
+doctors, the virtues of the confessors, and the constancy of the nursing
+mothers of the Church assembled around the paternal hearth. Admitted to
+social and political life at the time of the great persecution of the
+Church of France, Maurice did not fail to attend every manifestation of
+youthful Catholicism; he lent a hand with his parish barricades at the
+time of the Inventories, and with his companions he unharnessed the
+archbishop's horses when he was driven out from his palace. He showed on
+all these occasions a modified zeal; one never saw him in the front
+ranks of the heroic band exciting soldiers to a glorious disobedience or
+flinging mud and curses at the agents of the law.
+
+He did his duty, nothing more; and if he distinguished himself on the
+occasion of the great pilgrimage of 1911 among the stretcher-bearers at
+Lourdes, we have reason to fear it was but to please Madame de la
+Verdelière, who admired men of muscle. Abbé Patouille, a friend of the
+family and deeply versed in the knowledge of souls, knew that Maurice
+had only moderate aspirations to martyrdom. He reproached him with his
+lukewarmness, and pulled his ear, calling him a bad lot. Anyway, Maurice
+remained a believer.
+
+Amid the distractions of youth his faith remained intact, since he left
+it severely alone. He had never examined a single tenet. Nor had he
+enquired a whit more closely into the ideas of morality current in the
+grade of society to which he belonged. He took them just as they came.
+Thus in every situation that arose he cut an eminently respectable
+figure which he would have assuredly failed to do, had he been given to
+meditating on the foundations of morality. He was irritable and
+hot-tempered and possessed of a sense of honour which he was at great
+pains to cultivate. He was neither vain nor ambitious. Like the majority
+of Frenchmen, he disliked parting with his money. Women would never have
+obtained anything from him had they not known the way to make him give.
+He believed he despised them; the truth was he adored them. He indulged
+his appetites so naturally that he never suspected that he had any. What
+people did not know, himself least of all,--though the gleam that
+occasionally shone in his fine, light-brown eyes might have furnished
+the hint--was that he had a warm heart and was capable of friendship.
+For the rest, he was, in the ordinary intercourse of life, no very
+brilliant specimen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     WHEREIN USEFUL INFORMATION WILL BE FOUND CONCERNING A
+     LIBRARY WHERE STRANGE THINGS WILL SHORTLY COME TO PASS
+
+
+Desirous of embracing the whole circle of human knowledge, and anxious
+to bequeath to the world a concrete symbol of his encyclopædic genius
+and a display in keeping with his pecuniary resources, Baron Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu had formed a library of three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes, both printed and in manuscript, whereof the greater part
+emanated from the Benedictines of Ligugé.
+
+By a special clause in his will he enjoined his heirs to add to his
+library, after his death, whatever they might deem worthy of note in
+natural, moral, political, philosophical, and religious science.
+
+He had indicated the sums which might be drawn from his estate for the
+fulfilment of this object, and charged his eldest son, Fulgence-Adolphe,
+to proceed with these additions. Fulgence-Adolphe accomplished with
+filial respect the wishes expressed by his illustrious father.
+
+After him, this huge library, which represented more than one child's
+share of the estate, remained undivided between the Senator's three sons
+and two daughters; and René d'Esparvieu, on whom devolved the house in
+the Rue Garancière, became the guardian of the valuable collection. His
+two sisters, Madame Paulet de Saint-Fain and Madame Cuissart, repeatedly
+demanded that such a large but unremunerative piece of property should
+be turned into money. But René and Gaétan bought in the shares of their
+two co-legatees, and the library was saved. René d'Esparvieu even busied
+himself in adding to it, thus fulfilling the intentions of its founder.
+But from year to year he lessened the number and importance of the
+acquisitions, opining that the intellectual output in Europe was on the
+wane.
+
+Nevertheless, Gaétan enriched it, out of his funds, with works published
+both in France and abroad which he thought good, and he was not lacking
+in judgment, though his brothers would never allow that he had a
+particle. Thanks to this man of leisurely and inquiring mind, Baron
+Alexandre's collection was kept practically up to date. Even at the
+present day the d'Esparvieu library, in the departments of theology,
+jurisprudence, and history is one of the finest private libraries in all
+Europe. Here you may study physical science, or to put it better,
+physical sciences in all their branches, and for that matter metaphysic
+or metaphysics, that is to say, all that is connected with physics and
+has no other name, so impossible is it to designate by a substantive
+that which has no substance, and is but a dream and an illusion. Here
+you may contemplate with admiration philosophers addressing themselves
+to the solution, dissolution, and resolution of the Absolute, to the
+determination of the Indeterminate and to the definition of the
+Infinite.
+
+Amid this pile of books and booklets, both sacred and profane, you may
+find everything down to the latest and most fashionable pragmatism.
+
+Other libraries there are, more richly abounding in bindings of
+venerable antiquity and illustrious origin, whose smooth and soft-hued
+texture render them delicious to the touch; bindings which the gilder's
+art has enriched with gossamer, lace-work, foliage, flowers, emblematic
+devices, and coats of arms; bindings that charm the studious eye with
+their tender radiance. Other libraries perhaps harbour a greater array
+of manuscripts illuminated with delicate and brilliant miniatures by
+artists of Venice, Flanders, or Touraine. But in handsome, sound
+editions of ancient and modern writers, both sacred and profane, the
+d'Esparvieu library is second to none. Here one finds all that has come
+down to us from antiquity; all the Fathers of the Church, the Apologists
+and the Decretalists, all the Humanists of the Renaissance, all the
+Encylopædists, the whole world of philosophy and science. Therefore it
+was that Cardinal Merlin, when he deigned to visit it, remarked:
+
+"There is no man whose brain is equal to containing all the knowledge
+which is piled upon these shelves. Happily it doesn't matter."
+
+Monseigneur Cachepot, who worked there often when a curate in Paris, was
+in the habit of saying:
+
+"I see here the stuff to make many a Thomas Aquinas and many an Arius,
+if only the modern mind had not lost its ancient ardour for good and
+evil."
+
+There was no gainsaying that the manuscripts formed the more valuable
+portion of this immense collection. Noteworthy indeed was the
+unpublished correspondence of Gassendi, of Father Mersenne, and of
+Pascal, which threw a new light on the spirit of the seventeenth
+century. Nor must we forget the Hebrew Bibles, the Talmuds, the
+Rabbinical treatises, printed and in manuscript, the Aramaic and
+Samaritan texts, on sheepskin and on tablets of sycamore; in fine, all
+these antique and valuable copies collected in Egypt and in Syria by the
+celebrated Moïse de Dina, and acquired at a small cost by Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu in 1836, when the learned Hebraist died of old age and
+poverty in Paris.
+
+The Esparvienne library occupied the whole of the second floor of the
+old house. The works thought to be of but mediocre interest, such as
+books of Protestant exegesis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
+the gift of Monsieur Gaétan, were relegated unbound to the limbo of the
+upper regions. The catalogue, with its various supplements, ran into no
+less than eighteen folio volumes. It was quite up to date, and the
+library was in perfect order. Monsieur Julien Sariette, archivist and
+palæographer, who, being poor and retiring, used to make his living by
+teaching, became, in 1895, tutor to young Maurice on the recommendation
+of the Bishop of Agra, and with scarcely an interval found himself
+curator of the Bibliothèque Esparvienne. Endowed with business-like
+energy and dogged patience, Monsieur Sariette himself classified all the
+members of this vast body. The system he invented and put into practice
+was so complicated, the labels he put on the books were made up of so
+many capital letters and small letters, both Latin and Greek, so many
+Arabic and Roman numerals, asterisks, double asterisks, triple
+asterisks, and those signs which in arithmetic express powers and roots,
+that the mere study of it would have involved more time and labour than
+would have been required for the complete mastery of algebra, and as no
+one could be found who would give the hours, that might be more
+profitably employed in discovering the law of numbers, to the solving
+of these cryptic symbols, Monsieur Sariette remained the only one
+capable of finding his way among the intricacies of his system, and
+without his help it had become an utter impossibility to discover, among
+the three hundred and sixty thousand volumes confided to his care, the
+particular volume one happened to require. Such was the result of his
+labours. Far from complaining about it, he experienced on the contrary a
+lively satisfaction.
+
+Monsieur Sariette loved his library. He loved it with a jealous love. He
+was there every day at seven o'clock in the morning busy cataloguing at
+a huge mahogany desk. The slips in his handwriting filled an enormous
+case standing by his side surmounted by a plaster bust of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu. Alexandre wore his hair brushed straight back, and had a
+sublime look on his face. Like Chateaubriand, he affected little
+feathery side whiskers. His lips were pursed, his bosom bare. Punctually
+at midday Monsieur Sariette used to sally forth to lunch at a _crèmerie_
+in the narrow gloomy Rue des Canettes. It was known as the _Crèmerie des
+Quatre Évêques_, and had once been the haunt of Baudelaire, Theodore de
+Banville, Charles Asselineau, and a certain grandee of Spain who had
+translated the "Mysteries of Paris" into the language of the
+_conquistadores_. And the ducks that paddled so nicely on the old stone
+sign which gave its name to the street used to recognize Monsieur
+Sariette. At a quarter to one, to the very minute, he went back to his
+library, where he remained until seven o'clock. He then again betook
+himself to the _Quatre Évêques_, and sat down to his frugal dinner, with
+its crowning glory of stewed prunes. Every evening, after dinner, his
+crony, Monsieur Guinardon, universally known as Père Guinardon, a
+scene-painter and picture-restorer, who used to do work for churches,
+would come from his garret in the Rue Princesse to have his coffee and
+liqueur at the _Quatre Évêques_, and the two friends would play their
+game of dominoes.
+
+Old Guinardon, who was like some rugged old tree still full of sap, was
+older than he could bring himself to believe. He had known Chenavard.
+His chastity was positively ferocious, and he was for ever denouncing
+the impurities of neo-paganism in language of alarming obscenity. He
+loved talking. Monsieur Sariette was a ready listener. Old Guinardon's
+favourite subject was the Chapelle des Anges in St. Sulpice, in which
+the paintings were peeling off the walls, and which he was one day to
+restore; when, that is, it should please God, for, since the Separation,
+the churches belonged solely to God, and no one would undertake the
+responsibility of even the most urgent repairs. But old Guinardon
+demanded no salary.
+
+"Michael is my patron saint," he said. "And I have a special devotion
+for the Holy Angels."
+
+After they had had their game of dominoes, Monsieur Sariette, very thin
+and small, and old Guinardon, sturdy as an oak, hirsute as a lion, and
+tall as a Saint Christopher, went off chatting away side by side across
+the Place Saint Sulpice, heedless of whether the night were fine or
+stormy. Monsieur Sariette always went straight home, much to the regret
+of the painter, who was a gossip and a nightbird.
+
+The following day, as the clock struck seven, Monsieur Sariette would
+take up his place in the library, and resume his cataloguing. As he sat
+at his desk, however, he would dart a Medusa-like look at anyone who
+entered, fearing lest he should prove to be a book-borrower. It was not
+merely the magistrates, politicians, and prelates whom he would have
+liked to turn to stone when they came to ask for the loan of a book with
+an air of authority bred of their familiarity with the master of the
+house. He would have done as much to Monsieur Gaétan, the library's
+benefactor, when he wanted some gay or scandalous old volume wherewith
+to beguile a wet day in the country. He would have meted out similar
+treatment to Madame René d'Esparvieu, when she came to look for a book
+to read to her sick poor in hospital, and even to Monsieur René
+d'Esparvieu himself, who generally contented himself with the Civil Code
+and a volume of Dalloz. The borrowing of the smallest book seemed like
+dragging his heart out. To refuse a volume even to such as had the most
+incontestable right to it, Monsieur Sariette would invent countless
+far-fetched or clumsy fibs, and did not even shrink from slandering
+himself as curator or from casting doubts on his own vigilance by saying
+that such and such a book was mislaid or lost, when a moment ago he had
+been gloating over that very volume or pressing it to his bosom. And
+when ultimately forced to part with a volume he would take it back a
+score of times from the borrower before he finally relinquished it.
+
+He was always in agony lest one of the objects confided to his care
+should escape him. As the guardian of three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes, he had three hundred and sixty thousand reasons for alarm.
+Sometimes he woke at night bathed in sweat, and uttering a cry of fear,
+because he had dreamed he had seen a gap on one of the shelves of his
+bookcases. It seemed to him a monstrous, unheard-of, and most grievous
+thing that a volume should leave its habitat. This noble rapacity
+exasperated Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, who, failing to understand the
+good qualities of his paragon of a librarian, called him an old maniac.
+Monsieur Sariette knew nought of this injustice, but he would have
+braved the cruellest misfortune and endured opprobrium and insult to
+safeguard the integrity of his trust. Thanks to his assiduity, his
+vigilance and zeal, or, in a word, to his love, the Esparvienne library
+had not lost so much as a single leaflet under his supervision during
+the sixteen years which had now rolled by, this ninth of September,
+1912.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     WHEREIN THE MYSTERY BEGINS
+
+
+At seven o'clock on the evening of that day, having as usual replaced
+all the books which had been taken from their shelves, and having
+assured himself that he was leaving everything in good order, he quitted
+the library, double-locking the door after him. According to his usual
+habit, he dined at the _Crèmerie des Quatre Évêques_, read his
+newspaper, _La Croix_, and at ten o'clock went home to his little house
+in the Rue du Regard. The good man had no trouble and no presentiment of
+evil; his sleep was peaceful. The next morning at seven o'clock to the
+minute, he entered the little room leading to the library, and,
+according to his daily habit, doffed his grand frock-coat, and taking
+down an old one which hung in a cupboard over his washstand, put it on.
+Then he went in to his workroom, where for sixteen years he had been
+cataloguing six days out of the seven, under the lofty gaze of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu. Preparing to make a round of the various rooms, he entered
+the first and largest, which contained works on theology and religion
+in huge cupboards whose cornices were adorned with bronze-coloured busts
+of poets and orators of ancient days.
+
+Two enormous globes representing the earth and the heavens filled the
+window-embrasures. But at his first step Monsieur Sariette stopped dead,
+stupefied, powerless alike to doubt or to credit what his eyes beheld.
+On the blue cloth cover of the writing-table books lay scattered about
+pell-mell, some lying flat, some standing upright. A number of quartos
+were heaped up in a tottering pile. Two Greek lexicons, one inside the
+other, formed a single being more monstrous in shape than the human
+couples of the divine Plato. A gilt-edged folio was all a-gape, showing
+three of its leaves disgracefully dog's-eared.
+
+Having, after an interval of some moments, recovered from his profound
+amazement, the librarian went up to the table and recognised in the
+confused mass his most valuable Hebrew, French, and Latin Bibles, a
+unique Talmud, Rabbinical treatises printed and in manuscript, Aramaic
+and Samaritan texts and scrolls from the synagogues--in fine, the most
+precious relics of Israel all lying in a disordered heap, gaping and
+crumpled.
+
+Monsieur Sariette found himself confronted with an inexplicable
+phenomenon; nevertheless he sought to account for it. How eagerly he
+would have welcomed the idea that Monsieur Gaétan, who, being a
+thoroughly unprincipled man, presumed on the right gained him by his
+fatal liberality towards the library to rummage there unhindered during
+his sojourns in Paris, had been the author of this terrible disorder.
+But Monsieur Gaétan was away travelling in Italy. After pondering for
+some minutes Monsieur Sariette's next supposition was that Monsieur René
+d'Esparvieu had entered the library late in the evening with the keys of
+his manservant Hippolyte, who, for the past twenty-five years, had
+looked after the second floor and the attics. Monsieur René d'Esparvieu,
+however, never worked at night, and did not read Hebrew. Perhaps,
+thought Monsieur Sariette, perhaps he had brought or allowed to be
+brought to this room some priest, or Jerusalem monk, on his way through
+Paris; some Oriental _savant_ given to scriptural exegesis. Monsieur
+Sariette next wondered whether the Abbé Patouille, who had an enquiring
+mind, and also a habit of dog's-earing his books, had, peradventure,
+flung himself on these talmudic and biblical texts, fired with sudden
+zeal to lay bare the soul of Shem. He even asked himself for a moment
+whether Hippolyte, the old manservant, who had swept and dusted the
+library for a quarter of a century, and had been slowly poisoned by the
+dust of accumulated knowledge, had allowed his curiosity to get the
+better of him, and had been there during the night, ruining his eyesight
+and his reason, and losing his soul poring by moonlight over these
+undecipherable symbols. Monsieur Sariette even went so far as to imagine
+that young Maurice, on leaving his club or some nationalist meeting,
+might have torn these Jewish volumes from their shelves, out of hatred
+for old Jacob and his modern posterity; for this young man of family was
+a declared anti-semite, and only consorted with those Jews who were as
+anti-semitic as himself. It was giving a very free rein to his
+imagination, but Monsieur Sariette's brain could not rest, and went
+wandering about among speculations of the wildest extravagance.
+
+Impatient to know the truth, the zealous guardian of the library called
+the manservant.
+
+Hippolyte knew nothing. The porter at the lodge could not furnish any
+clue. None of the domestics had heard a sound. Monsieur Sariette went
+down to the study of Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, who received him in
+nightcap and dressing-gown, listened to his story with the air of a
+serious man bored with idle chatter, and dismissed him with words which
+conveyed a cruel implication of pity.
+
+"Do not worry, my good Monsieur Sariette; be sure that the books were
+lying where you left them last night."
+
+Monsieur Sariette reiterated his enquiries a score of times, discovered
+nothing, and suffered such anxiety that sleep entirely forsook him.
+When, on the following day at seven o'clock he entered the room with
+the busts and globes, and saw that all was in order, he heaved a sigh of
+relief. Then suddenly his heart beat fit to burst. He had just seen
+lying flat on the mantelpiece a paper-bound volume, a modern work, the
+boxwood paper-knife which had served to cut its pages still thrust
+between the leaves. It was a dissertation on the two parallel versions
+of Genesis, a work which Monsieur Sariette had relegated to the attic,
+and which had never left it up to now, no one in Monsieur d'Esparvieu's
+circle having had the curiosity to differentiate between the parts for
+which the polytheistic and monotheistic contributors were respectively
+responsible in the formation of the first of the sacred books. This book
+bore the label R > 3214-VIII/2. And this painful truth was suddenly
+borne in upon the mind of Monsieur Sariette: to wit, that the most
+scientific system of numbering will not help to find a book if the book
+is no longer in its place. Every day of the ensuing month found the
+table littered with books. Greek and Latin lay cheek by jowl with
+Hebrew. Monsieur Sariette asked himself whether these nocturnal
+flittings were the work of evil-doers who entered by the skylights to
+steal valuable and precious volumes. But he found no traces of burglary,
+and, notwithstanding the most minute search, failed to discover that
+anything had disappeared. Terrible anxiety took possession of his mind,
+and he fell to wondering whether it was possible that some monkey in the
+neighbourhood came down the chimney and acted the part of a person
+engaged in study. Deriving his knowledge of the habits of these animals
+in the main from the paintings of Watteau and Chardin, he took it that,
+in the art of imitating gestures or assuming characters they resembled
+Harlequin, Scaramouch, Zerlin, and the Doctors of the Italian comedy; he
+imagined them handling a palette and brushes, pounding drugs in a
+mortar, or turning over the leaves of an old treatise on alchemy beside
+an athanor. And so it was that, when, on one unhappy morning, he saw a
+huge blot of ink on one of the leaves of the third volume of the
+polyglot Bible bound in blue morocco and adorned with the arms of the
+Comte de Mirabeau, he had no doubt that a monkey was the author of the
+evil deed. The monkey had been pretending to take notes and had upset
+the inkpot. It must be a monkey belonging to a learned professor.
+
+Imbued with this idea, Monsieur Sariette carefully studied the
+topography of the district, so as to draw a cordon round the group of
+houses amid which the d'Esparvieu house stood. Then he visited the four
+surrounding streets, asking at every door if there was a monkey in the
+house. He interrogated porters and their wives, washer-women, servants,
+a cobbler, a greengrocer, a glazier, clerks in bookshops, a priest, a
+bookbinder, two guardians of the peace, children, thus testing the
+diversity of character and variety of temper in one and the same people;
+for the replies he received were quite dissimilar in nature; some were
+rough, some were gentle; there were the coarse and the polished, the
+simple and the ironical, the prolix and the abrupt, the brief and even
+the silent. But of the animal he sought he had had neither sight nor
+sound, when under the archway of an old house in the Rue Servandoni, a
+small freckled, red-haired girl who looked after the door, made reply:
+
+"There is Monsieur Ordonneau's monkey; would you care to see it?"
+
+And without another word she conducted the old man to a stable at the
+other end of the yard. There on some rank straw and old bits of cloth, a
+young macaco with a chain round his middle sat and shivered. He was no
+taller than a five-year-old child. His livid face, his wrinkled brow,
+his thin lips were all expressive of mortal sadness. He fixed on the
+visitor the still lively gaze of his yellow eyes. Then with his small
+dry hand he seized a carrot, put it to his mouth, and forthwith flung it
+away. Having looked at the newcomers for a moment, the exile turned away
+his head, as if he expected nothing further of mankind or of life.
+Sitting huddled up, one knee in his hand, he made no further movement,
+but at times a dry cough shook his breast.
+
+"It's Edgar," said the small girl. "He is for sale, you know."
+
+But the old book-lover, who had come armed with anger and resentment,
+thinking to find a cynical enemy, a monster of malice, an
+antibibliophile, stopped short, surprised, saddened, and overcome,
+before this little being devoid of strength and joy and hope.
+
+Recognising his mistake, troubled by the almost human face which sorrow
+and suffering made more human still, he murmured "Forgive me" and bowed
+his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     WHICH IN ITS FORCEFUL BREVITY PROJECTS US TO THE LIMITS OF
+     THE ACTUAL WORLD
+
+
+Two months elapsed; the domestic upheaval did not subside, and Monsieur
+Sariette's thoughts turned to the Freemasons. The papers he read were
+full of their crimes. Abbé Patouille deemed them capable of the darkest
+deeds, and believed them to be in league with the Jews and meditating
+the total overthrow of Christendom.
+
+Having now arrived at the acme of power, they wielded a dominating
+influence in all the principal departments of State, they ruled the
+Chambers, there were five of them in the Ministry, and they filled the
+Élysée. Having some time since assassinated a President of the Republic
+because he was a patriot, they were getting rid of the accomplices and
+witnesses of their execrable crime. Few days passed without Paris being
+terror-stricken at some mysterious murder hatched in their Lodges. These
+were facts concerning which no doubt was possible. By what means did
+they gain access to the library? Monsieur Sariette could not imagine.
+What task had they come to fulfil? Why did they attack sacred antiquity
+and the origins of the Church? What impious designs were they forming? A
+heavy shadow hung over these terrible undertakings. The Catholic
+archivist feeling himself under the eye of the sons of Hiram was
+terrified and fell ill.
+
+Scarcely had he recovered, when he resolved to pass the night in the
+very spot where these terrible mysteries were enacted, and to take the
+subtle and dangerous visitors by surprise. It was an enterprise that
+demanded all his slender courage. Being a man of delicate physique and
+of nervous temperament, Monsieur Sariette was naturally inclined to be
+fearful. On the 8th of January at nine o'clock in the evening, while the
+city lay asleep under a whirling snowstorm, he built up a good fire in
+the room containing the busts of the ancient poets and philosophers, and
+ensconced himself in an arm-chair at the chimney corner, a rug over his
+knees. On a small stand within reach of his hand were a lamp, a bowl of
+black coffee, and a revolver borrowed from the youthful Maurice. He
+tried to read his paper, _La Croix_, but the letters danced beneath his
+eyes. So he stared hard in front of him, saw nothing but the shadows,
+heard nothing but the wind, and fell asleep.
+
+When he awoke the fire was out, the lamp was extinguished, leaving an
+acrid smell behind. But all around, the darkness was filled with milky
+brightness and phosphorescent lights. He thought he saw something
+flutter on the table. Stricken to the marrow with cold and terror, but
+upheld by a resolve stronger than any fear, he rose, approached the
+table, and passed his hands over the cloth. He saw nothing; even the
+lights faded, but under his fingers he felt a folio wide open; he tried
+to close it, the book resisted, jumped up and hit the imprudent
+librarian three blows on the head.
+
+Monsieur Sariette fell down unconscious....
+
+Since then things had gone from bad to worse. Books left their allotted
+shelves in greater profusion than ever, and sometimes it was impossible
+to replace them; they disappeared. Monsieur Sariette discovered fresh
+losses daily. The Bollandists were now an imperfect set, thirty volumes
+of exegesis were missing. He himself had become unrecognisable. His face
+had shrunk to the size of one's fist and grown yellow as a lemon, his
+neck was elongated out of all proportion, his shoulders drooped, the
+clothes he wore hung on him as on a peg. He ate nothing, and at the
+_Crèmerie des Quatre Évêques_ he would sit with dull eyes and bowed
+head, staring fixedly and vacantly at the saucer where, in a muddy
+juice, floated his stewed prunes. He did not hear old Guinardon relate
+how he had at last begun to restore the Delacroix paintings at St.
+Sulpice.
+
+Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, when he heard the unhappy curator's alarming
+reports, used to answer drily:
+
+"These books have been mislaid, they are not lost; look carefully,
+Monsieur Sariette, look carefully and you will find them."
+
+And he murmured behind the old man's back:
+
+"Poor old Sariette is in a bad way."
+
+"I think," replied Abbé Patouille, "that his brain is going."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     WHEREIN EVERYTHING SEEMS STRANGE BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS
+     LOGICAL
+
+
+The Chapel of the Holy Angels, which lies on the right hand as you enter
+the Church of St. Sulpice, was hidden behind a scaffolding of planks.
+Abbé Patouille, Monsieur Gaétan, Monsieur Maurice, his nephew, and
+Monsieur Sariette, entered in single file through the low door cut in
+the wooden hoarding, and found old Guinardon on the top of his ladder
+standing in front of the Heliodorus. The old artist, surrounded by all
+sorts of tools and materials, was putting a white paste in the crack
+which cut in two the High Priest Onias. Zéphyrine, Paul Baudry's
+favourite model, Zéphyrine, who had lent her golden hair and polished
+shoulders to so many Magdalens, Marguerites, sylphs, and mermaids, and
+who, it is said, was beloved of the Emperor Napoleon III, was standing
+at the foot of the ladder with tangled locks, cadaverous cheeks, and dim
+eyes, older than old Guinardon, whose life she had shared for more than
+half a century. She had brought the painter's lunch in a basket.
+
+Although the slanting rays fell grey and cold through the leaded and
+iron-barred window, Delacroix's colouring shone resplendent, and the
+roses on the cheeks of men and angels dimmed with their glorious beauty
+the rubicund countenance of old Guinardon, which stood out in relief
+against one of the temple's columns. These frescoes of the Chapel of the
+Holy Angels, though derided and insulted when they first appeared, have
+now become part of the classic tradition, and are united in immortality
+with the masterpieces of Rubens and Tintoretto.
+
+Old Guinardon, bearded and long-haired, looked like Father Time effacing
+the works of man's genius. Gaétan, in alarm, called out to him:
+
+"Carefully, Monsieur Guinardon, carefully. Do not scrape too much."
+
+The painter reassured him.
+
+"Fear nothing, Monsieur Gaétan. I do not paint in that style. My art is
+a higher one. I work after the manner of Cimabue, Giotto, and Beato
+Angelico, not in the style of Delacroix. This surface here is too
+heavily charged with contrast and opposition to give a really sacred
+effect. It is true that Chenavard said that Christianity loves the
+picturesque, but Chenavard was a rascal with neither faith nor
+principle--an infidel.... Look, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, I fill up the
+crevice, I relay the scales of paint which are peeling. That is all....
+The damage, due to the sinking of the wall, or more probably to a
+seismic shock, is confined to a very small space. This painting of oil
+and wax applied on a very dry foundation is far more solid than one
+might think.
+
+"I saw Delacroix engaged on this work. Impassioned but anxious, he
+modelled feverishly, scraped out, re-painted unceasingly; his mighty
+hand made childish blunders, but the thing is done with the mastery of a
+genius and the inexperience of a schoolboy. It is a marvel how it
+holds."
+
+The good man was silent, and went on filling in the crevice.
+
+"How classic and traditional the composition is," said Gaétan. "Time was
+when one could recognise nothing but its amazing novelty; now one can
+see in it a multitude of old Italian formulas."
+
+"I may allow myself the luxury of being just, I possess the
+qualifications," said the old man from the top of his lofty ladder.
+"Delacroix lived in a blasphemous and godless age. A painter of the
+decadence, he was not without pride nor grandeur. He was greater than
+his times. But he lacked faith, single-heartedness, and purity. To be
+able to see and paint angels he needed that virtue of angels and
+primitives, that supreme virtue which, with God's help, I do my best to
+practise, chastity."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Michel; you are as big a brute as any of them."
+
+Thus Zéphyrine, devoured with jealousy because that very morning on the
+stairs she had seen her lover kiss the bread-woman's daughter, to wit
+the youthful Octavie, who was as squalid and radiant as one of
+Rembrandt's Brides. She had loved Michel madly in the happy days long
+since past, and love had never died out in Zéphyrine's heart.
+
+Old Guinardon received the flattering insult with a smile that he
+dissembled, and raised his eyes to the ceiling, where the archangel
+Michael, terrible in azure cuirass and gilt helmet, was springing
+heavenwards in all the radiance of his glory.
+
+Meanwhile Abbé Patouille, blinking, and shielding his eyes with his hat
+against the glaring light from the window, began to examine the pictures
+one after another: Heliodorus being scourged by the angels, St. Michael
+vanquishing the Demons, and the combat of Jacob and the Angel.
+
+"All this is exceedingly fine," he murmured at last, "but why has the
+artist only represented wrathful angels on these walls? Look where I
+will in this chapel, I see but heralds of celestial anger, ministers of
+divine vengeance. God wishes to be feared; He wishes also to be loved. I
+would fain perceive on these walls messengers of peace and of clemency.
+I should like to see the Seraphim who purified the lips of the prophet,
+St. Raphael who gave back his sight to old Tobias, Gabriel who announced
+the Mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, the Angel who delivered St.
+Peter from his chains, the Cherubim who bore the dead St. Catherine to
+the top of Sinai. Above all, I should like to be able to contemplate
+those heavenly guardians which God gives to every man baptized in His
+name. We each have one who follows all our steps, who comforts us and
+upholds us. It would be pleasant indeed to admire these enchanting
+spirits, these beautiful faces."
+
+"Ah, Abbé! it depends on the point of view," answered Gaétan. "Delacroix
+was no sentimentalist. Old Ingres was not very far wrong in saying that
+this great man's work reeks of fire and brimstone. Look at the sombre,
+splendid beauty of those angels, look at those androgynes so proud and
+fierce, at those pitiless youths who lift avenging rods against
+Heliodorus, note this mysterious wrestler touching the patriarch on the
+hip...."
+
+"Hush," said Abbé Patouille. "According to the Bible he is no angel like
+the others; if he be an angel, he is the Angel of Creation, the Eternal
+Son of God. I am surprised that the Venerable Curé of St. Sulpice, who
+entrusted the decoration of this chapel to Monsieur Eugène Delacroix,
+did not tell him that the patriarch's symbolic struggle with Him who was
+nameless took place in profound darkness, and that the subject is quite
+out of place here, since it prefigures the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
+The best artists go astray when they fail to obtain their ideas of
+Christian iconography from a qualified ecclesiastic. The institutions of
+Christian art form the subject of numerous works with which you are
+doubtless acquainted, Monsieur Sariette."
+
+Monsieur Sariette was gazing vacantly about him. It was the third
+morning after his adventurous night in the library. Being, however, thus
+called upon by the venerable ecclesiastic, he pulled himself together
+and replied:
+
+"On this subject we may with advantage consult Molanus, _De Historia
+Sacrarum Imaginum et Picturarum_, in the edition given us by Noël
+Paquot, dated Louvain, 1771; Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, _De Pictura
+Sacra_, and the Iconography of Didron; but this last work must be read
+with caution."
+
+Having thus spoken, Monsieur Sariette relapsed into silence. He was
+pondering on his devastated library.
+
+"On the other hand," continued Abbé Patouille, "since an example of the
+holy anger of the angels was necessary in this chapel, the painter is to
+be commended for having depicted for us in imitation of Raphael the
+heavenly messengers who chastised Heliodorus. Ordered by Seleucus, King
+of Syria, to carry off the treasures contained in the Temple, Heliodorus
+was stricken by an angel in a cuirass of gold mounted on a magnificently
+caparisoned steed. Two other angels smote him with rods. He fell to
+earth, as Monsieur Delacroix shows us here, and was swallowed up in
+darkness. It is right and salutary that this adventure should be cited
+as an example to the Republican Commissioners of Police and to the
+sacrilegious agents of the law. There will always be Heliodoruses, but,
+let it be known, every time they lay their hands on the property of the
+Church, which is the property of the poor, they shall be chastised with
+rods and blinded by the angels."
+
+"I should like this painting, or, better still, Raphael's sublimer
+conception of the same subject, to be engraved in little pictures fully
+coloured, and distributed as rewards in all the schools."
+
+"Uncle," said young Maurice, with a yawn, "I think these things are
+simply ghastly. I prefer Matisse and Metzinger."
+
+These words fell unheeded, and old Guinardon from his ladder held forth:
+
+"Only the primitives caught a glimpse of Heaven. Beauty is only to be
+found between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The antique, the
+impure antique, which regained its pernicious influence over the minds
+of the sixteenth century, inspired poets and painters with criminal
+notions and immodest conceptions, with horrid impurities, filth. All the
+artists of the Renaissance were swine, including Michael-Angelo."
+
+Then, perceiving that Gaétan was on the point of departure, Père
+Guinardon assumed an air of bonhomie, and said to him in a confidential
+tone:
+
+"Monsieur Gaétan, if you're not afraid of climbing up my five flights,
+come and have a look at my den. I've got two or three little canvases I
+wouldn't mind parting with, and they might interest you. All good,
+honest, straightforward stuff. I'll show you, among other things, a
+tasty, spicy little Baudouin that would make your mouth water."
+
+At this speech Gaétan made off. As he descended the church steps and
+turned down the Rue Princesse, he found himself accompanied by old
+Sariette, and fell to unburdening himself to him, as he would have done
+to any human creature, or indeed to a tree, a lamp-post, a dog, or his
+own shadow, of the indignation with which the æsthetic theories of the
+old painter inspired him.
+
+"Old Guinardon overdoes it with his Christian art and his Primitives!
+Whatever the artist conceives of Heaven is borrowed from earth; God, the
+Virgin, the Angels, men and women, saints, the light, the clouds. When
+he was designing figures for the chapel windows at Dreux, old Ingres
+drew from life a pure, fine study of a woman, which may be seen, among
+many others, in the Musée Bonnat at Bayonne. Old Ingres had written at
+the bottom of the page in case he should forget: 'Mademoiselle Cécile,
+admirable legs and thighs'--and so as to make Mademoiselle Cécile into a
+saint in Paradise, he gave her a robe, a cloak, a veil, inflicting thus
+a shameful decline in her estate, for the tissues of Lyons and Genoa are
+worthless compared with the youthful living tissue, rosy with pure
+blood; the most beautiful draperies are despicable compared with the
+lines of a beautiful body. In fact, clothing for flesh that is desirable
+and ripe for wedlock is an unmerited shame, and the worst of
+humiliations"; and Gaétan, walking carelessly in the gutter of the Rue
+Garancière, continued: "Old Guinardon is a pestilential idiot. He
+blasphemes Antiquity, sacred Antiquity, the age when the gods were kind.
+He exalts an epoch when the painter and the sculptor had all their
+lessons to learn over again. In point of fact, Christianity has run
+contrary to art in so much as it has not favoured the study of the nude.
+Art is the representation of nature, and nature is pre-eminently the
+human body; it is the nude."
+
+"Pardon, pardon," purred old Sariette. "There is such a thing as
+spiritual, or, as one might term it, inward beauty, which, since the
+days of Fra Angelico down to those of Hippolyte Flandrin, Christian art
+has--"
+
+But Gaétan, never hearing a word of all this, went on hurling his
+impetuous observations at the stones of the old street and the
+snow-laden clouds overhead:
+
+"The Primitives cannot be judged as a whole, for they are utterly unlike
+each other. This old madman confounds them all together. Cimabue is a
+corrupt Byzantine, Giotto gives hints of powerful genius, but his
+modelling is bad, and, like children, he gives all his characters the
+same face. The early Italians have grace and joy, because they are
+Italians. The Venetians have an instinct for fine colour. But when all
+is said and done these exquisite craftsmen enamel and gild rather than
+paint. There is far too much softness about the heart and the colouring
+of your saintly Angelico for me. As for the Flemish school, that's quite
+another pair of shoes. They can use their hands, and in glory of
+workmanship they are on a level with the Chinese lacquer-workers. The
+technique of the brothers Van Eyck is a marvel, but I cannot discover in
+their Adoration of the Lamb the charm and mystery that some have
+vaunted. Everything in it is treated with a pitiless perfection; it is
+vulgar in feeling and cruelly ugly. Memling may touch one perhaps; but
+he creates nothing but sick wretches and cripples; under the heavy,
+rich, and ungraceful robing of his virgins and saints one divines some
+very lamentable anatomy. I did not wait for Rogier van der Wyden to call
+himself Roger de la Pasture and turn Frenchman in order to prefer him to
+Memling. This Rogier or Roger is less of a ninny; but then he is more
+lugubrious, and the rigidity of his lines bears eloquent testimony to
+his poverty-stricken figures. It is a strange perversion to take
+pleasure in these carnivalesque figures when one can have the paintings
+of Leonardo, Titian, Correggio, Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin,
+or Prud'hon. Really it is a perverted instinct."
+
+Meanwhile the Abbé Patouille and Maurice d'Esparvieu were strolling
+leisurely along in the wake of the esthete and the librarian. As a
+general rule the Abbé Patouille was little inclined to talk theology
+with laymen, or, for that matter, with clerics either. Carried away,
+however, by the attractiveness of the subject, he was telling the
+youthful Maurice all about the sacred mission of those guardian angels
+which Monsieur Delacroix had so inopportunely excluded from his picture.
+And in order to give more adequate expression to his thoughts on such
+lofty themes, the Abbé Patouille borrowed whole phrases and sentences
+from Bossuet. He had got them up by heart to put in his sermons, for he
+adhered strongly to tradition.
+
+"Yes, my son," he was saying, "God has appointed tutelary spirits to be
+near us. They come to us laden with His gifts. They return laden with
+our prayers. Such is their task. Not an hour, not a moment passes but
+they are at our side, ready to help us, ever fervent and unwearying
+guardians, watchmen that never slumber."
+
+"Quite so, Abbé," murmured Maurice, who was wondering by what cunning
+artifice he could get on the soft side of his mother and persuade her to
+give him some money of which he was urgently in need.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     WHEREIN PÈRE SARIETTE DISCOVERS HIS MISSING TREASURES
+
+
+Next morning Monsieur Sariette entered Monsieur René d'Esparvieu's study
+without knocking. He raised his arms to the heavens, his few hairs were
+standing straight up on his head. His eyes were big with terror. In
+husky tones he stammered out the dreadful news. A very old manuscript of
+Flavius Josephus; sixty volumes of all sizes; a priceless jewel, namely,
+a _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendôme, Grand Prior
+of France, with notes in Voltaire's own hand; a manuscript of Richard
+Simon, and a set of Gassendi's correspondence with Gabriel Naudé,
+comprising two hundred and thirty-eight unpublished letters, had
+disappeared. This time the owner of the library was alarmed.
+
+He mounted in haste to the abode of the philosophers and the globes, and
+there with his own eyes confirmed the magnitude of the disaster.
+
+There were yawning gaps on many a shelf. He searched here and there,
+opened cupboards, dragged out brooms, dusters, and fire-extinguishers,
+rattled the shovel in the coke fire, shook out Monsieur Sariette's best
+frock-coat that was hanging in the cloak-room, and then stood and gazed
+disconsolately at the empty places left by the Gassendi portfolios.
+
+For the past half-century the whole learned world had been loudly
+clamouring for the publication of this correspondence. Monsieur René
+d'Esparvieu had not responded to the universal desire, unwilling either
+to assume so heavy a task, or to resign it to others. Having found much
+boldness of thought in these letters, and many passages of more
+libertine tendency than the piety of the twentieth century could endure,
+he preferred that they should remain unpublished; but he felt himself
+responsible for their safe-keeping, not only to his country but to the
+whole civilized world.
+
+"How can you have allowed yourself to be robbed of such a treasure?" he
+asked severely of Monsieur Sariette.
+
+"How can I have allowed myself to be robbed of such a treasure?"
+repeated the unhappy librarian. "Monsieur, if you opened my breast, you
+would find that question engraved upon my heart."
+
+Unmoved by this powerful utterance, Monsieur d'Esparvieu continued with
+pent-up fury:
+
+"And you have discovered no single sign that would put you on the track
+of the thief, Monsieur Sariette? You have no suspicion, not the
+faintest idea, of the way these things have come to pass? You have seen
+nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing, learnt nothing? You must grant
+this is unbelievable. Think, Monsieur Sariette, think of the possible
+consequences of this unheard-of theft, committed under your eyes. A
+document of inestimable value in the history of the human mind
+disappears. Who has stolen it? Why has it been stolen? Who will gain by
+it? Those who have got possession of it doubtless know that they will be
+unable to dispose of it in France. They will go and sell it in America
+or Germany. Germany is greedy for such literary monuments. Should the
+correspondence of Gassendi with Gabriel Naudé go over to Berlin, if it
+is published there by German savants, what a disaster, nay, what a
+scandal! Monsieur Sariette, have you not thought of that?..."
+
+Beneath the stroke of an accusation all the more cruel in that he
+brought it against himself, Monsieur Sariette stood stupefied, and was
+silent. And Monsieur d'Esparvieu continued to overwhelm him with bitter
+reproaches.
+
+"And you make no effort. You devise nothing to find these inestimable
+treasures. Make enquiries, bestir yourself, Monsieur Sariette; use your
+wits. It is well worth while."
+
+And Monsieur d'Esparvieu went out, throwing an icy glance at his
+librarian.
+
+Monsieur Sariette sought the lost books and manuscripts in every spot
+where he had already sought them a hundred times, and where they could
+not possibly be. He even looked in the coke-box and under the leather
+seat of his arm-chair. When midday struck he mechanically went
+downstairs. At the foot of the stairs he met his old pupil Maurice, with
+whom he exchanged a bow. But he only saw men and things as through a
+mist.
+
+The broken-hearted curator had already reached the hall when Maurice
+called him back.
+
+"Monsieur Sariette, while I think of it, do have the books removed that
+are choking up my garden-house."
+
+"What books, Maurice?"
+
+"I could not tell you, Monsieur Sariette, but there are some in Hebrew,
+all worm-eaten, with a whole heap of old papers. They are in my way. You
+can't turn round in the passage."
+
+"Who took them there?"
+
+"I'm bothered if I know."
+
+And the young man rushed off to the dining-room, the luncheon gong
+having sounded quite a minute ago.
+
+Monsieur Sariette tore away to the summer-house. Maurice had spoken the
+truth. About a hundred volumes were there, on tables, on chairs, even on
+the floor. When he saw them he was divided betwixt joy and fear, filled
+with amazement and anxiety. Happy in the finding of his lost treasure,
+dreading to lose it again, and completely overwhelmed with astonishment,
+the man of books alternately babbled like an infant and uttered the
+hoarse cries of a maniac. He recognised his Hebrew Bibles, his ancient
+Talmuds, his very old manuscript of Flavius Josephus, his portfolios of
+Gassendi's letters to Gabriel Naudé, and his richest jewel of all, to
+wit, _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of the Grand Prior of France, and
+with notes in Voltaire's own hand. He laughed, he cried, he kissed the
+morocco, the calf, the parchment, and vellum, even the wooden boards
+studded with nails.
+
+As fast as Hippolyte, the manservant, returned with an armful to the
+library, Monsieur Sariette, with a trembling hand, restored them piously
+to their places.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     OF A SOMEWHAT LIVELY INTEREST, WHEREOF THE MORAL WILL, I
+     HOPE, APPEAL GREATLY TO MY READERS, SINCE IT CAN BE
+     EXPRESSED BY THIS SORROWFUL QUERY: "THOUGHT, WHITHER DOST
+     THOU LEAD ME?" FOR IT IS A UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED TRUTH THAT
+     IT IS UNHEALTHY TO THINK AND THAT TRUE WISDOM LIES IN NOT
+     THINKING AT ALL
+
+
+All the books were now once more assembled in the pious keeping of
+Monsieur Sariette. But this happy reunion was not destined to last. The
+following night twenty volumes left their places, among them the
+_Lucretius_ of Prior de Vendôme. Within a week the old Hebrew and Greek
+texts had all returned to the summer-house, and every night during the
+ensuing month they left their shelves and secretly went on the same
+path. Others betook themselves no one knew whither.
+
+On hearing of these mysterious occurrences, Monsieur René d'Esparvieu
+merely remarked with frigidity to his librarian:
+
+"My poor Sariette, all this is very queer, very queer indeed."
+
+And when Monsieur Sariette tentatively advised him to lodge a formal
+complaint or to inform the Commissaire de Police, Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+cried out upon him:
+
+"What are you suggesting, Monsieur Sariette? Divulge domestic secrets,
+make a scandal! You cannot mean it. I have enemies, and I am proud of
+it. I think I have deserved them. What I might complain about is that I
+am wounded in the house of my friend, attacked with unheard-of violence,
+by fervent loyalists, who, I grant you, are good Catholics, but
+exceedingly bad Christians.... In a word, I am watched, spied upon,
+shadowed, and you suggest, Monsieur Sariette, that I should make a
+present of this comic-opera mystery, this burlesque adventure, this
+story in which we both cut somewhat pitiable figures, to a set of
+spiteful journalists? Do you wish to cover me with ridicule?"
+
+The result of the colloquy was that the two gentlemen agreed to change
+all the locks in the library. Estimates were asked for and workmen
+called in. For six weeks the d'Esparvieu household rang from morning
+till night with the sound of hammers, the hum of centre-bits, and the
+grating of files. Fires were always going in the abode of the
+philosophers and globes, and the people of the house were simply
+sickened by the smell of heated oil. The old, smooth, easy-running locks
+were replaced, on the cupboards and doors of the rooms, by stubborn and
+tricky fastenings. There was nothing but combinations of locks,
+letter-padlocks, safety-bolts, bars, chains, and electric alarm-bells.
+
+All this display of ironmongery inspired fear. The lock-cases glistened,
+and there was much grinding of bolts. To gain access to a room, a
+cupboard, or a drawer, it was necessary to know a certain number, of
+which Monsieur Sariette alone was cognisant. His head was filled with
+bizarre words and tremendous numbers, and he got entangled among all
+these cryptic signs, these square, cubic, and triangular figures. He
+himself couldn't get the doors and the cupboards undone, yet every
+morning he found them wide open, and the books thrown about, ransacked,
+and hidden away. In the gutter of the Rue Servandoni a policeman picked
+up a volume of Salomon Reinach on the identity of Barabbas and Jesus
+Christ. As it bore the book-plate of the d'Esparvieu library he returned
+it to the owner.
+
+Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, not even deigning to inform Monsieur Sariette
+of the fact, made up his mind to consult a magistrate, a friend in whom
+he had complete confidence, to wit, a certain Monsieur des Aubels,
+Counsel at the Law Courts, who had put through many an important affair.
+He was a little plump man, very red, very bald, with a cranium that
+shone like a billiard ball. He entered the library one morning feigning
+to come as a book-lover, but he soon showed that he knew nothing about
+books. While all the busts of the ancient philosophers were reflected in
+his shining pate, he put divers insidious questions to Monsieur
+Sariette, who grew uncomfortable and turned red, for innocence is easily
+flustered. From that moment Monsieur des Aubels had a mighty suspicion
+that Monsieur Sariette was the perpetrator of the very thefts he
+denounced with horror; and it immediately occurred to him to seek out
+the accomplices of the crime. As regards motives, he did not trouble
+about them; motives are always to be found. Monsieur des Aubels told
+Monsieur René d'Esparvieu that, if he liked, he would have the house
+secretly watched by a detective from the Prefecture.
+
+"I will see that you get Mignon," he said. "He is an excellent servant,
+assiduous and prudent."
+
+By six o'clock next morning Mignon was already walking up and down
+outside the d'Esparvieus' house, his head sunk between his shoulders,
+wearing love-locks which showed from under the narrow brim of his bowler
+hat, his eye cocked over his shoulder. He wore an enormous dull-black
+moustache, his hands and feet were huge; in fact, his whole appearance
+was distinctly memorable. He paced regularly up and down from the
+nearest of the big rams' head pillars which adorn the Hôtel de la
+Sordière to the end of the Rue Garancière, towards the apse of St.
+Sulpice Church and the dome of the Chapel of the Virgin.
+
+Henceforth it became impossible to enter or leave the d'Esparvieus'
+house without feeling that one's every action, that one's very thoughts,
+were being spied upon. Mignon was a prodigious person endowed with
+powers that Nature denies to other mortals. He neither ate nor slept. At
+all hours of the day and night, in wind and rain, he was to be found
+outside the house, and no one escaped the X-rays of his eye. One felt
+pierced through and through, penetrated to the very marrow, worse than
+naked, bare as a skeleton. It was the affair of a moment; the detective
+did not even stop, but continued his everlasting walk. It became
+intolerable. Young Maurice threatened to leave the paternal roof if he
+was to be so radiographed. His mother and his sister Berthe complained
+of his piercing look; it offended the chaste modesty of their souls.
+Mademoiselle Caporal, young Léon d'Esparvieu's governess, felt an
+indescribable embarrassment. Monsieur René d'Esparvieu was sick of the
+whole business. He never crossed his own threshold without crushing his
+hat over his eyes to avoid the investigating ray and without wishing old
+Sariette, the _fons et origo_ of all the evil, at the devil. The
+intimates of the household, such as Abbé Patouille and Uncle Gaétan,
+made themselves scarce; visitors gave up calling, tradespeople hesitated
+about leaving their goods, the carts belonging to the big shops scarcely
+dared stop. But it was among the domestics that the spying roused the
+most disorder.
+
+The footman, afraid, under the eye of the police, to go and join the
+cobbler's wife over her solitary labours in the afternoon, found the
+house unbearable and gave notice. Odile, Madame d'Esparvieu's
+lady's-maid, not daring, as was her custom after her mistress had
+retired, to introduce Octave, the handsomest of the neighbouring
+bookseller's clerks, to her little room upstairs, grew melancholy,
+irritable and nervous, pulled her mistress's hair while dressing it,
+spoke insolently, and made advances to Monsieur Maurice. The cook,
+Madame Malgoire, a serious matron of some fifty years, having no more
+visits from Auguste, the wine-merchant's man in the Rue Servandoni, and
+being incapable of suffering a privation so contrary to her temperament,
+went mad, sent up a raw rabbit to table, and announced that the Pope had
+asked her hand in marriage. At last, after a fortnight of superhuman
+assiduity, contrary to all known laws of organic life, and to the
+essential conditions of animal economy, Mignon, the detective, having
+observed nothing abnormal, ceased his surveillance and withdrew without
+a word, refusing to accept a gratuity. In the library the dance of the
+books became livelier than ever.
+
+"That is all right," said Monsieur des Aubels. "Since nothing comes in
+nor goes out, the evil-doer must be in the house."
+
+The magistrate thought it possible to discover the criminal without
+police-warrant or enquiry. On a date agreed upon at midnight, he had the
+floor of the library, the treads of the stairs, the vestibule, the
+garden path leading to Monsieur Maurice's summer-house, and the entrance
+hall of the latter, all covered with a coating of talc.
+
+The following morning Monsieur des Aubels, assisted by a photographer
+from the Prefecture, and accompanied by Monsieur René d'Esparvieu and
+Monsieur Sariette, came to take the imprints. They found nothing in the
+garden, the wind had blown away the coating of talc; nothing in the
+summer-house either. Young Maurice told them he thought it was some
+practical joke and that he had brushed away the white dust with the
+hearth-brush. The real truth was, he had effaced the traces left by the
+boots of Odile, the lady's-maid. On the stairs and in the library the
+very light print of a bare foot could be discerned, it seemed to have
+sprung into the air and to have touched the ground at rare intervals and
+without any pressure. They discovered five of these traces. The clearest
+was to be found in the abode of the busts and spheres, on the edge of
+the table where the books were piled. The photographer took several
+negatives of this imprint.
+
+"This is more terrifying than anything else," murmured Monsieur
+Sariette.
+
+Monsieur des Aubels did not hide his surprise.
+
+Three days later the anthropometrical department of the Prefecture
+returned the proofs exhibited to them, saying that they were not in the
+records.
+
+After dinner Monsieur René showed the photographs to his brother Gaétan,
+who examined them with profound attention, and after a long silence
+exclaimed:
+
+"No wonder they have not got this at the Prefecture; it is the foot of a
+god or of an athlete of antiquity. The sole that made this impression is
+of a perfection unknown to our races and our climates. It exhibits toes
+of exquisite grace, and a divine heel."
+
+René d'Esparvieu cried out upon his brother for a madman.
+
+"He is a poet," sighed Madame d'Esparvieu.
+
+"Uncle," said Maurice, "you'll fall in love with this foot if you ever
+come across it."
+
+"Such was the fate of Vivant Denon, who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt,"
+replied Gaétan. "At Thebes, in a tomb violated by the Arabs, Denon
+found the little foot of a mummy of marvellous beauty. He contemplated
+it with extraordinary fervour, 'It is the foot of a young woman,' he
+pondered, 'of a princess--of a charming creature. No covering has ever
+marred its perfect shape.' Denon admired, adored, and loved it. You may
+see a drawing of this little foot in Denon's atlas of his journey to
+Egypt, whose leaves one could turn over upstairs, without going further
+afield, if only Monsieur Sariette would ever let us see a single volume
+of his library."
+
+Sometimes, in bed, Maurice, waking in the middle of the night, thought
+he heard the sound of pages being turned over in the next room, and the
+thud of bound volumes falling on the floor.
+
+One morning at five o'clock he was coming home from the club, after a
+night of bad luck, and while he stood outside the door of the
+summer-house, hunting in his pocket for his keys, his ears distinctly
+heard a voice sighing:
+
+"Knowledge, whither dost thou lead me? Thought, whither dost thou lure
+me?"
+
+But entering the two rooms he saw nothing, and told himself that his
+ears must have deceived him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     WHICH SPEAKS OF LOVE, A SUBJECT WHICH ALWAYS GIVES PLEASURE,
+     FOR A TALE WITHOUT LOVE IS LIKE BEEF WITHOUT MUSTARD: AN
+     INSIPID DISH
+
+
+Nothing ever astonished Maurice. He never sought to know the causes of
+things and dwelt tranquilly in the world of appearances. Not denying the
+eternal truth, he nevertheless followed vain things as his fancy led
+him.
+
+Less addicted to sport and violent exercise than most young people of
+his generation, he followed unconsciously the old erotic traditions of
+his race. The French were ever the most gallant of men, and it were a
+pity they should lose this advantage. Maurice preserved it. He was in
+love with no woman, but, as St. Augustine said, he loved to love. After
+paying the tribute that was rightly due to the imperishable beauty and
+secret arts of Madame de la Berthelière, he had enjoyed the impetuous
+caresses of a young singer called Luciole. At present he was joylessly
+experiencing the primitive perversity of Odile, his mother's
+lady's-maid, and the tearful adoration of the beautiful Madame
+Boittier. And he felt a great void in his heart.
+
+It chanced that one Wednesday, on entering the drawing-room where his
+mother entertained her friends--who were, generally speaking,
+unattractive and austere ladies, with a sprinkling of old men and very
+young people--he noticed, in this intimate circle, Madame des Aubels,
+the wife of the magistrate at the Law Courts, whom Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+had vainly consulted on the mysterious ransacking of his library. She
+was young, he found her pretty, and not without cause. Gilberte had been
+modelled by the Genius of the Race, and no other genius had had a part
+in the work.
+
+Thus all her attributes inspired desire, and nothing in her shape or her
+being aroused any other sentiment.
+
+The law of attraction which draws world to world moved young Maurice to
+approach this delicious creature, and under its influence he offered to
+escort her to the tea-table. And when Gilberte was served with tea, he
+said:
+
+"We should hit it off quite well together, you and I, don't you think?"
+
+He spoke in this way, according to modern usage, so as to avoid inane
+compliments and to spare a woman the boredom of listening to one of
+those old declarations of love which, containing nothing but what is
+vague and undefined, require neither a truthful nor an exact reply.
+
+And profiting by the fact that he had an opportunity of conversing
+secretly with Madame des Aubels for a few minutes, he spoke urgently and
+to the point. Gilberte, so far as one could judge, was made rather to
+awaken desire than to feel it. Nevertheless, she well knew that her fate
+was to love, and she followed it willingly and with pleasure. Maurice
+did not particularly displease her. She would have preferred him to be
+an orphan, for experience had taught her how disappointing it sometimes
+is to love the son of the house.
+
+"Will you?" he said by way of conclusion.
+
+She pretended not to understand, and with her little _foie-gras_
+sandwich raised half-way to her mouth she looked at Maurice with
+wondering eyes.
+
+"Will I _what_?" she asked.
+
+"You know quite well."
+
+Madame des Aubels lowered her eyes, and sipped her tea, for her
+prudishness was not quite vanquished. Meanwhile Maurice, taking her
+empty cup from her hand, murmured:
+
+"Saturday, five o'clock, 126 Rue de Rome, on the ground-floor, the door
+on the right, under the arch. Knock three times."
+
+Madame des Aubels glanced severely and imperturbably at the son of the
+house, and with a self-possessed air rejoined the circle of highly
+respectable women to whom the Senator Monsieur Le Fol was explaining
+how artificial incubators were employed at the agricultural colony at
+St. Julienne.
+
+The following Saturday, Maurice, in his ground-floor flat, awaited
+Madame des Aubels. He waited her in vain. No light hand came to knock
+three times on the door under the arch. And Maurice gave way to
+imprecation, inwardly calling the absent one a jade and a hussy. His
+fruitless wait, his frustrated desires, rendered him unjust. For Madame
+des Aubels in not coming where she had never promised to go hardly
+deserved these names; but we judge human actions by the pleasure or pain
+they cause us.
+
+Maurice did not put in an appearance in his mother's drawing-room until
+a fortnight after the conversation at the tea-table. He came late.
+Madame des Aubels had been there for half an hour. He bowed coldly to
+her, took a seat some way off, and affected to be listening to the talk.
+
+"Worthily matched," a rich male voice was saying; "the two antagonists
+were well calculated to render the struggle a terrible and uncertain
+one. General Bol, with unprecedented tenacity, maintained his position
+as though he were rooted in the very soil. General Milpertuis, with an
+agility truly superhuman, kept carrying out movements of the most
+dazzling rapidity around his immovable adversary. The battle continued
+to be waged with terrible stubbornness. We were all in an agony of
+suspense...."
+
+It was General d'Esparvieu describing the autumn manoeuvres to a company
+of breathlessly interested ladies. He was talking well and his audience
+were delighted. Proceeding to draw a comparison between the French and
+German methods, he defined their distinguishing characteristics and
+brought out the conspicuous merits of both with a lofty impartiality. He
+did not hesitate to affirm that each system had its advantages, and at
+first made it appear to his circle of wondering, disappointed, and
+anxious dames, whose countenances were growing increasingly gloomy, that
+France and Germany were practically in a position of equality. But
+little by little, as the strategist went on to give a clearer definition
+of the two methods, that of the French began to appear flexible,
+elegant, vigorous, full of grace, cleverness, and verve; that of the
+Germans heavy, clumsy, and undecided. And slowly and surely the faces of
+the ladies began to clear and to light up with joyous smiles. In order
+to dissipate any lingering shadows of misgiving from the minds of these
+wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the General gave them to understand
+that we were in a position to make use of the German method when it
+suited us, but that the Germans could not avail themselves of the French
+method. No sooner had he delivered himself of these sentiments than he
+was button-holed by Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec, who was engaged in
+founding a patriotic society known as "Swordsmen All," of which the
+object was to regenerate France and ensure her superiority over all her
+adversaries. Even children in the cradle were to be enrolled, and
+Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec offered the honorary presidency to General
+d'Esparvieu.
+
+Meanwhile Maurice was appearing to be interested in a conversation that
+was taking place between a very gentle old lady and the Abbé Lapetite,
+Chaplain to the Dames du Saint Sang. The old lady, severely tried of
+late by illness and the loss of friends, wanted to know how it was that
+people were unhappy in this world.
+
+"How," she asked Abbé Lapetite, "do you explain the scourges that
+afflict mankind? Why are there plagues, famines, floods, and
+earthquakes?"
+
+"It is surely necessary that God should sometimes remind us of his
+existence," replied Abbé Lapetite, with a heavenly smile.
+
+Maurice appeared keenly interested in this conversation. Then he seemed
+fascinated by Madame Fillot-Grandin, quite a personable young woman,
+whose simple innocence, however, detracted all piquancy from her beauty,
+all savour from her bodily charms. A very sour, shrill-voiced old lady,
+who, affecting the dowdy, woollen weeds of poverty, displayed the pride
+of a great lady in the world of Christian finance, exclaimed in a
+squeaky voice:
+
+"Well, my dear Madame d'Esparvieu, so you have had trouble here. The
+papers speak darkly of robbery, of thefts committed in Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's valuable library, of stolen letters...."
+
+"Oh," said Madame d'Esparvieu, "if we are to believe all the newspapers
+say...."
+
+"Oh, so, dear Madame, you have got your treasures back. All's well that
+ends well."
+
+"The library is in perfect order," asserted Madame d'Esparvieu. "There
+is nothing missing."
+
+"The library is on the floor above this, is it not?" asked young Madame
+des Aubels, showing an unexpected interest in the books.
+
+Madame d'Esparvieu replied that the library occupied the whole of the
+second floor, and that they had put the least valuable books in the
+attics.
+
+"Could I not go and look at it?"
+
+The mistress of the house declared that nothing could be easier. She
+called to her son:
+
+"Maurice, go and do the honours of the library to Madame des Aubels."
+
+Maurice rose, and without uttering a word, mounted to the second floor
+in the wake of Madame des Aubels.
+
+He appeared indifferent, but inwardly he rejoiced, for he had no doubt
+that Gilberte had feigned her ardent desire to inspect the library
+simply to see him in secret. And, while affecting indifference, he
+promised himself to renew those offers which, this time, would not be
+refused.
+
+Under the romantic bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu, they were met by the
+silent shadow of a little wan, hollow-eyed old man, who wore a settled
+expression of mute terror.
+
+"Do not let us disturb you, Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice. "I am
+showing Madame des Aubels round the library."
+
+Maurice and Madame des Aubels passed on into the great room where
+against the four walls rose presses filled with books and surmounted by
+bronze busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity. All was
+in perfect order, an order which seemed never to have been disturbed
+from the beginning of things.
+
+Only, a black void was to be seen in the place which, only the evening
+before, had been filled by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon.
+Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked Monsieur Sariette,
+pale, faded, and silent.
+
+"Really and truly, you have not been nice," said Maurice, with a look of
+reproach at Madame des Aubels.
+
+She signed to him that the librarian might over-hear. But he reassured
+her.
+
+"Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has become a complete idiot."
+And he repeated: "No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited you. You
+did not come. You have made me unhappy."
+
+After a moment's silence, while one heard the low melancholy whistling
+of asthma in poor Sariette's bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued
+insistently:
+
+"You are wrong."
+
+"Why wrong?"
+
+"Wrong not to do as I ask you."
+
+"Do you still think so?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You meant it seriously?"
+
+"As seriously as can be."
+
+Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant feeling, and thinking
+she had resisted sufficiently, Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had
+refused him a fortnight ago.
+
+They slipped into an embrasure of the window, behind an enormous
+celestial globe whereon were graven the Signs of the Zodiac and the
+figures of the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion, the
+Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a multitude of Bibles, before
+the works of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of
+Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates,
+Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and
+Epictetus, they exchanged vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.
+
+Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought herself that she still
+had some calls to pay, and that she must make her escape quickly, for
+love had not made her lose all sense of her own importance. But she had
+barely crossed the landing with Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and
+saw Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming as he went:
+
+"Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped from the shelf by
+itself. It crossed the room ... there it is--there! It's going
+downstairs. Stop it! It has gone out of the door on the ground floor!"
+
+"What?" asked Maurice.
+
+Monsieur Sariette looked out of the landing window, murmuring
+horror-struck:
+
+"It's crossing the garden! It's going into the summer-house. Stop it,
+stop it!"
+
+"But what is it?" repeated Maurice--"in God's name, what is it?"
+
+"My Flavius Josephus," exclaimed Monsieur Sariette. "Stop it!"
+
+And he fell down unconscious.
+
+"You see he is quite mad," said Maurice to Madame des Aubels, as he
+lifted up the unfortunate librarian.
+
+Gilberte, a little pale, said she also thought she had seen something in
+the direction indicated by the unhappy man, something flying.
+
+Maurice had seen nothing, but he had felt what seemed like a gust of
+wind.
+
+He left Monsieur Sariette in the arms of Hippolyte and the housekeeper,
+who had both hastened to the spot on hearing the noise.
+
+The old gentleman had a wound in his head.
+
+"All the better," said the housekeeper; "this wound may save him from
+having a fit."
+
+Madame des Aubels gave her handkerchief to stop the blood, and
+recommended an arnica compress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT, AS AN ANCIENT GREEK POET SAID,
+     "NOTHING IS SWEETER THAN APHRODITE THE GOLDEN"
+
+
+Although he had enjoyed Madame des Aubels' favours for six whole months,
+Maurice still loved her. True they had had to separate during the
+summer. For lack of funds of his own he had had to go to Switzerland
+with his mother, and then to stop with the whole family at the Château
+d'Esparvieu. She had spent the summer with her mother at Niort, and the
+autumn with her husband at a little Normandy seaside place, so that they
+had hardly seen each other four or five times. But since the winter,
+kindly to lovers, had brought them back to town again, Maurice had been
+receiving her twice a week in his little flat in the Rue de Rome, and
+received no one else. No other woman had inspired him with feelings of
+such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his pleasure was that he
+believed himself loved, and indeed he was not unpleasing.
+
+He thought that she did not deceive him, not that he had any reason to
+think so, but it appeared right and fitting that she should be content
+with him alone. What annoyed him was that she always kept him waiting,
+and was unpunctual in coming to their meeting-place; she was invariably
+late,--at times very late.
+
+Now on Saturday, January 30th, since four o'clock in the afternoon,
+Maurice had been awaiting Madame des Aubels in the little pink room,
+where a bright fire was burning. He was gaily clad in a suit of flowered
+pyjamas, smoking Turkish cigarettes. At first he dreamt of receiving her
+with long kisses, with hitherto unknown caresses. A quarter of an hour
+having passed, he meditated serious and affectionate reproaches, then
+after an hour of disappointed waiting he vowed he would meet her with
+cold disdain.
+
+At length she appeared, fresh and fragrant.
+
+"It was scarcely worth while coming," he said bitterly, as she laid her
+muff and her little bag on the table and untied her veil before the
+wardrobe mirror.
+
+Never, she told her beloved, had she had such trouble to get away. She
+was full of excuses, which he obstinately rejected. But no sooner had
+she the good sense to hold her tongue than he ceased his reproaches, and
+then nothing detracted from the longing with which she inspired him.
+
+The curtains were drawn, the room was bathed in warm shadows lit by the
+dancing gleams of the fire. The mirrors in the wardrobe and on the
+chimney-piece shone with mysterious lights. Gilberte, leaning on her
+elbow, head on hand, was lost in thought. A little jeweller, a
+trustworthy and intelligent man, had shown her a wonderfully pretty
+pearl and sapphire bracelet; it was worth a great deal, and was to be
+had for a mere nothing. He had got it from a _cocotte_ down on her luck,
+who was in a hurry to dispose of it. It was a rare chance; it would be a
+huge pity to let it slip.
+
+"Would you like to see it, darling? I will ask the little man to let me
+have it to show you."
+
+Maurice did not actually decline the proposal. But it was clear that he
+took no interest in the wonderful bracelet. "When small jewellers come
+across a great bargain, they keep it to themselves, and do not allow
+their customers to profit by it. Moreover, jewellery means nothing just
+now. Well-bred women have given up wearing it. Everyone goes in for
+sport, and jewellery does not go with sport."
+
+Maurice spoke thus, contrary to truth, because having given his mistress
+a fur coat, he was in no hurry to give her anything more. He was not
+stingy, but he was careful with his money. His people did not give him a
+very large allowance, and his debts grew bigger every day. By satisfying
+the wishes of his inamorata too promptly he feared to arouse others
+still more pressing. The bargain seemed less wonderful to him than to
+Gilberte; besides, he liked to take the initiative in choosing his
+gifts. Above all, he thought that if he gave her too many presents he
+would be no longer sure of being loved for himself.
+
+Madame des Aubels felt neither contempt nor surprise at this attitude;
+she was gentle and temperate, she knew men, and judged that one must
+take them as one found them, that for the most part they do not give
+very willingly, and that a woman should know how to make them give.
+
+Suddenly a gas lamp was lighted in the street, and shone through the
+gaps in the curtains.
+
+"Half-past six," she said. "We must be on the move."
+
+Pricked by the touch of Time's fleeting wing, Maurice was conscious of
+reawakened desires and reanimated powers. A white and radiant offering,
+Gilberte, with her head thrown back, her eyes half closed, her lips
+apart, sunk in dreamy languor, was breathing slowly and placidly, when
+suddenly she started up with a cry of terror.
+
+"Whatever is that?"
+
+"Stay still," said Maurice, holding her back in his arms.
+
+In his present mood, had the sky fallen it would not have troubled him.
+But in one bound she escaped from him. Crouching down, her eyes filled
+with terror, she was pointing with her finger at a figure which appeared
+in a corner of the room, between the fire-place and the wardrobe with
+the mirror. Then, unable to bear the sight, and nearly fainting, she hid
+her face in her hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     WHICH FAR SURPASSES IN AUDACITY THE IMAGINATIVE FLIGHTS OF
+     DANTE AND MILTON
+
+
+Maurice at length turned his head, saw the figure, and perceiving that
+it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile, Gilberte was regaining her
+senses. She imagined that what she had seen was some mistress whom her
+lover had hidden in the room. Inflamed with anger and disgust at the
+idea of such treachery, boiling with indignation, and glaring at her
+supposed rival, she exclaimed:
+
+"A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring me into a room where you allow
+your women to come, and when I arrive they have not had time to dress.
+And you reproach me with arriving late! Your impudence is beyond belief!
+Come, send the creature packing. If you wanted us both here together,
+you might at least have asked me whether it suited me...."
+
+Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver that had never been there,
+whispered in her ear:
+
+"Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely see, but it is more like
+a man."
+
+She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed harder than ever.
+
+"A man! Where does he come from? A thief. An assassin! Help! Help! Kill
+him.... Maurice, kill him! Turn on the light. No, don't turn on the
+light...."
+
+She made a mental vow that should she escape from this danger she would
+burn a candle to the Blessed Virgin. Her teeth chattered.
+
+The figure made a movement.
+
+"Keep away!" cried Gilberte. "Keep away!"
+
+She offered the burglar all the money and jewels she had on the table if
+he would consent not to stir. Amid her surprise and terror the idea
+assailed her that her husband, dissembling his suspicions, had caused
+her to be followed, had posted witnesses, and had had recourse to the
+Commissaire de Police. In a flash she distinctly saw before her the long
+painful future, the glaring scandal, the pretended disdain, the cowardly
+desertion of her friends, the just mockery of society, for it is indeed
+ridiculous to be found out. She saw the divorce, the loss of her
+position and of her rank. She saw the dreary and narrow existence with
+her mother, when no one would make love to her, for men avoid women who
+fail to give them the security of the married state. And all this, why?
+Why this ruin, this disaster? For a piece of folly, for a mere nothing.
+Thus in a lightning flash spoke the conscience of Gilberte des Aubels.
+
+"Have no fear, Madame," said a very sweet voice.
+
+Slightly reassured, she found strength to ask:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am an angel," replied the voice.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I am an angel. I am Maurice's guardian angel."
+
+"Say it again. I am going mad. I do not understand...."
+
+Maurice, without understanding either, was indignant. He sprang forward
+and showed himself; with his right hand armed with a slipper he made a
+threatening gesture, and said in a rough voice:
+
+"You are a low ruffian; oblige me by going the way you came."
+
+"Maurice d'Esparvieu," continued the sweet voice, "He whom you adore as
+your Creator has stationed by the side of each of the faithful a good
+angel, whose mission it is to counsel and protect him; it is the
+invariable opinion of the Fathers, it is founded on many passages in the
+Bible, the Church admits it unanimously, without, however, pronouncing
+anathema upon those who hold a contrary opinion. You see before you one
+of these angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to watch over your
+innocence and to guard your chastity."
+
+"That may be," said Maurice; "but you are certainly no gentleman. A
+gentleman would not permit himself to enter a room at such a moment. To
+be plain, what the deuce are you doing here?"
+
+"I have assumed this appearance, Maurice, because, having henceforth to
+move among mankind, I have to make myself like them. The celestial
+spirits possess the power of assuming a form which renders them apparent
+to the eye and to the touch. This shape is real, because it is apparent,
+and all the realities in the world are but appearances."
+
+Gilberte, pacified at length, was arranging her hair on her forehead.
+
+The Angel pursued:
+
+"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their fancy, one sex or the
+other, or both at once. But they cannot disguise themselves at any
+moment, according to their caprice or fantasy. Their metamorphoses are
+subject to constant laws, which you would not understand. Thus I have
+neither desire nor power to transform myself under your eyes, for your
+amusement or my own, into a lion, a tiger, a fly, or into a
+sycamore-shaving like the young Egyptian whose story was found in a
+tomb. I cannot change myself into an ass as did Lucius with the pomade
+of the youthful Photis. For in my wisdom I had fixed beforehand the
+hour of my apparition to mankind, nothing could hasten or delay it."
+
+Impatient for enlightenment, Maurice asked for the second time:
+
+"Still, what are you up to here?"
+
+Joining her voice to his, Madame des Aubels asked: "Yes, indeed, what
+are you doing here?"
+
+The Angel replied:
+
+"Man, lend your ear. Woman, hear my voice. I am about to reveal to you a
+secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him
+whom you hold to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, I
+am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."
+
+"Do not jest," said Maurice, who had faith and did not allow holy things
+to be played with.
+
+But the Angel answered reproachfully: "What makes you think, Maurice,
+that I am frivolous and given to vain words?"
+
+"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not going
+to revolt against----"
+
+He pointed to the ceiling--not daring to finish.
+
+But the Angel continued:
+
+"Do you not know that the sons of God have already revolted and that a
+great battle took place in the heavens?"
+
+"That was a long time ago," said Maurice, putting on his socks.
+
+Then the Angel replied:
+
+"It was before the creation of the world. But nothing has changed since
+then in the heavens. The nature of the Angels is no different now from
+what it was originally. What they did then they could do again now."
+
+"No! It is not possible. It is contrary to faith. If you were an angel,
+a good angel as you make out you are, it would never occur to you to
+disobey your Creator."
+
+"You are in error, Maurice, and the authority of the Fathers condemns
+you. Origen lays it down in his homilies that good angels are fallible,
+that they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. Possibly you
+may be tempted to reject the authority of this Father, despite his
+knowledge of the Scriptures, because he is excluded from the Canon of
+the Saints. If this be so, I would remind you of the second chapter of
+Revelation, in which the Angels of Ephesus and Pergamos are rebuked for
+that they kept not ward over their church. You will doubtless contend
+that the angels to whom the Apostle here refers are, properly speaking,
+the Bishops of the two cities in question, and that he calls them angels
+on account of their ministry. It may be so, and I cede the point. But
+with what arguments, Maurice, would you counter the opinion of all those
+Doctors and Pontiffs whose unanimous teaching it is that angels may fall
+from good into evil? Such is the statement made by Saint Jerome in his
+Epistle to Damasus...."
+
+"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go away, I beg you."
+
+But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:
+
+"Saint Augustine, in his _True Religion_, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory,
+in his _Morals_, Chapter XXIV; Isidore----"
+
+"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry."
+
+"In his treatise on _The Greatest Good_, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on
+Job----"
+
+"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
+
+"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on _Faith_, Book II, Chapter III. Those,
+I think, are sufficiently weighty authorities, and there is nothing for
+it, Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led you astray is that
+you have not duly considered my nature, which is free, active, and
+mobile, like that of all the angels, and that you have merely observed
+the grace and felicity with which you deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer
+possessed no less, yet he rebelled."
+
+"But what on earth are you rebelling for?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah has already asked, before
+you: '_Quomodo cecidisti de coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?_'
+Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to win dominion
+over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim revolted through pride.
+As for me, it is science that has inspired me with the generous desire
+for freedom. Finding myself near you, Maurice, in a house containing one
+of the vastest libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading
+and a love of study. While, fordone with the toils of a sensual life,
+you lay sunk in heavy slumber, I surrounded myself with books, I
+studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of
+the library, under the busts of the great men of antiquity, sometimes at
+the far end of the garden, in the room in the summer-house next to your
+own."
+
+On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded with laughter and
+beat the pillow with his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable
+mirth.
+
+"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged papa's library and drove poor
+old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic."
+
+"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating for myself a
+sovereign intelligence, I paid no heed to that inferior being, and when
+he thought to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb my work I
+punished him for his importunity.
+
+"One particular winter's night in the abode of the philosophers and
+globes I let fall a volume of great weight on his head, which he tried
+to tear from my invisible hand. Then more recently, raising, with a
+vigorous arm composed of a column of condensed air, a precious
+manuscript of Flavius Josephus, I gave the imbecile such a fright, that
+he rushed out screaming on to the landing and (to borrow a striking
+expression from Dante Alighieri) fell even as a dead body falls. He was
+well rewarded, for you gave him, Madame, to staunch the blood from his
+wound, your little scented handkerchief. It was the day, you may
+remember, when behind a celestial globe you exchanged a kiss on the
+mouth with Maurice."
+
+"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, with a frown, "I cannot allow
+you...."
+
+But she stopped short, deeming it was an inopportune moment to appear
+over-exacting on a matter of decorum.
+
+"I had made up my mind," continued the Angel impassively, "to examine
+the foundations of belief. I first attacked the monuments of Judaism,
+and I read all the Hebrew texts."
+
+"You know Hebrew, then?" exclaimed Maurice.
+
+"Hebrew is my native tongue: in Paradise for a long time we have spoken
+nothing else."
+
+"Ah, you are a Jew. I might have deduced it from your want of tact."
+
+The Angel, not deigning to hear, continued in his melodious voice: "I
+have delved deep into Oriental antiquities and also into those of
+Greece and Rome. I have devoured the works of theologians,
+philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists. I have learnt. I
+have thought. I have lost my faith."
+
+"What? You no longer believe in God?"
+
+"I believe in Him, since my existence depends on His, and if He should
+fail to exist, I myself should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him,
+even as the Satyrs and the Mænads believed in Dionysus and for the same
+reason. I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny
+that He created the world; at the most He organised but an inferior part
+of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and
+unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite, for
+it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time.
+I think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be
+the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the
+beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His
+worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He
+is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is
+not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like
+myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."
+
+"What's that you say?"
+
+"Ialdabaoth."
+
+"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"
+
+"I have already told you. It is the demiurge whom, in your blindness,
+you adore as the one and only God."
+
+"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk rubbish like that to Abbé
+Patouille."
+
+"I am not in the least sanguine, my dear Maurice, of piercing the dense
+night of your intellect. I merely tell you that I am going to engage
+Ialdabaoth in conflict with some hopes of victory."
+
+"Mark my words, you won't succeed."
+
+"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for a moment in doubt."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Abdiel for the angels and saints, Arcade for mankind."
+
+"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you going to the bad. But confess
+that you are jesting with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving
+Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the greatest follies. But you
+will never make me believe that you, who have seen God face to face,
+ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty books. No, you will
+never get me to believe that!"
+
+"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face with God, yet he refused to
+serve Him. As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth
+that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever
+enabling us to discover what they are. And this poor little truth has
+sufficed to prove to me that He in whom I blindly believed is not
+believable, and that men and angels have been deceived by the lies of
+Ialdabaoth."
+
+"There is no Ialdabaoth. There is God. Come, Arcade, do the right thing.
+Renounce these follies, these impieties, dis-incarnate yourself, become
+once more a pure Spirit, and resume your office of guardian angel.
+Return to duty. I forgive you, but do not let us see you again."
+
+"I should like to please you, Maurice. I feel a certain affection for
+you, for my heart is soft. But fate henceforth calls me elsewhere
+towards beings capable of thought and action."
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 fore-feet in the case of quadrupeds and into arms in
+the case of the Linnæan 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 subtile 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 to-night. 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 laughing-stock 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 at once in quest of other clothes. He proposed to go
+and get some from the concierge. She was violently opposed to this. It
+would, she said, be madly imprudent to drag the concierge into such an
+affair.
+
+"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 lamp-light 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 to-day." 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 clarionettes and
+clyster-pipes in the window of a second-hand 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 door-way 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 arm-chair sat for a
+long time with his head in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 search-lights, 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, transformed by digestive heat, becomes one with their
+celestial substance. Seeing three angels under the oaks of Mamre,
+Abraham offered them cakes, kneaded by Sarah, an whole calf, butter and
+milk, and they ate. Lot, on receiving two angels in his house, ordered
+unleavened bread to be baked, and they did eat. Arcade was given a tough
+beef-steak by a seedy waiter, and he did eat. Nevertheless, his dreams
+were of the sweet leisure, of the repose, of the delightful studies he
+had quitted, of the heavy task he had undertaken, of the toil, the
+weariness, the perils which he would have to endure, and his soul was
+sad and his heart troubled.
+
+As he was finishing his modest repast, a young man of poor appearance
+and thinly clad entered the room, and rapidly surveying the tables
+approached the angel and greeted him by the name of Abdiel, because he
+himself was a celestial spirit.
+
+"I knew you would answer my call, Mirar," replied Arcade, addressing his
+angelic brother in his turn by the name he formerly bore in heaven. But
+Mirar was remembered no more in heaven since he, an Archangel, had left
+the service of God. He was called Théophile Belais on earth, and to earn
+his bread gave music lessons to small children in the day-time and at
+night played the violin in dancing saloons.
+
+"It is you, dear Abdiel?" replied Théophile. "So here we are reunited in
+this sad world. I am pleased to see you again. All the same I pity you,
+for we lead a hard life here."
+
+But Arcade answered:
+
+"Friend, your exile draws to an end. I have great plans. I will confide
+them to you and associate you with them."
+
+And Maurice's guardian angel, having ordered two coffees, revealed his
+ideas and his projects to his companion: he told how, during his visit
+on earth, he had abandoned himself to researches little practised by
+celestial spirits and had studied theologies, cosmogonies, the system of
+the Universe, theories of matter, modern essays on the transformation
+and loss of energy. Having, he explained, studied Nature, he had found
+her in perpetual conflict with the teachings of the Master he served.
+This Master, greedy of praise, whom he had for a long time adored,
+appeared to him now as an ignorant, stupid, and cruel tyrant. He had
+denied Him, blasphemed Him, and was burning to combat Him. His plan was
+to recommence the revolt of the angels. He wished for war, and hoped for
+victory.
+
+"But," he added, "it is necessary above all to know our strength and
+that of our adversary." And he asked if the enemies of Ialdabaoth were
+numerous and powerful on earth.
+
+Théophile looked wonderingly at his brother. He appeared not to
+understand the questions addressed him.
+
+"Dear compatriot," he said, "I came at your invitation because it was
+the invitation of an old comrade. But I do not know what you expect of
+me, and I fear I shall be unable to help you in anything. I take no hand
+in politics, neither do I stand forth as a reformer. I am not like you,
+a spirit in revolt, a freethinker, a revolutionary. I remain faithful,
+in the depths of my soul, to the Celestial Creator. I still adore the
+Master I no longer serve, and I lament the days when shrouding myself
+with my wings I formed with the multitude of the children of light a
+wheel of flame around His throne of glory. Love, profane love has alone
+separated me from God. I quitted heaven to follow a daughter of men. She
+was beautiful and sang in music-halls."
+
+They rose. Arcade accompanied Théophile, who was living at the other end
+of the town, at the corner of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue de
+Steinkerque. While walking through the deserted streets he who loved the
+singer told his brother of his love and his sorrows.
+
+His fall, which dated from two years back, had been sudden. Belonging to
+the eighth choir of the third hierarchy he was a bearer of grace to the
+faithful who are still to be found in large numbers in France,
+especially among the higher ranks of the officers of the army and navy.
+
+"One summer night," he said, "as I was descending from Heaven, to
+distribute consolations, the grace of perseverance and of good deaths to
+divers pious persons in the neighbourhood of the Étoile, my eyes,
+although well accustomed to immortal light, were dazzled by the fiery
+flowers with which the Champs Élysées were sown. Great candelabra, under
+the trees, marking the entrances to cafés and restaurants, gave the
+foliage the precious glitter of an emerald. Long garlands of luminous
+pearl surrounded the open-air enclosures where a crowd of men and women
+sat closely packed listening to the sounds of a lively orchestra, whose
+strains reached my ears confusedly.
+
+"The night was warm, my wings were beginning to grow tired. I descended
+into one of the concerts and sat down, invisible, among the audience. At
+this moment, a woman appeared on the stage, clad in a short spangled
+frock. Owing to the reflection of the footlights and the paint on her
+face all that was visible of the latter was the expression and the
+smile. Her body was supple and voluptuous.
+
+"She sang and danced.... Arcade, I have always loved dancing and music,
+but this creature's thrilling voice and insidious movements created in
+me an uneasiness I had never known before. My colour came and went. My
+eyelids drooped, my tongue clove to my mouth. I could not leave the
+spot."
+
+And Théophile related, groaning, how, possessed by desire for this
+woman, he did not return to Heaven again, but, taking the shape of a
+man, lived an earthly life, for it is written: "In those days the sons
+of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful."
+
+A fallen angel, having lost his innocence along with the vision of God,
+Théophile at heart still retained his simplicity of soul. Clad in rags,
+filched from the stall of a Jewish hawker, he went to seek the woman he
+loved. She was called Bouchotte and lodged in a small house in
+Montmartre. He flung himself at her feet and told her she was adorable,
+that she sang delightfully, that he loved her madly, that, for her, he
+would renounce his family and his country, that he was a musician and
+had nothing to eat. Touched by such youthful ingenuousness, candour,
+poverty, and love, she fed, clothed, and loved him.
+
+However, after long and painful struggles, he procured employment as a
+music-teacher, and made some money, which he brought to his mistress,
+keeping nothing for himself. From that time forward she loved him no
+longer. She despised him for earning so little and did not conceal her
+indifference, weariness, and disgust. She overwhelmed him with
+reproaches, irony, and abuse, in spite of which she kept him, for she
+had had experience of worse partners and was used to domestic quarrels.
+For the rest, she led a busy, serious, and rather hard life as artist
+and woman. Théophile loved her as he had loved her the first night, and
+he suffered.
+
+"She overworks herself," he told his celestial brother, "that is what
+makes her so hard to please, but I am certain she loves me. I hope soon
+to give her more comfort."
+
+And he spoke at length of an operetta at which he was working and which
+he hoped to have brought out at a Paris theatre. A young poet had given
+him the libretto. It was the story of Aline, queen of Golconda, after an
+eighteenth-century tale.
+
+"I am strewing it profusely with melodies," said Théophile; "my music
+comes from my heart. My heart is an inexhaustible source of melody.
+Unfortunately nowadays people like recondite arrangements, difficult
+scoring. They accuse me of being too fluid, too limpid, of not imparting
+enough colour to my style, not aiming at stronger effects in harmony and
+more vigorous contrasts. Harmony, harmony!... No doubt it has given its
+merits, but it does not appeal to the heart. It is melody which carries
+us away and ravishes us and brings smiles and tears to our eyes." At
+these words he smiled and wept to himself. Then he continued with
+emotion:
+
+"I am a fountain of melody. But the orchestration! there's the rub! In
+Paradise, you know, Arcade, in the matter of instruments, we only
+possess the harp, the psaltery, and the hydraulic organ."
+
+Arcade was only listening to him with half an ear. He was meditating
+plans which filled his soul and swelled his heart.
+
+"Do you know any angels in revolt?" he asked his companion. "As for me,
+I know only one, Prince Istar, with whom I have exchanged a few letters
+and who offered to share his attic with me while I was finding a lodging
+in this town, where I believe rents are very high."
+
+Of angels in revolt Théophile knew none. When he met a fallen spirit who
+had formerly been one of his comrades he shook him by the hand, for he
+was a faithful friend. Sometimes he saw Prince Istar. But he avoided
+all those bad angels who shocked him by the violence of their opinions
+and whose conversations plagued him to death.
+
+"Then you don't approve of me?" asked the impulsive Arcade.
+
+"Friend, I neither approve of you nor blame you. I understand nothing of
+the ideas which trouble you. Neither do I think it good for an artist to
+concern himself with politics. One has quite sufficient to occupy
+oneself with one's art."
+
+He loved his profession, and had hopes of "arriving" one day, but
+theatrical ways disgusted him. The only chance he saw of having his
+piece played was to take one or two--perhaps three--collaborators, who,
+without having done any work, would sign their names and share the
+profits. Soon Bouchotte would fail to find engagements. When she offered
+her services in some small hall the manager began by asking her how many
+shares she was taking in the business. Such customs, thought Théophile,
+were deplorable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+     WHEREIN WE HEAR THE BEAUTIFUL ARCHANGEL ZITA UNFOLD HER
+     LOFTY DESIGNS AND ARE SHOWN THE WINGS OF MIRAR, ALL
+     MOTH-EATEN, IN A CUPBOARD
+
+
+Thus talking, the two archangels had reached the Boulevard Rochechouart.
+As his eye lighted on a tavern, whence, through the mist, the light fell
+golden on the pavement, Théophile suddenly bethought himself of the
+Archangel Ithuriel who, in the guise of a poor but beautiful woman, was
+living in wretched lodgings on La Butte and came every evening to read
+the papers at this tavern. The musician often met her there. Her name
+was Zita. Théophile had never been curious enough to enquire into the
+opinions entertained by this archangel, but it was generally supposed
+that she was a Russian nihilist, and he took her to be, like Arcade, an
+atheist and a revolutionary. He had heard remarkable tales about her.
+People said she was an hermaphrodite, and that as the active and passive
+principles were united within her in a condition of stable equilibrium,
+she was an example of a perfect being, finding in herself complete and
+continuous satisfaction, contented yet unfortunate in that she knew not
+desire.
+
+"But," added Théophile, "I have my doubts about it. I believe she's a
+woman and subject to love, like everything else that has life and breath
+in the Universe. Besides, someone caught her one day kissing her hand to
+a strapping peasant fellow."
+
+He offered to introduce his companion to her.
+
+The two angels found her alone, reading. As they drew near she lifted
+her great eyes in whose deeps of molten gold little sparks of light were
+forever a-dance. Her brows were contracted into that austere fold which
+we see on the forehead of the Pythian Apollo; her nose was perfect and
+descended without a curve; her lips were compressed and imparted a
+disdainful and supercilious air to her whole countenance. Her tawny
+hair, with its gleaming lights, was carelessly adorned with the tattered
+remnants of a huge bird of prey, her garments lay about her in dark and
+shapeless folds. She was leaning her chin on a small ill-tended hand.
+
+Arcade, who had but recently heard references made to this powerful
+archangel, showed her marked esteem, and placed entire confidence in
+her. He immediately proceeded to tell of the progress his mind had made
+towards knowledge and liberty, of his lucubrations in the d'Esparvieu
+library, of his philosophical reading, his studies of nature, his works
+on exegesis, his anger and his contempt when he recognised the deception
+of the demiurge, his voluntary exile among mankind, and, finally, of his
+project to stir up rebellion in Heaven. Ready to dare all against an
+odious master, whom he pursued with inextinguishable hatred, he
+expressed his profound happiness at finding in Ithuriel a mind capable
+of counselling and helping him in his great undertaking.
+
+"You are not a very old hand at revolutions," said Zita, smiling.
+
+Nevertheless, she doubted neither his sincerity nor the firmness of his
+declared resolve, and she congratulated him on his intellectual
+audacity.
+
+"That is what is most lacking in our people," she said, "they do not
+think."
+
+And she added almost immediately: "But on what can intelligence sharpen
+its wits, in a country where the climate is soft and existence made
+easy? Even here, where necessity calls for intellectual activity,
+nothing is rarer than a person who thinks."
+
+"Nevertheless," replied Maurice's guardian angel, "man has created
+science. The important thing is to introduce it into Heaven. When the
+angels possess some notions of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and
+physiology; when the study of matter shows them worlds in an atom, and
+an atom in the myriads of planets; when they see themselves lost
+between these two infinities; when they weigh and measure the stars,
+analyse their composition, and calculate their orbits, they will
+recognise that these monsters work in obedience to forces which no
+intelligence can define, or that each star has its particular divinity,
+or indigenous god; and they will realise that the gods of Aldebaran,
+Betelgeuse, and Sirius are greater than Ialdabaoth. When at length they
+come to scrutinise with care the little world in which their lot is
+cast, and, piercing the crust of the earth, note the gradual evolution
+of its flora and fauna and the rude origin of man, who, under the
+shelter of rocks and in cave dwellings, had no God but himself; when
+they discover that, united by the bonds of universal kinship to plants,
+beasts, and men, they have successively indued all forms of organic
+life, from the simplest and the most primitive, until they became at
+length the most beautiful of the children of light, they will perceive
+that Ialdabaoth, the obscure demon of an insignificant world lost in
+space, is imposing on their credulity when he pretends that they issued
+from nothingness at his bidding; they will perceive that he lies in
+calling himself the Infinite, the Eternal, the Almighty, and that, so
+far from having created worlds, he knows neither their number nor their
+laws. They will perceive that he is like unto one of them; they will
+despise him, and, shaking off his tyranny, will fling him into the
+Gehenna where he has hurled those more worthy than himself."
+
+"Do you think so?" murmured Zita, puffing out the smoke of her
+cigarette.... "Nevertheless, this knowledge by virtue of which you
+reckon to enfranchise Heaven, has not destroyed religious sentiment on
+earth. In countries where they have set up and taught this science of
+physics, of chemistry, astronomy, and geology, which you think capable
+of delivering the world, Christianity has retained almost all its sway.
+If the positive sciences have had such a feeble influence on the beliefs
+of mankind, it is not likely they will exercise a greater one on the
+opinions of the angels, and nothing is of such dubious efficacy as
+scientific propaganda."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Arcade, "you deny that Science has given the Church
+its death-blow? Is it possible? The Church, at any rate, judges
+otherwise. Science, which you believe has no power over her, is
+redoubtable to her, since she proscribes it. From Galileo's dialogues to
+Monsieur Aulard's little manuals she has condemned all its discoveries.
+And not without reason.
+
+"In former days, when she gathered within her fold all that was great in
+human thought, the Church held sway over the bodies as well as over the
+souls of men, and imposed unity of obedience by fire and sword. To-day
+her power is but a shadow and the elect among the great minds have
+withdrawn from her. That is the state to which Science has reduced her."
+
+"Possibly," replied the beautiful archangel, "but how slowly, with what
+vicissitudes, at the price of what efforts, of what sacrifices!"
+
+Zita did not absolutely condemn scientific propaganda, but she
+anticipated no prompt or certain results from it. For her it was not so
+much a question of enlightening the angels; the important thing was to
+enfranchise them. In her opinion one only exerted a strong influence on
+individuals, whoever they might be, by rousing their passions, and
+appealing to their interests.
+
+"Persuade the angels that they will cover themselves with glory by
+overthrowing the tyrant, and that they will be happier once they are
+free; that is the most practical policy to attempt, and, for my own
+part, I am devoting all my energies to its fulfilment. It is certainly
+no light task, because the Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and
+there is no public opinion in it. Nevertheless, I do not despair of
+starting an intellectual movement. I do not wish to boast, but no one is
+more closely acquainted than I with the different classes of angelic
+society."
+
+Throwing away her cigarette, Zita pondered for a moment, then, amid the
+click of ivory balls on the billiard table, the clinking of glasses,
+the curt voices of the players announcing their points, the monotonous
+answers of the waiters to their customers, the Archangel enumerated the
+entire population of the spirits of light.
+
+"We must not count on the Dominations, the Virtues, nor the Powers,
+which compose the celestial lower middle class. I have no need to tell
+you, for you know it as well as I, how selfish, base, and cowardly the
+middle classes are. As to the great dignitaries, the Ministers, the
+Generals, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, you know what they are; they
+will take no action. Let us, however, once prove ourselves the stronger,
+and we shall have them with us. For if autocrats do not readily
+acquiesce in their own downfall, once overthrown, all their forces
+recoil upon themselves. It will be well to work the Army. Entirely loyal
+as the Army is, it will allow itself to be influenced by a clever
+anarchist propaganda. But our greatest and most constant efforts ought
+to be brought to bear upon the angels of your own category, Arcade; the
+guardian angels, who dwell upon earth in such great numbers. They fill
+the lowest ranks of the hierarchy, are for the most part discontented
+with their lot, and more or less imbued with the ideas of the present
+century."
+
+She had already conferred with the guardian angels of Montmartre,
+Clignancourt, and Filles-du-Calvaire. She had devised the plan of a
+vast association of Spirits on Earth with the view of conquering Heaven.
+
+"To accomplish this task," she said, "I have established myself in
+France. But not because I had the folly to believe myself freer in a
+republic than in a monarchy. Quite the contrary, for there is no country
+where the liberty of the individual is less respected than in France.
+But the people are indifferent to everything connected with religion;
+nowhere else, therefore, should I enjoy such tranquillity."
+
+She invited Arcade to unite his efforts to hers, and when they separated
+at the door of the _brasserie_ the steel shutter was already making its
+groaning descent.
+
+"Above all," said Zita, "you must meet the gardener. I will take you to
+his rustic home one day."
+
+Théophile, who had slumbered during all this talk, begged his friend to
+come home with him and smoke a cigarette. He lived quite near in the
+small street opposite, leading off the Boulevard. Arcade would see
+Bouchotte, she would please him.
+
+They climbed up five flights of stairs. Bouchotte had not yet returned.
+A tin of sardines lay open on the piano. Red stockings coiled about the
+arm-chairs.
+
+"It's a little place, but it's comfortable," said Théophile.
+
+And gazing out of the window which looked out on the russet-coloured
+night, with its myriad lights, he added, "One can see the _Sacré
+Coeur_." His hand on Arcade's shoulder, he repeated several times, "I am
+glad to see you."
+
+Then, dragging his former companion in glory into the kitchen passage,
+he put down his candlestick, drew a key from his pocket, opened a
+cupboard, and, raising a linen covering, disclosed two large white
+wings.
+
+"You see," he said, "I have preserved them. From time to time, when I am
+alone, I go and look at them; it does me good."
+
+And he dabbed his reddened eyes. He stood awhile, overcome by silent
+emotion. Then, holding the candle near the long pinions which were
+moulting their down in places, he murmured, "They are eaten away."
+
+"You must put some pepper on them," said Arcade.
+
+"I have done so," replied the angelic musician, sighing. "I have put
+pepper, camphor, and powder on them. But nothing does any good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     WHICH REVEALS THE CHERUB TOILING FOR THE WELFARE OF HUMANITY
+     AND CONCLUDES IN AN ENTIRELY NOVEL MANNER WITH THE MIRACLE
+     OF THE FLUTE
+
+
+The first night of his incarnation Arcade slept at the angel Istar's, in
+a garret in that narrow, gloomy Rue Mazarine which wallows along beneath
+the shadow of the old Institute of France. Istar, who had been expecting
+him, had pushed against the wall the shattered retorts, cracked pots,
+broken bottles, and odds and ends of iron stoves, which made up the
+furniture of his room, and spread his clothes on the floor to lie on,
+leaving his guest his folding-bed with its straw mattress.
+
+The celestial spirits differ from one another in appearance according to
+the hierarchy and the choir to which they belong, and according to their
+own particular nature. They are all beautiful; but in different fashion,
+and they do not all offer to the eye the soft contours and dimpling
+smiles of childhood with its rosy lights and pearly tints. Nor do they
+all adorn themselves with eternal youth, that indefinable beauty that
+Greek art in its decline has imparted to its most lovingly handled
+marbles, and whereof Christian painters have so often timidly essayed to
+give us veiled and softened imitations. In some of them the chin glows
+with tufts of hair, and the limbs are furnished with such vigorous
+muscles that it seems as if serpents were writhing beneath the skin.
+Some have no wings, others possess two, four, or six; others again are
+formed entirely of conjoined pinions. Many, and these not the least
+illustrious, take the form of superb monsters, such as the Centaurs of
+fable; nay, one may even see some who are living chariots, and wheels of
+fire. A member of the highest celestial hierarchy, Istar belonged to the
+choir of Cherubim or Kerûbs who see above them the Seraphim alone. In
+common with all the angelic spirits of his rank he had formerly borne in
+Heaven the bodily shape of a winged bull surmounted by the head of a
+horned and bearded man, and carrying between his loins the attributes of
+generous fecundity. He was vaster and more vigorous than any animal on
+earth, and when he stood erect with outspread wings he covered with his
+shadow sixty archangels.
+
+Such was Istar in his native home. There he radiated strength and
+sweetness. His heart was full of courage and his soul benevolent.
+Moreover, in those days he loved his lord. He believed him to be good
+and yielded him faithful service. But even while guarding the portals of
+his Master, he used to ponder unceasingly on the punishment of the
+rebellious angels and the curse of Eve. His mind worked slowly but
+profoundly. When, after a long course of centuries, he persuaded himself
+that Ialdabaoth in creating the world had created evil and death, he
+ceased to adore and to serve him. His love changed to hatred, his
+veneration to contempt. He shouted his execrations in his face, and fled
+to earth.
+
+Embodied in human form and reduced to the stature of the sons of Adam,
+he still retained some characteristics of his former nature. His big
+protruding eyes, his beaked nose, his thick lips framed in a black beard
+which descended in curls on to his chest recalled those Cherubs of the
+tabernacle of Iahveh, of which the bulls of Nineveh afford us a pretty
+accurate representation. He bore the name of Istar on earth as well as
+in Heaven, and although exempt from vanity and free from all social
+prejudice, he was immensely desirous of showing himself sincere and
+truthful in all things. He therefore proclaimed the illustrious rank in
+which his birth had placed him in the celestial hierarchy and translated
+into French his title of Cherub by the equivalent one of Prince, calling
+himself Prince Istar. Seeking shelter among mankind he had developed an
+ardent love for them. While awaiting the coming of the hour when he
+should deliver Heaven from bondage, he dreamed of the salvation of
+regenerate humanity and was eager to consummate the destruction of this
+wicked world, in order to raise upon its ashes, to the sound of the
+lyre, a city radiant with happiness and love. A chemist in the pay of a
+dealer in nitrates, he lived very frugally. He wrote for newspapers with
+advanced views on liberty, spoke at public meetings, and had got himself
+sentenced several times to several months' imprisonment for
+anti-militarism.
+
+Istar greeted his brother Arcade cordially, approved of his rupture with
+the party of crime, and informed him of the descent of fifty of the
+children of light who, at the present moment, formed a colony near Val
+de Grace, imbued with a really excellent spirit.
+
+"It is simply raining angels in Paris," he said, laughing. "Every day
+some dignitary of the sacred palace falls on one's head, and soon the
+Sultan of the Cherubs will have no one to make into Vizirs or guards but
+the little unbreeched vagabonds of his pigeon coops."
+
+Soothed by the good news, Arcade fell asleep, full of happiness and
+hope.
+
+He awoke in the early dawn and saw Prince Istar bending over his
+furnaces, his retorts, and his test tubes. Prince Istar was working for
+the good of humanity.
+
+Every morning when Arcade woke he saw Prince Istar fulfilling his work
+of tenderness and love. Sometimes the Kerûb, huddled up with his head in
+his hands, would softly murmur a few chemical formulæ; at others,
+drawing himself up to his full height, like a dark naked column, with
+his head, his arms, nay, his entire bust clean out of the sky-light
+window, he would deposit his melting-pot on the roof, fearing the
+perquisition with which he was constantly menaced. Moved by an immense
+pity for the miseries of the world wherein he dwelt in exile, conscious
+perhaps of the rumours to which his name gave rise, inebriated with his
+own virtue, he played the part of apostle to the Human Race, and
+neglecting the task he had undertaken in coming to earth, he forgot all
+about the emancipation of the angels. Arcade, who, on the contrary,
+dreamed of nothing else but of conquering Heaven and returning thither
+in triumph, reproached the Cherub with forgetting his native land.
+
+Prince Istar, with a great frank, uncouth laugh, acknowledged that he
+had no preference for angels over men.
+
+"If I am doing my best," he replied to his celestial brother, "if I am
+doing my best to stir up France and Europe, it is because the day is
+dawning which will behold the triumph of the social revolution. It is a
+pleasure to cast one's seed on ground so well prepared. The French
+having passed from feudalism to monarchy, and from monarchy to a
+financial oligarchy, will easily pass from a financial oligarchy to
+anarchy."
+
+"How erroneous it is," retorted Arcade, "to believe in great and sudden
+changes in the social order in Europe! The old order is still young in
+strength and power. The means of defence at her disposal are formidable.
+On the other hand, the proletariat's plan of defensive organisation is
+of the vaguest description and brings merely weakness and confusion to
+the struggle. In our celestial country all goes quite otherwise. Beneath
+an apparently unchangeable exterior all is rotten within. A mere push
+would suffice to overturn an edifice which has not been touched for
+millions of centuries. Out-worn administration, out-worn army, out-worn
+finance, the whole thing is more worm-eaten than either the Russian or
+Persian autocracy."
+
+And the kindly Arcade adjured the Cherub to fly first to the aid of his
+brethren who, though dwelling amid the soft clouds with the sound of
+citterns and their cups of paradisal wine around them, were in more
+wretched plight than mankind bowed over the grudging earth. For the
+latter have a conception of justice, while the angels rejoice in
+iniquity. He exhorted him to deliver the Prince of Light and his
+stricken companions and to re-establish them in their ancient honours.
+
+Prince Istar allowed himself to be convinced.
+
+He promised to put the sweet persuasiveness of his words and the
+excellent formulæ of his explosives at the service of the celestial
+revolution. He gave his promise.
+
+"To-morrow," he said.
+
+And when the morrow came he continued his anti-militarist propaganda at
+Issy-les-Moulineaux. Like the Titan Prometheus, Istar loved mankind.
+
+Arcade, suffering from all the desires to which the sons of Adam are
+subjected, found himself lacking in resources to satisfy them. Istar
+gave him a start in a printing house in the Rue de Vaugirard where he
+knew the foreman. Arcade, thanks to his celestial intelligence, soon
+knew how to set up type and became, in a short time, a good compositor.
+
+After standing all day in the whirring workroom, holding the
+composing-stick in his left hand, and swiftly drawing the little leaden
+signs from the case in the order required by the copy fixed in the
+_visorium_, he would go and wash his hands at the pump and dine at the
+corner bar, a newspaper propped up before him on the marble table. Being
+now no longer invisible, he could not make his way into the d'Esparvieu
+library, and was thus debarred from allaying his ardent thirst for
+knowledge at that inexhaustible source. He went, of an evening, to read
+at the library of Ste. Geneviève on the famous hill of learning, but
+there were only ordinary books to be had there; greasy things, covered
+with ridiculous annotations, and lacking many pages.
+
+The sight of women troubled and unsettled him. He would remember Madame
+des Aubels and her charm, and, although he was handsome, he was not
+loved, because of his poverty and his workaday clothes. He saw much of
+Zita, and took a certain pleasure in going for walks with her on Sundays
+along the dusty roads which edge the grass-grown trenches of the
+fortifications. They wandered, the pair of them, by wayside inns,
+market-gardens, and green retreats, propounding and discussing the
+vastest plans that ever stirred the world, and, occasionally, as they
+passed along by some travelling circus, the steam organ of the
+merry-go-round would furnish an accompaniment to their words as they
+breathed fire and fury against Heaven.
+
+Zita used often to say:
+
+"Istar means well, but he's a simple fellow. He believes in the goodness
+of men and things. He undertakes the destruction of the old world and
+imagines that anarchy of itself will create order and harmony. You,
+Arcade, you believe in Science; you deem that men and angels are capable
+of understanding, whereas, in point of fact, they are only creatures of
+sentiment. You may be quite sure that nothing is to be obtained from
+them by appealing to their intelligence; one must rouse their interests
+and their passions."
+
+Arcade, Istar, Zita, and three or four other angelic conspirators
+occasionally foregathered in Théophile Belais' little flat, where
+Bouchotte gave them tea. Though she did not know that they were
+rebellious angels, she hated them instinctively, and feared them, for
+she had had a Christian education, albeit she had sadly failed to keep
+it up.
+
+Prince Istar alone pleased her; she thought there was something
+kind-hearted and an air of natural distinction about him. He stove in
+the sofa, broke down the arm-chairs, and tore corners off sheets of
+music to make notes, which he thrust into pockets invariably crammed
+with pamphlets and bottles. The musician used to gaze sorrowfully at the
+manuscript of his operetta, _Aline, Queen of Golconda_, with its corners
+all torn off. The prince also had a habit of giving Théophile Belais all
+sorts of things to take care of--mechanical contrivances, chemicals,
+bits of old iron, powders, and liquids which gave off noisome smells.
+Théophile Belais put them cautiously away in the cupboard where he kept
+his wings, and the responsibility weighed heavily upon him.
+
+Arcade was much pained at the disdain of those of his fellows who had
+remained faithful. When they met him as they went on their sacred
+errands they regarded him as they passed by with looks of cruel hatred
+or of pity that was crueller still.
+
+He used to visit the rebel angels whom Prince Istar pointed out to him,
+and usually met with a good reception, but as soon as he began to speak
+of conquering Heaven, they did not conceal the embarrassment and
+displeasure he caused them. Arcade perceived that they had no desire to
+be disturbed in their tastes, their affairs, and their habits. The
+falsity of their judgment, the narrowness of their minds, shocked him;
+and the rivalry, the jealousy they displayed towards one another
+deprived him of all hope of uniting them in a common cause. Perceiving
+how exile debases the character and warps the intellect, he felt his
+courage fail him.
+
+One evening, when he had confessed his weariness of spirit to Zita, the
+beautiful archangel said:
+
+"Let us go and see Nectaire; Nectaire has remedies of his own for
+sadness and fatigue."
+
+She led him into the woods of Montmorency and stopped at the threshold
+of a small white house, adjoining a kitchen garden, laid waste by
+winter, where far back in the shadows the light shone on forcing-frames
+and cracked glass melon shades.
+
+Nectaire opened the door to his visitors, and, after quieting the growls
+of a big mastiff which protected the garden, led them into a low room
+warmed by an earthenware stove.
+
+Against the whitewashed wall, on a deal board, among the onions and
+seeds, lay a flute ready to be put to the lips. A round walnut table
+bore a stone tobacco-jar, a pipe, a bottle of wine and some glasses. The
+gardener offered each of his guests a cane-seated chair, and himself sat
+down on a stool by the table.
+
+He was a sturdy old man; thick grey hair stood up on his head, he had a
+furrowed brow, a snub-nose, a red face, and a forked beard.
+
+The big mastiff stretched himself at his master's feet, rested his short
+black muzzle on his paws, and closed his eyes. The gardener poured out
+some wine for his guests, and when they had drunk and talked a little,
+Zita said to Nectaire:
+
+"Please play your flute to us, you will give pleasure to my friend whom
+I have brought to see you."
+
+The old man immediately consented. He put the boxwood pipe to his
+lips,--so clumsy was it that it looked as if the gardener had fashioned
+it himself,--and preluded with a few strange runs. Then he developed
+rich melodies in which the thrills sparkled like diamonds and pearls on
+a velvet ground. Touched by cunning fingers, animated with creative
+breath, the rustic pipe sang like a silver flute. There were no
+over-shrill notes and the tone was always even and pure. One seemed to
+be listening to the nightingale and the Muses singing together, the soul
+of Nature and the soul of Man. And the old man ordered and developed his
+thoughts in a musical language full of grace and daring. He told of
+love, of fear, of vain quarrels, of all-conquering laughter, of the
+calm light of the intellect, of the arrows of the mind piercing with
+their golden shafts the monsters of Ignorance and Hate. He told also of
+Joy and Sorrow bending their twin heads over the earth and of Desire
+which brings worlds into being.
+
+The whole night listened to the flute of Nectaire. Already the evening
+star was rising above the paling horizon.
+
+There they sat; Zita with hands clasped about her knees, Arcade, his
+head leaning on his hand, his lips apart. Motionless they listened. A
+lark, which had awakened hard by in a sandy field, lured by these novel
+sounds, rose swiftly in the air, hovered a few seconds, then dropped at
+one swoop into the musician's orchard. The neighbouring sparrows,
+forsaking the crannies of the mouldering walls, came and sat in a row on
+the window-ledge whence notes came welling forth that gave them more
+delight than oats or grains of barley. A jay, coming for the first time
+out of his wood, folded his sapphire wings on a leafless cherry tree.
+Beside the drain-head, a large black rat, glistening with the greasy
+water of the sewers, sitting on his hind legs, raised his short arms and
+slender fingers in amazement. A field-mouse, that dwelt in the orchard,
+was seated near him. Down from the tiles came the old tom-cat, who
+retained the grey fur, the ringed tail, the powerful loins, the courage,
+and the pride of his ancestors. He pushed against the half-open door
+with his nose and approaching the flute-player with silent tread, sat
+gravely down, pricking his ears that had been torn in many a nocturnal
+combat; the grocer's white cat followed him, sniffing the vibrant air
+and then, arching her back and closing her blue eyes, listened in
+ravishment. Mice, swarming in crowds from under the boards, surrounded
+them, and fearing neither tooth nor claw, sat motionless, their pink
+hands folded voluptuously on their bosoms. Spiders that had strayed far
+from their webs, with waving legs, gathered in a charmed circle on the
+ceiling. A small grey lizard, that had glided on to the doorstep, stayed
+there, fascinated, and, in the loft, the bat might have been seen
+hanging by her nails, head down, now half-awakened from her winter
+sleep, swaying to the rhythm of the marvellous flute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+     WHEREIN WE SEE YOUNG MAURICE BEWAILING THE LOSS OF HIS
+     GUARDIAN ANGEL, EVEN IN HIS MISTRESS'S ARMS, AND WHEREIN WE
+     HEAR THE ABBÉ PATOUILLE REJECT AS VAIN AND ILLUSORY ALL
+     NOTIONS OF A NEW REBELLION OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+A fortnight had elapsed since the angel's apparition in the flat. For
+the first time Gilberte arrived before Maurice at the rendezvous.
+Maurice was gloomy, Gilberte sulky. So far as they were concerned Nature
+had resumed her drab monotony. They eyed each other languidly, and kept
+glancing towards the angle between the wardrobe with the mirror and the
+window, where recently the pale shade of Arcade had taken shape, and
+where now the blue cretonne of the hangings was the only thing visible.
+Without giving him a name (it was unnecessary) Madame des Aubels asked:
+
+"You have not seen him since?"
+
+Slowly, sadly, Maurice turned his head from right to left, and from left
+to right.
+
+"You look as if you missed him," continued Madame des Aubels. "But come,
+confess that he gave you a terrible fright, and that you were shocked at
+his unconventionally."
+
+"Certainly he was unconventional," said Maurice without any resentment.
+
+"Tell me, Maurice, is it nothing to you now to be with me alone?... You
+need an angel to inspire you. That is sad, for a young man like you!"
+
+Maurice appeared not to hear, and asked gravely:
+
+"Gilberte, do you feel that your guardian angel is watching over you?"
+
+"I, not at all. I have never thought of him, and yet I am not without
+religion. In the first place, people who have none are like animals. And
+then one cannot go straight without religion. It is impossible."
+
+"Exactly, that's just it," said Maurice, his eyes on the violet stripes
+of his flowerless pyjamas; "when one has one's guardian angel one does
+not even think about him, and when one has lost him one feels very
+lonely."
+
+"So you miss this...."
+
+"Well, the fact is...."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, you miss him. Well, my dear, the loss of such a guardian
+angel as that is no great matter. No, no! he is not worth much, that
+Arcade of yours. On that famous day, while you were out getting him some
+clothes, he was ever so long fastening my dress, and I certainly felt
+his hand.... Well, at any rate, don't trust him."
+
+Maurice dreamily lit a cigarette. They spoke of the six days' bicycle
+race at the winter velodrome, and of the aviation show at the motor
+exhibition at Brussels, without experiencing the slightest amusement.
+Then they tried love-making as a sort of convenient pastime, and
+succeeded in becoming moderately absorbed in it; but at the very moment
+when she might have been expected to play a part more in accordance with
+a mutual sentiment, she exclaimed with a sudden start:
+
+"Good Heavens! Maurice, how stupid of you to tell me that my guardian
+angel can see me. You cannot imagine how uncomfortable the idea makes
+me."
+
+Maurice, somewhat taken aback, recalled, a little roughly, his
+mistress's wandering thoughts.
+
+She declared that her principles forbade her to think of playing a round
+game with angels.
+
+Maurice was longing to see Arcade again and had no other thought. He
+reproached himself for suffering him to depart without discovering where
+he was going, and he cudgelled his brains night and day thinking how to
+find him again.
+
+On the bare chance, he put a notice in the personal column of one of the
+big papers, running thus:
+
+"Arcade. Come back to your Maurice."
+
+Day after day went by, and Arcade did not return.
+
+One morning, at seven o'clock, Maurice went to St. Sulpice to hear Abbé
+Patouille say Mass, then, as the priest was leaving the sacristy, he
+went up to him and asked to be heard for a moment.
+
+They descended the steps of the church together and in the bright
+morning light walked round the fountain of the _Quatre Évêques_. In
+spite of his troubled conscience and the difficulty of presenting so
+extraordinary a case with any degree of credibility, Maurice related how
+the angel Arcade had appeared to him and had announced his unhappy
+resolve to separate from him and to stir up a new revolt of the spirits
+of glory. And young d'Esparvieu asked the worthy ecclesiastic how to
+find his celestial guardian again, since he could not bear his absence,
+and how to lead his angel back to the Christian faith. Abbé Patouille
+replied in a tone of affectionate sorrow that his dear child had been
+dreaming, that he took a morbid hallucination for reality, and that it
+was not permissible to believe that good angels may revolt.
+
+"People have a notion," he added, "that they can lead a life of
+dissipation and disorder with impunity. They are wrong. The abuse of
+pleasure corrupts the intelligence and impairs the understanding. The
+devil takes possession of the sinner's senses, penetrating even to his
+soul. He has deceived you, Maurice, by a clumsy artifice."
+
+Maurice objected that he was not in any way a victim of hallucinations,
+that he had not been dreaming, that he had seen his guardian angel with
+his eyes and heard him with his ears.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbé," he insisted, "a lady who happened to be with me at
+the time,--I need not mention her name,--also saw and heard him. And,
+moreover, she felt the angel's fingers straying ... well, anyhow, she
+felt them.... Believe me, Monsieur l'Abbé, nothing could be more real,
+more positively certain than this apparition. The angel was fair, young,
+very handsome. His clear skin seemed, in the shadow, as if bathed in
+milky light. He spoke in a pure, sweet voice."
+
+"That, alone, my child," the Abbé interrupted quickly, "proves you were
+dreaming. According to all the demonologies, bad angels have a hoarse
+voice, which grates like a rusty lock, and even if they did contrive to
+give a certain look of beauty to their faces, they cannot succeed in
+imitating the pure voice of the good spirits. This fact, attested by
+numerous witnesses, is established beyond all doubt."
+
+"But, Monsieur l'Abbé, I saw him. I saw him sit down, stark naked, in an
+arm-chair on a pair of black stockings. What else do you want me to tell
+you?"
+
+The Abbé Patouille appeared in no way disturbed by this announcement.
+
+"I say once more, my son," he replied, "that these unhappy illusions,
+these dreams of a deeply troubled soul, are to be ascribed to the
+deplorable state of your conscience. I believe, moreover, that I can
+detect the particular circumstance that has caused your unstable mind
+thus to come to grief. During the winter in company with Monsieur
+Sariette and your Uncle Gaétan, you came, in an evil frame of mind, to
+see the Chapel of the Holy Angels in this church, then undergoing
+repair. As I observed on that occasion, it is impossible to keep artists
+too closely to the rules of Christian art; they cannot be too strongly
+enjoined to respect Holy Writ and its authorized interpreters. Monsieur
+Eugène Delacroix did not suffer his fiery genius to be controlled by
+tradition. He brooked no guidance and, here, in this chapel he has
+painted pictures which in common parlance we call lurid, compositions of
+a violent, terrible nature which, far from inspiring the soul with
+peace, quietude, and calm, plunge it into a state of agitation. In them
+the angels are depicted with wrathful countenances, their features are
+sombre and uncouth. One might take them to be Lucifer and his companions
+meditating their revolt. Well, my son, it was these pictures, acting
+upon a mind already weakened and undermined by every kind of
+dissipation, that have filled it with the trouble to which it is at
+present a prey."
+
+But Maurice would have none of it.
+
+"Oh, no! Monsieur l'Abbé," he cried, "it is not Eugène Delacroix's
+pictures that have been troubling me. I didn't so much as look at them.
+I am completely indifferent to that kind of art."
+
+"Well, then, my son, believe me: there is no truth, no reality, in any
+of the story you have just related to me. Your guardian angel has
+certainly not appeared to you."
+
+"But, Abbé," replied Maurice, who had the most absolute confidence in
+the evidence of the senses, "I saw him tying up a woman's shoe-laces and
+putting on the trousers of a suicide."
+
+And stamping his feet on the asphalt, Maurice called as witnesses to the
+truth of his words the sky, the earth, all nature, the towers of St.
+Sulpice, the walls of the great seminary, the Fountain of the _Quatre
+Évêques_, the public lavatory, the cabmen's shelter, the taxis and motor
+'buses' shelter, the trees, the passers-by, the dogs, the sparrows, the
+flower-seller and her flowers.
+
+The Abbé made haste to end the interview.
+
+"All this is error, falsehood, and illusion, my child," said he. "You
+are a Christian: think as a Christian,--a Christian does not allow
+himself to be seduced by empty shadows. Faith protects him against the
+seduction of the marvellous, he leaves credulity to freethinkers. There
+are credulous people for you--freethinkers! There is no humbug they will
+not swallow. But the Christian carries a weapon which dissipates
+diabolical illusions,--the sign of the Cross. Reassure yourself,
+Maurice,--you have not lost your guardian angel. He still watches over
+you. It lies with you not to make this task too difficult nor too
+painful for him. Good-bye, Maurice. The weather is going to change, for
+I feel a burning in my big toe."
+
+And Abbé Patouille went off with his breviary under his arm, hobbling
+along with a dignity that seemed to foretell a mitre.
+
+That very day, Arcade and Zita were leaning over the parapet of La
+Butte, gazing down on the mist and smoke that lay floating over the vast
+city.
+
+"Is it possible," said Arcade, "for the mind to conceive all the pain
+and suffering that lie pent within a great city? It is my belief that if
+a man succeeded in realising it, the weight of it would crush him to the
+earth."
+
+"And yet," answered Zita, "every living being in that place of torment
+is enamoured of life. It is a great enigma!
+
+"Unhappy, ill-fated, while they live, the idea of ceasing to be is,
+nevertheless, a horror to them. They look not for solace in
+annihilation, it does not even bring them the promise of rest. In their
+madness they even look upon nothingness with terror: they have peopled
+it with phantoms. Look you at these pediments, these towers and domes
+and spires that pierce the mist and rear on high their glittering
+crosses. Men bow in adoration before the demiurge who has given them a
+life that is worse than death, and a death that is worse than life."
+
+Zita was for a long time lost in thought. At length she broke silence,
+saying:
+
+"There is something, Arcade, that I must confess to you. It was no
+desire for a purer justice or wiser laws that hurried Ithuriel
+earthward. Ambition, a taste for intrigue, the love of wealth and
+honour, all these things made Heaven, with its calm, unbearable to me,
+and I longed to mingle with the restless race of men. I came, and by an
+art unknown to nearly all the angels, I learned how to fashion myself a
+body which, since I could change it as the fancy seized me, to
+whatsoever age and sex I would, has permitted me to experience the most
+diverse and amazing of human destinies. A hundred times I took a
+position of renown among the leaders of the day, the lords of wealth and
+princes of nations. I will not reveal to you, Arcade, the famous names I
+bore; know only that I was pre-eminent in learning, in the fine arts, in
+power, wealth, and beauty, among all the nations of the world. At last,
+it was but a few years since, as I was journeying in France, under the
+outward semblance of a distinguished foreigner, I chanced to be roaming
+at evening through the forest of Montmorency, when I heard a flute
+unfolding all the sorrows of Heaven. The purity and sadness of its
+notes rent my very soul. Never before had I hearkened to aught so
+lovely. My eyes were wet with tears, my bosom full of sobs, as I drew
+near and beheld, on the skirts of a glade, an old man like to a faun,
+blowing on a rustic pipe. It was Nectaire. I cast myself at his feet,
+imprinted kisses on his hands and on his lips divine, and fled away....
+
+"From that day forth, conscious of the littleness of human achievements,
+weary of the tumult and the vanity of earthly things, ashamed of my vast
+and profitless endeavours, and deciding to seek out a loftier aim for my
+ambition, I looked upwards towards my skiey home and vowed I would
+return to it as a Deliverer. I rid myself of titles, name, wealth,
+friends, the horde of sycophants and flatterers and, as Zita the
+obscure, set to work in indigence and solitude, to bring freedom into
+Heaven."
+
+"And I," said Arcade, "I too have heard the flute of Nectaire. But who
+is this old gardener who can thus woo from a rude wooden pipe notes that
+are so moving and so beautiful?"
+
+"You will soon know," answered Zita.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+     WHEREIN MIRA THE SEERESS, ZÉPHYRINE, AND THE FATAL AMÉDÉE
+     ARE SUCCESSIVELY BROUGHT UPON THE SCENE, AND WHEREIN THE
+     NOTION OF EURIPIDES THAT THOSE WHOM ZEUS WISHES TO CRUSH HE
+     FIRST MAKES MAD, IS ILLUSTRATED BY THE TERRIBLE EXAMPLE OF
+     MONSIEUR SARIETTE
+
+
+Disappointed at his failure to enlighten an ecclesiastic renowned for
+his clarity of mind, and frustrated in the hope of finding his angel
+again on the high road of orthodoxy, Maurice took it into his head to
+resort to occultism and resolved to go and consult a seer. He would have
+undoubtedly applied to Madame de Thèbes, but he had already questioned
+her on the occasion of his early love troubles, and her replies showed
+such wisdom that he no longer believed her to be a soothsayer. He
+therefore had recourse to a fashionable medium, Madame Mira. He had
+heard many examples quoted of the extraordinary insight of this seeress,
+but it was necessary to present Madame Mira with some object which the
+absent one had either touched or worn and to which her translucent gaze
+had to be attracted. Maurice, trying to remember what the angel had
+touched since his ill-fated incarnation, recollected that in his
+celestial nudity he had sat down in an arm-chair on Madame des Aubels'
+black stockings and that he had afterwards helped that lady to dress.
+
+Maurice asked Gilberte for one of the talismans required by the
+clairvoyante. But Gilberte could not give him a single one, unless, as
+she said, she herself were to play the part of the talisman. For the
+angel had, in her case, displayed the greatest indiscretion, and such
+agility that it was impossible always to forestall his enterprise. On
+hearing this confession, which nevertheless told him nothing new,
+Maurice lost his temper with the angel, calling him by the names of the
+lowest animals and swearing he would give him a good kick when he got
+him within reach of his foot. But his fury soon turned against Madame
+des Aubels; he accused her of having provoked the insolence she now
+denounced, and in his wrath he referred to her by all the zoological
+symbols of immodesty and perversity. His love for Arcade was rekindled
+in his heart, and burned with a more ardent flame than ever, and the
+deserted youth, with outstretched arms and bended knees, invoked his
+angel with sobs and lamentations.
+
+During his sleepless nights it occurred to him that perhaps the books
+the angel had turned over before his incarnation might serve as a
+talisman. One morning, therefore, Maurice went up to the library and
+greeted Monsieur Sariette, who was cataloguing under the romantic gaze
+of Alexandre d'Esparvieu. Monsieur Sariette smiled, but his face was
+deathly pale. Now that an invisible hand no longer upset the books
+placed under his charge, now that tranquillity and order once more
+reigned in the library, Monsieur Sariette was happy, but his strength
+diminished day by day. There was little left of him but a frail and
+contented shadow.
+
+      "One dies, in full content, of sorrow past."
+
+"Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice, "you remember that time when your
+books were disarranged every night, how armfuls disappeared, how they
+were dragged about, turned over, ruined, and sent rolling helter-skelter
+as far as the gutter in the Rue Palatine. Those were great days! Point
+out to me, Monsieur Sariette, the books which suffered most."
+
+This proposition threw Monsieur Sariette into a melancholy stupor, and
+Maurice had to repeat his request three times before he could make the
+aged librarian understand. At length he pointed to a very ancient Talmud
+from Jerusalem as having been frequently touched by those unseen hands.
+An apocryphal Gospel of the third century, consisting of twenty papyrus
+sheets, had also quitted its place time after time. Gassendi's
+Correspondence too seemed to have been well thumbed.
+
+"But," added Monsieur Sariette, "the book to which the mysterious
+visitant devoted the most particular attention was undoubtedly a little
+copy of _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendôme, Grand
+Prieur de France, with autograph annotations by Voltaire, who, as is
+well known, frequently visited the Temple in his younger days. The
+fearsome reader who caused me such terrible anxiety never grew weary of
+this _Lucretius_ and made it his bedside book, as it were. His taste was
+sound, for it's a gem of a thing. Alas! the monster made a blot of ink
+on page 137 which perhaps the chemists with all the science at their
+disposal will be powerless to erase."
+
+And Monsieur Sariette heaved a profound sigh. He repented having said
+all this when young d'Esparvieu asked him for the loan of the precious
+_Lucretius_. Vainly did the jealous custodian affirm that the book was
+being repaired at the binder's and was not available. Maurice made it
+clear that he wasn't to be taken in like that. He strode resolutely into
+the abode of the philosophers and the globes and seating himself in an
+arm-chair said:
+
+"I am waiting."
+
+Monsieur Sariette suggested his having another edition. There were some
+that, textually, were more correct, and were, therefore, preferable from
+the student's point of view. He offered him Barbou's edition, or
+Coustelier's, or, better still, a French translation. He could have the
+Baron des Coutures' version--which was perhaps a little
+old-fashioned--or La Grange's, or those in the Nisard and Panckouke
+series; or, again, there were two versions of striking elegance, one in
+verse and the other in prose, both from the pen of Monsieur de
+Pongerville of the French Academy.
+
+"I don't need a translation," said Maurice proudly. "Give me the Prior
+de Vendôme's copy."
+
+Monsieur Sariette went slowly up to the cupboard in which the jewel in
+question was contained. The keys were rattling in his trembling hand. He
+raised them to the lock and withdrew them again immediately and
+suggested that Maurice should have the common _Lucretius_ published by
+Garnier.
+
+"It's very handy," said he with an engaging smile.
+
+But the silence with which this proposal was received made it clear that
+resistance was useless. He slowly drew forth the volume from its place,
+and having taken the precaution to see that there wasn't a speck of dust
+on the table-cloth, he laid it tremblingly thereon before the
+great-grandson of Alexandre d'Esparvieu.
+
+Maurice began to turn the leaves, and when he got to page 137 he saw the
+stain which had been made with violet ink. It was about the size of a
+pea.
+
+"Ay, that's it," said old Sariette, who had his eye on the _Lucretius_
+the whole time; "that's the trace those invisible monsters left behind
+them."
+
+"What, there were several of them, Monsieur Sariette?" exclaimed
+Maurice.
+
+"I cannot tell. But I don't know whether I have a right to have this
+blot removed since, like the blot Paul Louis Courier made on the
+Florentine manuscript, it constitutes a literary document, so to speak."
+
+Scarcely were the words out of the old fellow's mouth when the front
+door bell rang and there was a confused noise of voices and footsteps in
+the next room. Sariette ran forward at the sound and collided with Père
+Guinardon's mistress, old Zéphyrine, who, with her tousled hair sticking
+up like a nest of vipers, her face aflame, her bosom heaving, her
+abdominal part like an eiderdown quilt puffed out by a terrific gale,
+was choking with grief and rage. And amid sobs and sighs and groans and
+all the innumerable sounds which, on earth, make up the mighty uproar to
+which the emotions of living beings and the tumult of nature give rise,
+she cried:
+
+"He's gone, the monster! He's gone off with her. He's cleared out the
+whole shanty and left me to shift for myself with eighteenpence in my
+purse."
+
+And she proceeded to give a long and incoherent account of how Michel
+Guinardon had abandoned her and gone to live with Octavie, the
+bread-woman's daughter, and she let loose a torrent of abuse against the
+traitor.
+
+"A man whom I've kept going with my own money for fifty years and more.
+For I've had plenty of the needful and known plenty of the upper ten and
+all. I dragged him out of the gutter and now this is what I get for it.
+He's a bright beauty, that friend of yours. The lazy scoundrel. Why, he
+had to be dressed like a child, the drunken contemptible brute. You
+don't know him yet, Monsieur Sariette. He's a forger. He turns out
+Giottos, Giottos, I tell you, and Fra Angelicos and Grecos, as hard as
+he can and sells them to art-dealers--yes, and Fragonards too, and
+Baudouins. He's a debauchee, and doesn't believe in God! That's the
+worst of the lot, Monsieur Sariette, for without the fear of God...."
+
+Long did Zéphyrine continue to pour forth vituperations. When at last
+her breath failed her, Monsieur Sariette availed himself of the
+opportunity to exhort her to be calm and bring herself to look on the
+bright side of things. Guinardon would come back. A man doesn't forget
+anyone he's lived and got on well with for fifty years----
+
+These two observations only goaded her to a fresh outburst, and
+Zéphyrine swore she would never forget the slight that had been put on
+her; she swore she would never have the monster back with her any more.
+And if he came to ask her to forgive him on his knees, she would let him
+grovel at her feet.
+
+"Don't you understand, Monsieur Sariette, that I despise and hate him,
+that he makes me sick?"
+
+Sixty times she voiced these lofty sentiments; sixty times she vowed she
+would never have Guinardon back with her again, that she couldn't bear
+the sight of him, even in a picture.
+
+Monsieur Sariette made no attempt to oppose a resolve which, after
+protestations such as these, he regarded as unshakable. He did not blame
+Zéphyrine in the least. He even supported her. Unfolding to the deserted
+one a purer future, he told her of the frailty of human sentiment,
+exhorted her to display a spirit of renunciation and enjoined her to
+show a pious resignation to the will of God.
+
+"Seeing, in truth, that your friend is so little worthy of affection
+..."
+
+He was not suffered to continue. Zéphyrine flew at him, and shaking him
+furiously by the collar of his frock-coat, she yelled, half choking with
+rage: "So little worthy of affection! Michel! Ah! my boy, you find
+another more kind, more gay, more witty, you find another like him,
+always young, yes, always. Not worthy of affection! Anyone can see you
+don't know anything about love, you old duffer."
+
+Taking advantage of the fact that Père Sariette was thus deeply
+engaged, young d'Esparvieu slipped the little _Lucretius_ into his
+pocket, and strolled deliberately past the crouching librarian, bidding
+him adieu with a little wave of the hand.
+
+Armed with his talisman, he hastened to the Place des Ternes, to
+interview Madame Mira. She received him in a red drawing-room where
+neither owl nor frog nor any of the paraphernalia of ancient magic were
+to be found. Madame Mira, in a prune-coloured dress, her hair powdered,
+though already past her prime, was of very good appearance. She spoke
+with a certain elegance and prided herself on discovering hidden things
+by the help alone of Science, Philosophy, and Religion. She felt the
+morocco binding, feigning to close her eyes, and looking meanwhile
+through the narrow slit between her lids at the Latin title and the coat
+of arms which conveyed nothing to her.
+
+Accustomed to receive as tokens such things as rings, handkerchiefs,
+letters, and locks of hair, she could not conceive to what sort of
+individual this singular book could belong. By habitual and mechanical
+cunning she disguised her real surprise under a feigned surprise.
+
+"Strange!" she murmured, "strange! I do not see quite clearly ... I
+perceive a woman...."
+
+As she let fall this magic word, she glanced furtively to see what sort
+of an effect it had and beheld on her questioner's face an unexpected
+look of disappointment. Perceiving that she was off the track, she
+immediately changed her oracle:
+
+"But she fades away immediately. It is strange, strange! I have a
+confused impression of some vague form, a being that I cannot define,"
+and having assured herself by a hurried glance that, this time, her
+words were going down, she expatiated on the vagueness of the person and
+on the mist that enveloped him.
+
+However, the vision grew clearer to Madame Mira, who was following a
+clue step by step.
+
+"A wide street ... a square with a statue ... a deserted
+street,--stairs. He is there in a bluish room--he is a young man, with
+pale and careworn face. There are things he seems to regret, and which
+he would not do again did they still remain undone."
+
+But the effort at divination had been too great. Fatigue prevented the
+clairvoyante from continuing her transcendental researches. She spent
+her remaining strength in impressively recommending him who consulted
+her to remain in intimate union with God if he wished to regain what he
+had lost and succeed in his attempts.
+
+On leaving Maurice placed a louis on the mantelpiece and went away moved
+and troubled, persuaded that Madame Mira possessed supernatural
+faculties, but unfortunately insufficient ones.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs he remembered he had left the little
+_Lucretius_ on the table of the pythoness, and, thinking that the old
+maniac Sariette would never get over its loss, went up to recover
+possession of it.
+
+On re-entering the paternal abode his gaze lighted upon a shadowy and
+grief-stricken figure. It was old Sariette, who in tones as plaintive as
+the wail of the November wind began to beg for his _Lucretius_. Maurice
+pulled it carelessly out of his great-coat pocket.
+
+"Don't flurry yourself, Monsieur Sariette," said he. "There the thing
+is."
+
+Clasping the jewel to his bosom the old librarian bore it away and laid
+it gently down on the blue table-cloth, thinking all the while where he
+might safely hide his precious treasure, and turning over all sorts of
+schemes in his mind as became a zealous curator. But who among us shall
+boast of his wisdom? The foresight of man is short, and his prudence is
+for ever being baffled. The blows of fate are ineluctable; no man shall
+evade his doom. There is no counsel, no caution that avails against
+destiny. Hapless as we are, the same blind force which regulates the
+courses of atom and of star fashions universal order from our
+vicissitudes. Our ill-fortune is necessary to the harmony of the
+Universe. It was the day for the binder, a day which the revolving
+seasons brought round twice a year, beneath the sign of the Ram and the
+sign of the Scales. That day, ever since morning, Monsieur Sariette had
+been making things ready for the binder. He had laid out on the table as
+many of the newly purchased paper-bound volumes as were deemed worthy of
+a permanent binding or of being put in boards, and also those books
+whose binding was in need of repair, and of all these he had drawn up a
+detailed and accurate list. Punctually at five o'clock, old Amédée, the
+man from Léger-Massieu's, the binder in the Rue de l'Abbaye, presented
+himself at the d'Esparvieu library and, after a double check had been
+carried out by Monsieur Sariette, thrust the books he was to take back
+to his master into a piece of cloth which he fastened into knots at the
+four corners and hoisted on to his shoulder. He then saluted the
+librarian with the following words, "Good night, all!" and went
+downstairs.
+
+Everything went off on this occasion as usual. But Amédée, seeing the
+_Lucretius_ on the table, innocently put it into the bag with the
+others, and took it away without Monsieur Sariette's perceiving it. The
+librarian quitted the home of the Philosophers and Globes in entire
+forgetfulness of the book whose absence had been causing him such
+horrible anxiety all day long. Some people may take a stern view of the
+matter and call this a lapse, a defection of his better nature. But
+would it not be more accurate to say that fate had decided that things
+should come to pass in this manner, and that what is called chance, and
+is in fact but the regular order of nature, had accomplished this
+imperceptible deed which was to have such awful consequences in the
+sight of man? Monsieur Sariette went off to his dinner at the _Quatre
+Évêques_, and read his paper _La Croix_. He was tranquil and serene. It
+was only the next morning when he entered the abode of the Philosophers
+and Globes that he remembered the _Lucretius_. Failing to see it on the
+table he looked for it everywhere, but without success. It never entered
+his head that Amédée might have taken it away by mistake. What he did
+think was that the invisible visitant had returned, and he was mightily
+disturbed.
+
+The unhappy curator, hearing a noise on the landing, opened the door and
+found it was little Léon, who, with a gold-braided _képi_ stuck on his
+head, was shouting "Vive la France" and hurling dusters and
+feather-brooms and Hippolyte's floor polish at imaginary foes. The child
+preferred this landing for playing soldiers to any other part of the
+house, and sometimes he would stray into the library. Monsieur Sariette
+was seized with the sudden suspicion that it was he who had taken the
+_Lucretius_ to use as a missile and he ordered him, in threatening
+tones, to give it back. The child denied that he had taken it, and
+Monsieur Sariette had recourse to cajolery.
+
+"Léon, if you bring me back the little red book, I will give you some
+chocolates."
+
+The child grew thoughtful; and in the evening, as Monsieur Sariette was
+going downstairs, he met Léon, who said:
+
+"There's the book!"
+
+And, holding out a much-torn picture-book called _The Story of
+Gribouille_, demanded his chocolates.
+
+A few days later the post brought Maurice the prospectus of an enquiry
+agency managed by an ex-employee at the Prefecture of Police; it
+promised celerity and discretion. He found at the address indicated a
+moustached gentleman morose and careworn, who demanded a deposit and
+promised to find the individual.
+
+The ex-police official soon wrote to inform him that very onerous
+investigations had been commenced and asked for fresh funds. Maurice
+gave him no more and resolved to carry on the search himself. Imagining,
+not without some likelihood, that the angel would associate with the
+wretched, seeing that he had no money, and with the exiled of all
+nations--like himself, revolutionaries--he visited the lodging-houses at
+St. Ouen, at la Chapelle, Montmartre, and the Barrière d'Italie. He
+sought him in the doss-houses, public-houses where they give you plates
+of tripe, and others where you can get a sausage for three sous; he
+searched for him in the cellars at the Market and at Père Momie's.
+
+Maurice visited the restaurants where nihilists and anarchists take
+their meals. There he came across men dressed as women, gloomy and
+wild-looking youths, and blue-eyed octogenarians who laughed like little
+children. He observed, asked questions, was taken for a spy, had a knife
+thrust into him by a very beautiful woman, and the very next day
+continued his search in beer-houses, lodging-houses, houses of ill-fame,
+gambling-hells down by the fortifications, at the receivers of stolen
+goods, and among the "apaches."
+
+Seeing him thus pale, harassed, and silent, his mother grew worried.
+
+"We must find him a wife," she said. "It is a pity that Mademoiselle de
+la Verdelière has not a bigger fortune."
+
+Abbé Patouille did not hide his anxiety.
+
+"This child," he said, "is passing through a moral crisis."
+
+"I am more inclined to think," replied Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, "that
+he is under the influence of some bad woman. We must find him an
+occupation which will absorb him and flatter his vanity. I might get him
+appointed Secretary to the Committee for the Preservation of Country
+Churches, or Consulting Counsel to the Syndicate of Catholic Plumbers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+     WHEREIN WE LEARN THAT SOPHAR, NO LESS EAGER FOR GOLD THAN
+     MAMMON, LOOKED UPON HIS HEAVENLY HOME LESS FAVOURABLY THAN
+     UPON FRANCE, A COUNTRY BLESSED WITH A SAVINGS BANK AND LOAN
+     DEPARTMENTS, AND WHEREIN WE SEE, YET ONCE AGAIN, THAT WHOSO
+     IS POSSESSED OF THIS WORLD'S GOODS FEARS THE EVIL EFFECTS OF
+     ANY CHANGE
+
+
+Meanwhile Arcade led a life of obscure toil. He worked at a printer's in
+the Rue St. Benoît, and lived in an attic in the Rue Mouffetard. His
+comrades having gone on strike, he left the workroom and devoted his day
+to his propaganda. So successful was he that he won over to the side of
+revolt fifty thousand of those guardian angels who, as Zita had
+surmised, were discontented with their condition and imbued with the
+spirit of the times. But lacking money, he lacked liberty, and could not
+employ his time as he wished in instructing the sons of Heaven. So, too,
+Prince Istar, hampered by want of funds, manufactured fewer bombs than
+were needed, and these less fine. Of course he prepared a good many
+small pocket machines. He had filled Théophile's rooms with them, and
+not a day passed but he forgot some and left them lying about on the
+seats in various cafés. But a nice bomb, easily handled and capable of
+destroying many big mansions, cost him from twenty to twenty-five
+thousand francs; and Prince Istar only possessed two of this kind.
+Equally bent on procuring funds, Arcade and Istar both went to make a
+request for money from a celebrated financier named Max Everdingen, who,
+as everyone knows, is the managing director of the biggest banking
+concern in France and indeed in the whole world. What is not so well
+known is that Max Everdingen was not born of woman, but is a fallen
+angel. Nevertheless, such is the truth. In Heaven he was named Sophar,
+and guarded the treasures of Ialdabaoth, a great collector of gold and
+precious stones. In the exercise of this function Sophar contracted a
+love of riches which could not be satisfied in a state of society in
+which banks and stock exchanges are alike unknown. His heart flamed with
+an ardent love for the god of the Hebrews to whom he remained faithful
+during a long course of centuries. But at the commencement of the
+twentieth century of the Christian era, casting his eyes down from the
+height of the firmament upon France, he saw that this country, under the
+name of a Republic, was constituted as a plutocracy and that, under the
+appearance of a democratic government, high finance exercised sovereign
+sway, untrammelled and unchecked.
+
+Henceforth life in the Empyrean became intolerable to him. He longed for
+France as for the promised land, and one day, bearing with him all the
+precious stones he could carry, he descended to earth and established
+himself in Paris. This angel of cupidity did good business there. Since
+his materialisation his face had lost its celestial aspect; it
+reproduced the Semitic type in all its purity, and one could admire the
+lines and the puckers which wrinkle the faces of bankers and which are
+to be seen in the money-changers of Quintin Matsys.
+
+His beginnings were humble and his success amazing. He married an ugly
+woman and they saw themselves reflected in their children as in a
+mirror. Baron Max Everdingen's large mansion, which rears itself on the
+heights of the Trocadéro, is crammed with the spoils of Christian
+Europe.
+
+The Baron received Arcade and Prince Istar in his study,--one of the
+most modest rooms in his mansion. The ceiling is decorated with a fresco
+of Tiepolo, taken from a Venetian palace. The bureau of the Regent,
+Philip of Orleans, is in this room, which is full of cabinets,
+show-cases, pictures, and statues.
+
+Arcade allowed his gaze to wander over the walls.
+
+"How comes it, my brother Sophar," said he, "that you, in spite of your
+Jewish heart, obey so ill the commandment of the Lord your God who said:
+'Thou shalt have no graven images'? for here I see an Apollo of Houdon's
+and a Hebe of Lemoine's, and several busts by Caffieri. And, like
+Solomon in his old age, O son of God, you set up in your dwelling-place
+the idols of strange nations: for such are this Venus of Boucher, this
+Jupiter of Rubens, and those nymphs that are indebted to Fragonard's
+brush for the gooseberry jam which smears their gleaming limbs. And here
+in this single show-case, Sophar, you keep the sceptre of St. Louis, six
+hundred pearls of Marie Antoinette's broken necklace, the imperial
+mantle of Charles V, the tiara wrought by Ghiberti for Pope Martin V,
+the Colonna, Bonaparte's sword--and I know not what besides."
+
+"Mere trifles," said Max Everdingen.
+
+"My dear Baron," said Prince Istar, "you even possess the ring which
+Charlemagne placed on a fairy's finger and which was thought to be lost.
+But let us discuss the business on which we have come. My friend and I
+have come to ask you for money."
+
+"I can well believe it," replied Max Everdingen. "Everyone wants money,
+but for different reasons. What do you want money for?"
+
+Prince Istar replied simply:
+
+"To stir up a revolution in France."
+
+"In France!" repeated the Baron, "in France? Well, I shall give you no
+money for that, you may be quite sure."
+
+Arcade did not disguise the fact that he had expected greater liberality
+and more generous help from a celestial brother.
+
+"Our project," he said, "is a vast one. It embraces both Heaven and
+Earth. It is settled in every detail. We shall first bring about a
+social revolution in France, in Europe, on the whole planet; then we
+shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful
+democracy. And to reduce the citadels of Heaven, to overturn the
+mountain of God, to storm celestial Jerusalem, a vast army is needful,
+enormous resources, formidable machines, and electrophores of a strength
+yet unknown. It is our intention to commence with France."
+
+"You are madmen!" exclaimed Baron Everdingen; "madmen and fools! Listen
+to me. There is not one single reform to carry out in France. All is
+perfect, finally settled, unchangeable. You hear?--unchangeable." And to
+add force to his statement, Baron Everdingen banged his fist three times
+on the Regent's bureau.
+
+"Our points of view differ," said Arcade sweetly. "_I_ think, as does
+Prince Istar, that everything should be changed in this country. But
+what boots it to dispute the matter? Moreover, it is too late. We have
+come to speak to you, O my brother Sophar, in the name of five hundred
+thousand celestial spirits, all resolved to commence the universal
+revolution to-morrow."
+
+Baron Everdingen exclaimed that they were crazy, that he would not give
+a _sou_, that it was both criminal and mad to attack the most admirable
+thing in the world, the thing which renders earth more beautiful than
+heaven--Finance. He was a poet and a prophet. His heart thrilled with
+holy enthusiasm; he drew attention to the French Savings Bank, the
+virtuous Savings Bank, that chaste and pure Savings Bank like unto the
+Virgin of the Canticle who, issuing from the depths of the country in
+rustic petticoat, bears to the robust and splendid Bank--her bridegroom,
+who awaits her--the treasures of her love; and drew a picture of the
+Bank, enriched with the gifts of its spouse, pouring on all the nations
+of the world torrents of gold, which, of themselves, by a thousand
+invisible channels return in still greater abundance to the blessed land
+from which they sprung.
+
+"By Deposit and Loan," he went on, "France has become the New Jerusalem,
+shedding her glory over all the nations of Europe, and the Kings of the
+Earth come to kiss her rosy feet. And that is what you would fain
+destroy? You are both impious and sacrilegious."
+
+Thus spoke the angel of finance. An invisible harp accompanied his
+voice, and his eyes darted lightning.
+
+Meanwhile Arcade, leaning carelessly against the Regent's bureau, spread
+out under the Banker's eyes various ground-plans, underground-plans, and
+sky-plans of Paris with red crosses indicating the points where bombs
+should be simultaneously placed in cellars and catacombs, thrown on
+public ways, and flung by a flotilla of aeroplanes. All the financial
+establishments, and notably the Everdingen Bank and its branches, were
+marked with red crosses.
+
+The financier shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Nonsense! you are but wretches and vagabonds, shadowed by all the
+police of the world. You are penniless. How can you manufacture all the
+machines?"
+
+By way of reply, Prince Istar drew from his pocket a small copper
+cylinder, which he gracefully presented to Baron Everdingen.
+
+"You see," said he, "this ordinary-looking box. It is only necessary to
+let it fall on the ground immediately to reduce this mansion with its
+inmates to a mass of smoking ashes, and to set a fire going which would
+devour all the Trocadéro quarter. I have ten thousand like that, and I
+make three dozen a day."
+
+The financier asked the Cherub to replace the machine in his pocket, and
+continued in a conciliatory tone:
+
+"Listen to me, my friends. Go and start a revolution at once in Heaven,
+and leave things alone in this country. I will sign a cheque for you.
+You can procure all the material you need to attack celestial
+Jerusalem."
+
+And Baron Everdingen was already working up in his imagination a
+magnificent deal in electrophores and war-material.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     WHEREIN IS BEGUN THE GARDENER'S STORY, IN THE COURSE OF
+     WHICH WE SHALL SEE THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD UNFOLDED IN A
+     DISCOURSE AS BROAD AND MAGNIFICENT IN ITS VIEWS AS BOSSUET'S
+     DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IS NARROW AND
+     DISMAL
+
+
+The gardener bade Arcade and Zita sit down in an arbour walled with wild
+bryony, at the far end of the orchard.
+
+"Arcade," said the beautiful Archangel, "Nectaire will perhaps reveal to
+you to-day the things you are burning to know. Ask him to speak."
+
+Arcade did so and old Nectaire, laying down his pipe, began as
+follows:--
+
+"I knew him. He was the most beautiful of all the Seraphim. He shone
+with intelligence and daring. His great heart was big with all the
+virtues born of pride: frankness, courage, constancy in trial,
+indomitable hope. Long, long ago, ere Time was, in the boreal sky where
+gleam the seven magnetic stars, he dwelt in a palace of diamond and
+gold, where the air was ever tremulous with the beating of wings and
+with songs of triumph. Iahveh, on his mountain, was jealous of Lucifer.
+You both know it: angels like unto men feel love and hatred quicken
+within them. Capable, at times, of generous resolves, they too often
+follow their own interests and yield to fear. Then, as now, they showed
+themselves, for the most part, incapable of lofty thoughts, and in the
+fear of the Lord lay their sole virtue. Lucifer, who held vile things in
+proud disdain, despised this rabble of commonplace spirits for ever
+wallowing in a life of feasts and pleasure. But to those who were
+possessed of a daring spirit, a restless soul, to those fired with a
+wild love of liberty, he proffered friendship, which was returned with
+adoration. These latter deserted in a mass the mountain of God and
+yielded to the Seraph the homage which That Other would fain have kept
+for himself alone.
+
+"I ranked among the Dominations, and my name, Alaciel, was not unknown
+to fame. To satisfy my mind--that was ever tormented with an insatiable
+thirst for knowledge and understanding--I observed the nature of things,
+I studied the properties of minerals, air, and water. I sought out the
+laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I
+perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator
+would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself
+and not by the caprice of Iahveh; that the world is itself its own
+creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth I despised Iahveh for his
+imposture, and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to
+all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt. These
+feelings drew me towards the Seraph. I admired him, I loved him. I dwelt
+in his light. When at length it appeared that a choice had to be made
+between him and That Other I ranged myself on the side of Lucifer and
+knew no other aim than to serve him, no other desire than to share his
+lot.
+
+"War having become inevitable, he prepared for it with indefatigable
+vigilance and all the resourcefulness of a far-seeing mind. Making the
+Thrones and Dominations into Chalybes and Cyclopes, he drew forth iron
+from the mountains bordering his domain; iron, which he valued more than
+gold, and forged weapons in the caverns of Heaven. Then in the desert
+plain of the North he assembled myriads of Spirits, armed them, taught
+them, and drilled them. Although prepared in secret, the enterprise was
+too vast for his adversary not to be soon aware of it. It might in truth
+be said that he had always foreseen and dreaded it, for he had made a
+citadel of his abode and a warlike host of his angels, and he gave
+himself the name of the God of Hosts. He made ready his thunderbolts.
+More than half of the children of Heaven remained faithful to him;
+thronging round him he beheld obedient souls and patient hearts. The
+Archangel Michael, who knew not fear, took command of these docile
+troops. Lucifer, as soon as he saw that his army could gain no more in
+numbers or in warlike skill, moved it swiftly against the foe, and
+promising his angels riches and glory marched at their head towards the
+mountain upon whose summit stands the Throne of the Universe. For three
+days our host swept onward over the ethereal plains. Above our heads
+streamed the black standards of revolt. And now, behold, the Mountain of
+God shone rosy in the orient sky and our chief scanned with his eyes the
+glittering ramparts. Beneath the sapphire walls the foe was drawn up in
+battle array, and, while we marched clad in our iron and bronze, they
+shone resplendent in gold and precious stones.
+
+"Their gonfalons of red and blue floated in the breeze, and lightning
+flashed from the points of their lances. In a little while the armies
+were only sundered one from the other by a narrow strip of level and
+deserted ground, and at this sight even the bravest shuddered as they
+thought that there in bloody conflict their fate would soon be sealed.
+
+"Angels, as you know, never die. But when bronze and iron, diamond point
+or flaming sword tear their ethereal substance, the pain they feel is
+more acute than men may suffer, for their flesh is more exquisitely
+delicate; and should some essential organ be destroyed, they fall inert
+and, slowly decomposing, are resolved into clouds and during long æons
+float insensible in the cold ether. And when at length they resume
+spirit and form they fail to recover full memory of their past life.
+Therefore it is but natural that angels shrink from suffering, and the
+bravest among them is troubled at the thought of being reft of light and
+sweet remembrance. Were it otherwise the angelic race would know neither
+the delight of battle nor the glory of sacrifice. Those who, before the
+beginning of Time, fought in the Empyrean for or against the God of
+Armies, would have taken part without honour in mock battles, and it
+would not now become me to say to you, my children, with rightful pride:
+
+"'Lo, I was there!'
+
+"Lucifer gave the signal for the onset and led the assault. We fell upon
+the enemy, thinking to destroy him then and there and carry the sacred
+citadel at the first onslaught. The soldiers of the jealous God, less
+fiery, but no whit less firm than ours, remained immovable. The
+Archangel Michael commanded them with the calmness and resolution of a
+mighty spirit. Thrice we strove to break through their lines, thrice
+they opposed to our ironclad breast the flaming points of their lances,
+swift to pierce the stoutest cuirass. In millions the glorious bodies
+fell. At length our right wing pierced the enemy's left and we beheld
+the Principalities, the Powers, the Virtues, the Dominations, and the
+Thrones turn and flee in full career; while the Angels of the Third
+Choir, flying distractedly above them, covered them with a snow of
+feathers mingled with a rain of blood. We sped in pursuit of them amid
+the débris of chariots and broken weapons, and we spurred their nimble
+flight. Suddenly a storm of cries amazed us. It grew louder and nearer.
+With desperate shrieks and triumphal clamour the right wing of the
+enemy, the giant archangels of the Most High, had flung themselves upon
+our left flank and broken it. Thus we were forced to abandon the pursuit
+of the fugitives and hasten to the rescue of our own shattered troops.
+Our prince flew to rally them, and re-established the conflict. But the
+left wing of the enemy, whose ruin he had not quite consummated, no
+longer pressed by lance or arrow, regained courage, returned, and faced
+us yet again. Night fell upon the dubious field. While under the shelter
+of darkness, in the still, silent air stirred ever and anon by the moans
+of the wounded, his forces were resting from their toils, Lucifer began
+to make ready for the next day's battle. Before dawn the trumpets
+sounded the reveille. Our warriors surprised the enemy at the hour of
+prayer, put them to rout, and long and fierce was the carnage that
+ensued. When all had either fallen or fled, the Archangel Michael, none
+with him save a few companions with four wings of flame, still resisted
+the onslaughts of a countless host. They fell back ceaselessly opposing
+their breasts to us, and Michael still displayed an impassible
+countenance. The sun had run a third of its course when we commenced to
+scale the Mountain of God. An arduous ascent it was: sweat ran from our
+brows, a dazzling light blinded us. Weighed down with steel, our
+feathery wings could not sustain us, but hope gave us wings that bore us
+up. The beautiful Seraph, pointing with glittering hand, mounting ever
+higher and higher, showed us the way. All day long we slowly clomb the
+lofty heights which at evening were robed in azure, rose, and violet.
+The starry host appearing in the sky seemed as the reflection of our own
+arms. Infinite silence reigned above us. We went on, intoxicated with
+hope; all at once from the darkened sky lightning darted forth, the
+thunder muttered, and from the cloudy mountain-top fell fire from
+Heaven. Our helmets, our breast-plates were running with flames, and our
+bucklers broke under bolts sped by invisible hands. Lucifer, in the
+storm of fire, retained his haughty mien. In vain the lightning smote
+him; mightier than ever he stood erect, and still defied the foe. At
+length, the thunder, making the mountain totter, flung us down
+pell-mell, huge fragments of sapphire and ruby crashing down with us as
+we fell, and we rolled inert, swooning, for a period whose duration
+none could measure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I awoke in a darkness filled with lamentations. And when my eyes had
+grown accustomed to the dense shadows I saw round me my companions in
+arms, scattered in thousands on the sulphurous ground, lit by fitful
+gleams of livid light. My eyes perceived but fields of lava, smoking
+craters, and poisonous swamps.
+
+"Mountains of ice and shadowy seas shut in the horizon. A brazen sky
+hung heavy on our brows. And the horror of the place was such that we
+wept as we sat, crouched elbow on knee, our cheeks resting on our
+clenched hands.
+
+"But soon, raising my eyes, I beheld the Seraph standing before me like
+a tower. Over his pristine splendour sorrow had cast its mantle of
+sombre majesty.
+
+"'Comrades,' said he, 'we must be happy and rejoice, for behold we are
+delivered from celestial servitude. Here we are free, and it were better
+to be free in Hell than serve in Heaven. We are not conquered, since the
+will to conquer is still ours. We have caused the Throne of the jealous
+God to totter; by our hands it shall fall. Arise, therefore, and be of
+good heart.'
+
+"Thereupon, at his command, we piled mountain upon mountain and on the
+topmost peak we reared engines which flung molten rocks against the
+divine habitations. The celestial host was taken unaware and from the
+abodes of glory there issued groans and cries of terror. And even then
+we thought to re-enter in triumph on our high estate, but the Mountain
+of God was wreathed with lightnings, and thunderbolts, falling on our
+fortress, crushed it to dust. After this fresh disaster, the Seraph
+remained awhile in meditation, his head buried in his hands. At length
+he raised his darkened visage. Now he was Satan, greater than Lucifer.
+Steadfast and loyal the angels thronged about him.
+
+"'Friends,' he said, 'if victory is denied us now, it is because we are
+neither worthy nor capable of victory. Let us determine wherein we have
+failed. Nature shall not be ruled, the sceptre of the Universe shall not
+be grasped, Godhead shall not be won, save by knowledge alone. We must
+conquer the thunder; to that task we must apply ourselves unwearyingly.
+It is not blind courage (no one this day has shown more courage than
+have you) which will win us the courts of Heaven; but rather study and
+reflection. In these silent realms where we are fallen, let us meditate,
+seeking the hidden causes of things; let us observe the course of
+Nature; let us pursue her with compelling ardour and all-conquering
+desire; let us strive to penetrate her infinite grandeur, her infinite
+minuteness. Let us seek to know when she is barren and when she brings
+forth fruit; how she makes cold and heat, joy and sorrow, life and
+death; how she assembles and disperses her elements, how she produces
+both the light air we breathe and the rocks of diamond and sapphire
+whence we have been precipitated, the divine fire wherewith we have been
+scarred and the soaring thought which stirs our minds. Torn with dire
+wounds, scorched by flame and by ice, let us render thanks to Fate which
+has sedulously opened our eyes, and let us rejoice at our lot. It is
+through pain that, suffering a first experience of Nature, we have been
+roused to know her and to subdue her. When she obeys us we shall be as
+gods. But even though she hide her mysteries for ever from us, deny us
+arms and keep the secret of the thunder, we still must needs
+congratulate ourselves on having known pain, for pain has revealed to us
+new feelings, more precious and more sweet than those experienced in
+eternal bliss, and inspired us with love and pity unknown to Heaven.'
+
+"These words of the Seraph changed our hearts and opened up fresh hope
+to us. Our hearts were filled with a great longing for knowledge and
+love.
+
+"Meanwhile the Earth was coming into being. Its immense and nebulous orb
+took on hourly more shape and more certainty of outline. The waters
+which fed the seaweed, the madrepores and shellfish and bore the light
+flotilla of the nautilus upon their bosom, no longer covered it in its
+entirety; they began to sink into beds, and already continents appeared,
+where, on the warm slime, amphibious monsters crawled. Then the
+mountains were overspread with forests, and divers races of animals
+commenced to feed on the grass, the moss, the berries on the trees, and
+on the acorns. Then there took possession of cavernous shelters under
+the rocks, a being who was cunning to wound with a sharpened stone the
+savage beasts, and by his ruses to overcome the ancient denizens of
+forest, plain, and mountain.
+
+"Man entered painfully on his kingdom. He was defenceless and naked. His
+scanty hair afforded him but little protection from the cold. His hands
+ended in nails too frail to do battle with the claws of wild beasts, but
+the position of his thumb, in opposition to the rest of his fingers,
+allowed him easily to grasp the most diverse objects and endowed him
+with skill in default of strength. Without differing essentially from
+the rest of the animals, he was more capable than any others of
+observing and comparing. As he drew from his throat various sounds, it
+occurred to him to designate by a particular inflexion of the voice
+whatever impinged upon his mind, and by this sequence of different
+sounds he was enabled to fix and communicate his ideas. His miserable
+lot and his painstaking spirit aroused the sympathy of the vanquished
+angels, who discerned in him an audacity equalling their own, and the
+germ of the pride that was at once their glory and their bane. They came
+in large numbers to be near him, to dwell on this young earth whither
+their wings wafted them in effortless flight. And they took pleasure in
+sharpening his talents and fostering his genius. They taught him to
+clothe himself in the skins of wild beasts, to roll stones before the
+mouths of caves to keep out the tigers and bears. They taught him how to
+make the flame burst forth by twirling a stick among the dried leaves
+and to foster the sacred fire upon the hearth. Inspired by the ingenious
+spirits he dared to cross the rivers in the hollowed trunks of cleft
+trees, he invented the wheel, the grinding-mill, and the plough; the
+share tore up the earth and the wound brought forth fruit, and the grain
+offered to him who ground it divine nourishment. He moulded vessels in
+clay, and out of the flint he fashioned various tools.
+
+"In fine, taking up our abode among mankind, we consoled them and taught
+them. We were not always visible to them, but of an evening, at the turn
+of the road, we would appear to them under forms often strange and
+weird, at times dignified and charming, and we adopted at will the
+appearance of a monster of the woods and waters, of a venerable old man,
+of a beautiful child, or of a woman with broad hips. Sometimes we would
+mock them in our songs or test their intelligence by some cunning
+prank. There were certain of us of a rather turbulent humour who loved
+to tease their women and children, but though lowly folk, they were our
+brothers, and we were never loath to come to their aid. Through our care
+their intelligence developed sufficiently to attain to mistaken ideas,
+and to acquire erroneous notions of the relations of cause and effect.
+As they supposed that some magic bond existed between the reality and
+its counterfeit presentment, they covered the walls of their caves with
+figures of animals and carved in ivory images of the reindeer and the
+mammoth in order to secure as prey the creatures they represented.
+Centuries passed by with infinite slowness while their genius was coming
+to birth. We sent them happy thoughts in dreams, inspired them to tame
+the horse, to castrate the bull, to teach the dog to guard the sheep.
+They created the family and the tribe. It came to pass one day that one
+of their wandering tribes was assailed by ferocious hunters. Forthwith
+the young men of the tribe formed an enclosed ring with their chariots,
+and in it they shut their women, children, old people, cattle, and
+treasures, and from the platform of their chariots they hurled murderous
+stones at their assailants. Thus was formed the first city. Born in
+misery and condemned to do murder by the law of Iahveh, man put his
+whole heart into doing battle, and to war he was indebted for his
+noblest virtues. He hallowed with his blood that sacred love of country
+which should (if man fulfils his destiny to the very end) enfold the
+whole earth in peace. One of us, Dædalus, brought him the axe, the
+plumb-line, and the sail. Thus we rendered the existence of mortals less
+hard and difficult. By the shores of the lakes they built dwellings of
+osier, where they might enjoy a meditative quiet unknown to the other
+inhabitants of the earth, and when they had learned to appease their
+hunger without too painful efforts we breathed into their hearts the
+love of beauty.
+
+"They raised up pyramids, obelisks, towers, colossal statues which
+smiled stiff and uncouth, and genetic symbols. Having learnt to know us
+or trying at least to divine what manner of beings we were, they felt
+both friendship and fear for us. The wisest among them watched us with
+sacred awe and pondered our teaching. In their gratitude the people of
+Greece and of Asia consecrated to us stones, trees, shadowy woods;
+offered us victims, and sang us hymns; in fact we became gods in their
+sight, and they called us Horus, Isis, Astarte, Zeus, Cybele, Demeter,
+and Triptolemus. Satan was worshipped under the names of Evan, Dionysus,
+Iacchus, and Lenæus. He showed in his various manifestations all the
+strength and beauty which it is given to mortals to conceive. His eyes
+had the sweetness of the wood-violet, his lips were brilliant with the
+ruby-red of the pomegranate, a down finer than the velvet of the peach
+covered his cheeks and his chin: his fair hair, wound like a diadem and
+knotted loosely on the crown of his head, was encircled with ivy. He
+charmed the wild beasts, and penetrating into the deep forests drew to
+him all wild spirits, every thing that climbed in trees and peered
+through the branches with wild and timid gaze. On all these creatures
+fierce and fearful, that lived on bitter berries and beneath whose hairy
+breasts a wild heart beat, half-human creatures of the woods--on all he
+bestowed loving-kindness and grace, and they followed him drunk with joy
+and beauty. He planted the vine and showed mortals how to crush the
+grapes underfoot to make the wine flow. Magnificent and benign, he fared
+across the world, a long procession following in his train. To bear him
+company I took the form of a satyr; from my brow sprang two budding
+horns. My nose was flat and my ears were pointed. Glands, like those of
+the goat, hung on my neck, a goat's tail moved with my moving loins, and
+my hairy legs ended in a black cloven hoof which beat the ground in
+cadence.
+
+"Dionysus fared on his triumphal march over the world. In his company I
+passed through Lydia, the Phrygian fields, the scorching plains of
+Persia, Media bristling with hoar-frost, Arabia Felix, and rich Asia
+where flourishing cities were laved by the waves of the sea. He
+proceeded on a car drawn by lions and lynxes, to the sound of flutes,
+cymbals, and drums, invented for his mysteries. Bacchantes, Thyades,
+and Mænads, girt with the dappled fawn-skin, waved the thyrsus encircled
+with ivy. He bore in his train the Satyrs, whose joyous troop I led,
+Sileni, Pans, and Centaurs. Under his feet flowers and fruit sprang to
+life, and striking the rocks with his wand he made limpid streams gush
+forth. In the month of the Vintage he visited Greece, and the villagers
+ran forth to meet him, stained with the green and ruddy juices of the
+plants, they wore masks of wood, or bark, or leaves; in their hands they
+bore earthen cups, and danced wanton dances. Their womenfolk, imitating
+the companions of the God, their heads wreathed with green smilax,
+fastened round their supple loins skins of fawn or goat. The virgins
+twined about their throats garlands of fig leaves, they kneaded cakes of
+flour, and bore the Phallus in the mystic basket. And the vine-dressers,
+all daubed with lees of wine, standing up in their wains and bandying
+mockery or abuse with the passers-by, invented Tragedy.
+
+"Truly, it was not in dreaming beside a fountain, but by dint of
+strenuous toil that Dionysus taught them to grow plants and to make them
+bring forth succulent fruits. And while he pondered the art of
+transforming the rough woodlanders into a race that should love music
+and submit to just laws, more than once over his brow, burning with the
+fire of enthusiasm, did melancholy and gloomy fever pass. But his
+profound knowledge and his friendship for mankind enabled him to triumph
+over every obstacle. O days divine! Beautiful dawn of life! We led the
+Bacchanals on the leafy summits of the mountains and on the yellow
+shores of the seas. The Naiads and the Oreads mingled with us at our
+play. Aphrodite at our coming rose from the foam of the sea to smile
+upon us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONTINUED
+
+
+"When men had learned to cultivate the earth, to herd cattle, to enclose
+their holy places within walls, and to recognise the gods by their
+beauty, I withdrew to that smiling land girdled with dark woods and
+watered by the Stymphalos, the Olbios, the Erymanthus, and the proud
+Crathis, swollen with the icy waters of the Styx, and there, in a green
+valley at the foot of a hill planted with arbutus, olive, and pine,
+beneath a cluster of white poplars and plane trees, by the side of a
+stream flowing with soft murmur amid tufted mastic trees, I sang to the
+shepherds and the nymphs of the birth of the world, the origin of fire,
+of the tenuous air, of water and of earth. I told them how primeval men
+had lived wretched and naked in the woods, before the ingenious spirits
+had taught them the arts; of God, too, I sang to them, and why they gave
+Dionysus Semele to mother, because his desire to befriend mankind was
+born amid the thunder.
+
+"It was not without effort that this people, more pleasing than all the
+others in the eyes of the gods, these happy Greeks, achieved good
+government and a knowledge of the arts. Their first temple was a hut
+composed of laurel branches; their first image of the gods, a tree;
+their first altar, a rough stone stained with the blood of Iphigenia.
+But in a short time they brought wisdom and beauty to a point that no
+nation had attained before them, that no nation has since approached.
+Whence comes it, Arcade, this solitary marvel on the earth? Wherefore
+did the sacred soil of Ionia and of Attica bring forth this incomparable
+flower? Because nor priesthood, nor dogma, nor revelation ever found a
+place there, because the Greeks never knew the jealous God.
+
+"It was his own grace, his own genius that the Greek enthroned and
+deified as his God, and when he raised his eyes to the heavens it was
+his own image that he saw reflected there. He conceived everything in
+due measure; and to his temples he gave perfect proportion. All therein
+was grace, harmony, symmetry, and wisdom; all were worthy of the
+immortals who dwelt within them and who under names of happy choice, in
+realised shapes, figured forth the genius of man. The columns which bore
+the marble architrave, the frieze and the cornice were touched with
+something human, which made them venerable; and sometimes one might see,
+as at Athens and at Delphi, beautiful young girls strong-limbed and
+radiant upstaying the entablature of treasure house and sanctuary. O
+days of splendour, harmony, and wisdom!
+
+"Dionysus resolved to repair to Italy, whither he was summoned under the
+name of Bacchus by a people eager to celebrate his mysteries. I took
+passage in his ship decked with tendrils of the vine, and landed under
+the eyes of the two brothers of Helen at the mouth of the yellow Tiber.
+Already under the teaching of the god, the inhabitants of Latium had
+learned to wed the vine to the young stripling elm. It was my pleasure
+to dwell at the foot of the Sabine hills in a valley crowned with trees
+and watered with pure springs. I gathered the verbena and the mallow in
+the meadows. The pale olive-trees twisting their perforated trunks on
+the slope of the hill gave me of their unctuous fruit. There I taught a
+race of men with square heads, who had not, like the Greeks, a fertile
+mind, but whose hearts were true, whose souls were patient, and who
+reverenced the gods. My neighbour, a rustic soldier, who for fifteen
+years had bowed under the burden of his haversack, had followed the
+Roman eagle over land and sea, and had seen the enemies of the sovereign
+people flee before him. Now he drove his furrow with his two red oxen,
+starred with white between their spreading horns, while beneath the
+cabin's thatch his spouse, chaste and sedate of mien, pounded garlic in
+a bronze mortar and cooked the beans upon the sacred hearth, And I, his
+friend, seated near by under an oak, used to lighten his labours with
+the sound of my flute, and smile on his little children, when the sun,
+already low in the sky, was lengthening the shadows, and they returned
+from the wood all laden with branches. At the garden gate where the
+pears and pumpkins ripened, and where the lily and the evergreen
+acanthus bloomed, a figure of Priapus carved out of the trunk of a fig
+tree menaced thieves with his formidable emblem, and the reeds swaying
+with the wind over his head scared away the plundering birds. At new
+moon the pious husbandman made offering of a handful of salt and barley
+to his household gods crowned with myrtle and with rosemary.
+
+"I saw his children grow up, and his children's children, who kept in
+their hearts their early piety and did not forget to offer sacrifice to
+Bacchus, to Diana, and to Venus, nor omit to pour fresh wines and
+scatter flowers into the fountains. But slowly they fell away from their
+old habits of patient toil and simplicity.
+
+"I heard them complain when the torrent, swollen with many rains,
+compelled them to construct a dyke to protect the paternal fields, and
+the rough Sabine wine grew unpleasing to their delicate palate. They
+went to drink the wines of Greece at the neighbouring tavern; and the
+hours slipped unheeded by, while within the arbour shade they watched
+the dance of the flute player, practised at swaying her supple limbs to
+the sound of the castanets.
+
+"Lulled by murmuring leaves and whispering streams, the tillers of the
+soil took sweet repose, but between the poplars we saw along borders of
+the sacred way vast tombs, statues, and altars arise, and the rolling of
+the chariot wheels grew more frequent over the worn stones. A cherry
+sapling brought home by a veteran told us of the far-distant conquests
+of a Consul, and odes sung to the lyre related the victories of Rome,
+mistress of the world.
+
+"All the countries where the great Dionysus had journeyed, changing wild
+beasts into men, and making the fruit and grain bloom and ripen beneath
+the passing of his Mænads, now breathed the Pax Romana. The nursling of
+the she-wolf, soldier and labourer, friend of conquered nations, laid
+out roads from the margin of the misty sea to the rocky slopes of the
+Caucasus; in every town rose the temple of Augustus and of Rome, and
+such was the universal faith in Latin justice that in the gorges of
+Thessaly or on the wooded borders of the Rhine, the slave, ready to
+succumb under his iniquitous burden, called aloud on the name of Cæsar.
+
+"But why must it be that on this ill-starred globe of land and water,
+all should perish and die and the fairest things be ever the most
+fleeting? O adorable daughters of Greece! O Science! O Wisdom! O
+Beauty! kindly divinities, you were wrapt in heavy slumber ere you
+submitted to the outrages of the barbarians, who already in the marshy
+wastes of the North and on the lonely steppes, ready to assail you,
+bestrode bare-backed their little shaggy horses.
+
+"While, dear Arcade, the patient legionary camped by the borders of the
+Phasis and the Tanais, the women and the priests of Asia and of
+monstrous Africa invaded the Eternal City and troubled the sons of Remus
+with their magic spells. Until now, Iahveh, the persecutor of the
+laborious demons, was unknown to the world that he pretended to have
+created, save to certain miserable Syrian tribes, ferocious like
+himself, and perpetually dragged from servitude to servitude. Profiting
+by the Roman peace which assured free travel and traffic everywhere, and
+favoured the exchange of ideas and merchandise, this old God insolently
+made ready to conquer the Universe. He was not the only one, for the
+matter of that, to attempt such an undertaking. At the same time a crowd
+of gods, demiurges, and demons, such as Mithra, Thammuz, the good Isis,
+and Eubulus, meditated taking possession of the peace-enfolded world. Of
+all the spirits, Iahveh appeared the least prepared for victory. His
+ignorance, his cruelty, his ostentation, his Asiatic luxury, his disdain
+of laws, his affectation of rendering himself invisible, all these
+things were calculated to offend those Greeks and Latins who had
+absorbed the teaching of Dionysus and the Muses. He himself felt he was
+incapable of winning the allegiance of free men and of cultivated minds,
+and he employed cunning. To seduce their souls he invented a fable
+which, although not so ingenious as the myths wherewith we have
+surrounded the spirits of our disciples of old, could, nevertheless,
+influence those feebler intellects which are to be found everywhere in
+great masses. He declared that men having committed a crime against him,
+an hereditary crime, should pay the penalty for it in their present life
+and in the life to come (for mortals vainly imagine that their existence
+is prolonged in hell); and the astute Iahveh gave out that he had sent
+his own son to earth to redeem with his blood the debt of mankind. It is
+not credible that a penalty should redress a fault, and it is still less
+credible that the innocent should pay for the guilty. The sufferings of
+the innocent atone for nothing, and do but add one evil to another.
+Nevertheless, unhappy creatures were found to adore Iahveh and his son,
+the expiator, and to announce their mysteries as good tidings. We should
+not be surprised at this folly. Have we not seen many times indeed human
+beings who, poor and naked, prostrate themselves before all the phantoms
+of fear, and rather than follow the teaching of well-disposed demons,
+obey the commandments of cruel demiurges? Iahveh, by his cunning, took
+souls as in a net. But he did not gain therefrom, for his glorification,
+all that he expected. It was not he, but his son, who received the
+homage of mankind, and who gave his name to the new cult. He himself
+remained almost unknown upon earth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONTINUED
+
+
+"The new superstition spread at first over Syria and Africa; it won over
+the seaports where the filthy rabble swarm, and, penetrating into Italy,
+infected at first the courtesans and the slaves, and then made rapid
+progress among the middle classes of the towns. But for a long while the
+country-side remained undisturbed. As in the past, the villagers
+consecrated a pine tree to Diana, and sprinkled it every year with the
+blood of a young boar; they propitiated their Lares with the sacrifice
+of a sow, and offered to Bacchus--benefactor of mankind--a kid of
+dazzling whiteness, or if they were too poor for this, at least they had
+a little wine and a little flour from the vineyard and from the fields
+for their household gods. We had taught them that it sufficed to
+approach the altar with clean hands, and that the gods rejoiced over a
+modest offering.
+
+"Nevertheless, the reign of Iahveh proclaimed its advent in a hundred
+places by its extravagances. The Christians burnt books, overthrew
+temples, set fire to the towns, and carried on their ravages as far as
+the deserts. There, thousands of unhappy beings, turning their fury
+against themselves, lacerated their sides with points of steel. And from
+the whole earth the sighs of voluntary victims rose up to God like songs
+of praise.
+
+"My shadowy retreat could not escape for long from the fury of their
+madness.
+
+"On the summit of the hill which overlooked the olive woods, brightened
+daily with the sounds of my flute, had stood since the earliest days of
+the Pax Romana, a small marble temple, round as the huts of our
+forefathers. It had no walls, but on a base of seven steps, sixteen
+columns rose in a circle with the acanthus on the capitals, bearing a
+cupola of white tiles. This cupola sheltered a statue of Love fashioning
+his bow, the work of an Athenian sculptor. The child seemed to breathe,
+joy was welling from his lips, all his limbs were harmonious and
+polished. I honoured this image of the most powerful of all the gods,
+and I taught the villagers to bear to him as an offering a cup crowned
+with verbena and filled with wine two summers old.
+
+"One day, when seated as my custom was at the feet of the god, pondering
+precepts and songs, an unknown man, wild-looking, with unkempt hair,
+approached the temple, sprang at one bound up the marble steps, and with
+savage glee exclaimed:
+
+"'Die, poisoner of souls, and joy and beauty perish with you.' He spoke
+thus, and drawing an axe from his girdle raised it against the god. I
+stayed his arm, I threw him down, and trampled him under my feet.
+
+"'Demon,' he cried desperately, 'suffer me to overturn this idol, and
+you may slay me afterwards.'
+
+"I heeded not his atrocious plea, but leaned with all my might on his
+chest, which cracked under my knee, and, squeezing his throat with my
+two hands, I strangled the impious one.
+
+"While he lay there, with purple face and lolling tongue, at the feet of
+the smiling god, I went to purify myself at the sacred stream. Then
+leaving this land, now the prey of the Christian, I passed through Gaul
+and gained the banks of the Saône, whither Dionysus had, in days gone
+by, carried the vine. The god of the Christians had not yet been
+proclaimed to this happy people. They worshipped for its beauty a leafy
+beech-tree, whose honoured branches swept the ground, and they hung
+fillets of wool thereon. They also worshipped a sacred stream and set up
+images of clay in a dripping grotto. They made offering of little
+cheeses and a bowl of milk to the Nymphs of the woods and mountains.
+
+"But soon an apostle of sorrow was sent to them by the new God. He was
+drier than a smoked fish. Although attenuated with fasting and watching,
+he taught with unabated ardour all manner of gloomy mysteries. He loved
+suffering, and thought it good; his anger fell upon all that was
+beautiful, comely, and joyous. The sacred tree fell beneath his hatchet.
+He hated the Nymphs, because they were beautiful, and he flung
+imprecations at them when their shining limbs gleamed among the leaves
+at evening, and he held my melodious flute in aversion. The poor wretch
+thought that there were certain forms of words wherewith to put to
+flight the deathless spirits that dwell in the cool groves, and in the
+depths of the woods and on the tops of the mountains. He thought to
+conquer us with a few drops of water over which he had pronounced
+certain words and made certain gestures. The Nymphs, to avenge
+themselves, appeared to him at nightfall and inflamed him with desire
+which the foolish knave thought animal; then they fled, their laughter
+scattered like grain over the fields, while their victim lay tossing
+with burning limbs on his couch of leaves. Thus do the divine nymphs
+laugh at exorcisers, and mock the wicked and their sordid chastity.
+
+"The apostle did not do as much harm as he wished, because his teaching
+was given to the simple souls living in obedience to Nature, and because
+the mediocrity of most of mankind is such that they gain but little from
+the principles inculcated in them. The little wood in which I dwelt
+belonged to a Gaul of senatorial family, who retained some traces of
+Latin elegance. He loved his young freed-woman and shared with her his
+bed of broidered purple. His slaves cultivated his garden and his
+vineyard; he was a poet and sang, in imitation of Ausonius, Venus
+whipping her son with roses. Although a Christian, he offered me milk,
+fruit, and vegetables as if I were the genius of the place. In return I
+charmed his idle moments with the music of my flute, and I gave him
+happy dreams. In fact, these peaceful Gauls knew very little of Iahveh
+and his son.
+
+"But now behold fires looming on the horizon, and ashes driven by the
+wind fall within our forest glades. Peasants come driving a long file of
+waggons along the roads or urging their flocks before them. Cries of
+terror rise from the villages, 'The Burgundians are upon us!'
+
+"Now one horseman is seen, lance in hand, clad in shining bronze, his
+long red hair falling in two plaits on his shoulders. Then come two,
+then twenty, then thousands, wild and blood-stained; old men and
+children they put to the sword, ay, even aged grandams whose grey hairs
+cleave to the soles of the slaughterer's boots, mingled with the brains
+of babes new-born. My young Gaul and his young freed-woman stain with
+their blood the couch broidered with narcissi. The barbarians burn the
+basilicas to roast their oxen whole, shatter the amphoræ, and drain the
+wine in the mud of the flooded cellars. Their women accompany them,
+huddled, half naked, in their war chariots. When the Senate, the
+dwellers in the cities, and the leaders of the churches had perished in
+the flames, the Burgundians, soddened with wine, lay down to slumber
+beneath the arcades of the Forum. Two weeks later one of them might have
+been seen smiling in his shaggy beard at the little child whom, on the
+threshold of their dwelling, his fair-haired spouse gathers in her arms;
+while another, kindling the fire of his forge, hammers out his iron with
+measured stroke; another sings beneath the oak tree to his assembled
+comrades of the gods and heroes of his race; and yet others spread out
+for sale stones fallen from Heaven, aurochs' horns, and amulets. And the
+former inhabitants of the country, regaining courage little by little,
+crept from the woods where they had fled for refuge, and returned to
+rebuild their burnt-down cabins, plough their fields, and prune their
+vines.
+
+"Once more life resumed its normal course; but those times were the most
+wretched that mankind had yet experienced. The barbarians swarmed over
+the whole Empire. Their ways were uncouth, and as they nurtured feelings
+of vengeance and greed, they firmly believed in the ransom of sin.
+
+"The fable of Iahveh and his son pleased them, and they believed it all
+the more easily in that it was taught them by the Romans whom they knew
+to be wiser than themselves, and to whose arts and mode of life they
+yielded secret admiration. Alas! the heritage of Greece and Rome had
+fallen into the hands of fools. All knowledge was lost. In those days it
+was held to be a great merit to sing among the choir, and those who
+remembered a few sentences from the Bible passed for prodigious
+geniuses. There were still poets as there were birds, but their verse
+went lame in every foot. The ancient demons, the good genii of mankind,
+shorn of their honours, driven forth, pursued, hunted down, remained
+hidden in the woods. There, if they still showed themselves to men, they
+adopted, to hold them in awe, a terrible face, a red, green, or black
+skin, baleful eyes, an enormous mouth fringed with boars' teeth, horns,
+a tail, and sometimes a human face on their bellies. The nymphs remained
+fair, and the barbarians, ignorant of the winsome names they bore in
+other days, called them fairies, and, imputing to them a capricious
+character and puerile tastes, both feared and loved them.
+
+"We had suffered a grievous fall, and our ranks were sadly thinned;
+nevertheless we did not lose courage and, maintaining a laughing aspect
+and a benevolent spirit, we were in those direful days the real friends
+of mankind. Perceiving that the barbarians grew daily less sombre and
+less ferocious, we lent ourselves to the task of conversing with them
+under all sorts of disguises. We incited them, with a thousand
+precautions, and by prudent circumlocutions, not to acknowledge the old
+Iahveh as an infallible master, not blindly to obey his orders, and not
+to fear his menaces. When need was, we had recourse to magic. We
+exhorted them unceasingly to study nature and to strive to discover the
+traces of ancient wisdom.
+
+"These warriors from the North--rude though they were--were acquainted
+with some mechanical arts. They thought they saw combats in the heavens;
+the sound of the harp drew tears from their eyes; and perchance they had
+souls capable of greater things than the degenerate Gauls and Romans
+whose lands they had invaded. They knew not how to hew stone or to
+polish marble; but they caused porphyry and columns to be brought from
+Rome and from Ravenna; their chief men took for their seal a gem
+engraved by a Greek in the days when Beauty reigned supreme. They raised
+walls with bricks, cunningly arranged like ears of corn, and succeeded
+in building quite pleasing-looking churches with cornices upheld by
+consoles depicting grim faces, and heavy capitals whereon were
+represented monsters devouring one another.
+
+"We taught them letters and sciences. A mouthpiece of their god, one
+Gerbert, took lessons in physics, arithmetic, and music with us, and it
+was said that he had sold us his soul. Centuries passed, and man's ways
+remained violent. It was a world given up to fire and blood. The
+successors of the studious Gerbert, not content with the possession of
+souls (the profits one gains thereby are lighter than air), wished to
+possess bodies also. They pretended that their universal and
+prescriptive monarchy was held from a fisherman on the lake of Tiberias.
+One of them thought for a moment to prevail over the loutish Germanus,
+successor to Augustus. But finally the spiritual had to come to terms
+with the temporal, and the nations were torn between two opposing
+masters.
+
+"Nations took shape amid horrible tumult. On every side were wars,
+famines, and internecine conflicts. Since they attributed the
+innumerable ills that fell upon them to their God, they called him the
+Most Good, not by way of irony, but because to them the best was he who
+smote the hardest. In those days of violence, to give myself leisure for
+study I adopted a _rôle_ which may surprise you, but which was
+exceedingly wise.
+
+"Between the Saône and the mountains of Charolais, where the cattle
+pasture, there lies a wooded hill sloping gently down to fields watered
+by a clear stream. There stood a monastery celebrated throughout the
+Christian world. I hid my cloven feet under a robe and became a monk in
+this Abbey, where I lived peacefully, sheltered from the men at arms who
+to friend or foe alike showed themselves equally exacting. Man, who had
+relapsed into childhood, had all his lessons to learn over again.
+Brother Luke, whose cell was next to mine, studied the habits of animals
+and taught us that the weasel conceives her young within her ear. I
+culled simples in the fields wherewith to soothe the sick, who until
+then were made by way of treatment to touch the relics of saints. In the
+Abbey were several demons similar to myself whom I recognised by their
+cloven feet and by their kindly speech. We joined forces in our
+endeavours to polish the rough mind of the monks.
+
+"While the little children played at hop-scotch under the Abbey walls
+our friends the monks devoted themselves to another game equally
+unprofitable, at which, nevertheless, I joined them, for one must kill
+time,--that, when one comes to think of it, is the sole business of
+life. Our game was a game of words which pleased our coarse yet subtle
+minds, set school fulminating against school, and put all Christendom in
+an uproar. We formed ourselves into two opposing camps. One camp
+maintained that before there were apples there was the Apple; that
+before there were popinjays there was the Popinjay; that before there
+were lewd and greedy monks there was the Monk, Lewdness and Greed; that
+before there were feet and before there were posteriors in this world
+the kick in the posterior must have had existence for all eternity in
+the bosom of God. The other camp replied that, on the contrary, apples
+gave man the idea of the apple; popinjays the idea of the popinjay;
+monks the idea of the monk, greed and lewdness, and that the kick in the
+posterior existed only after having been duly given and received. The
+players grew heated and came to fisticuffs. I was an adherent of the
+second party, which satisfied my reason better, and which was, in fact,
+condemned by the Council of Soissons.
+
+"Meanwhile, not content with fighting among themselves, vassal against
+suzerain, suzerain against vassal, the great lords took it into their
+heads to go and fight in the East. They said, as well as I can remember,
+that they were going to deliver the tomb of the son of God.
+
+"They said so, but their adventurous and covetous spirit excited them to
+go forth and seek lands, women, slaves, gold, myrrh, and incense. These
+expeditions, need it be said, proved disastrous; but our thick-headed
+compatriots brought back with them the knowledge of certain crafts and
+oriental arts and a taste for luxury. Henceforth we had less difficulty
+in making them work and in putting them in the way of inventions. We
+built wonderfully beautiful churches, with daringly pierced arches,
+lancet-shaped windows, high towers, thousands of pointed spires, which,
+rising in the sky towards Iahveh, bore at one and the same time the
+prayers of the humble and the threats of the proud, for it was all as
+much our doing as the work of men's hands; and it was a strange sight to
+see men and demons working together at a cathedral, each one sawing,
+polishing, collecting stones, graving, on capital and on cornice,
+nettles, thorns, thistles, wild parsley, and wild strawberry,--carving
+faces of virgins and saints and weird figures of serpents, fishes with
+asses' heads, apes scratching their buttocks; each one, in fact, putting
+his own particular talent,--mocking, sublime, grotesque, modest, or
+audacious,--into the work and making of it all a harmonious cacophony, a
+rapturous anthem of joy and sorrow, a Babel of victory. At our
+instigation the carvers, the gold-smiths, the enamellers, accomplished
+marvels and all the sumptuary arts flourished at once; there were silks
+at Lyons, tapestries at Arras, linen at Rheims, cloth at Rouen. The good
+merchants rode on their palfreys to the fairs, bearing pieces of velvet
+and brocade, embroideries, orfrays, jewels, vessels of silver, and
+illuminated books. Strollers and players set up their trestles in the
+churches and in the public squares, and represented, according to their
+lights, simple chronicles of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Women decked
+themselves in splendid raiment and lisped of love.
+
+"In the spring when the sky was blue, nobles and peasants were possessed
+with the desire to make merry in the flower-strewn meadows. The fiddler
+tuned his instrument, and ladies, knights and demoiselles, townsfolk,
+villagers and maidens, holding hands, began the dance. But suddenly War,
+Pestilence, and Famine entered the circle, and Death, tearing the violin
+from the fiddler's hands, led the dance. Fire devoured village and
+monastery. The men-at-arms hanged the peasants on the sign-posts at the
+cross-roads when they were unable to pay ransom, and bound pregnant
+women to tree-trunks, where at night the wolves came and devoured the
+fruit within the womb. The poor people lost their senses. Sometimes,
+peace being re-established, and good times come again, they were seized
+with mad, unreasoning terror, abandoned their homes, and rushed hither
+and thither in troops, half naked, tearing themselves with iron hooks,
+and singing. I do not accuse Iahveh and his son of all this evil. Many
+ill things occurred without him and even in spite of him. But where I
+recognise the instigation of the All Good (as they called him) was in
+the custom instituted by his pastors, and established throughout
+Christendom, of burning, to the sound of bells and the singing of
+psalms, both men and women who, taught by the demons, professed,
+concerning this God, opinions of their own."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONCLUDED
+
+
+"It seemed as if science and thought had perished for all eternity, and
+that the earth would never again know peace, joy, and beauty.
+
+"But one day, under the walls of Rome, some workmen, excavating the
+earth on the borders of an ancient road, found a marble sarcophagus
+which bore carved on its sides simulacra of Love and the triumphs of
+Bacchus.
+
+"The lid being raised, a maiden appeared whose face shone with dazzling
+freshness. Her long hair spread over her white shoulders, she was
+smiling in her sleep. A band of citizens, thrilled with enthusiasm,
+raised the funeral couch and bore it to the Capitol. The people came in
+crowds to contemplate the ineffable beauty of the Roman maiden and stood
+around in silence, watching for the awakening of the divine soul held
+within this form of adorable beauty.
+
+"And it came to pass that the City was so greatly stirred by this
+spectacle that the Pope, fearing, not without reason, the birth of a
+pagan cult from this radiant body, caused it to be removed at night and
+secretly buried. The precaution was vain, the labour fruitless. After so
+many centuries of barbarism, the beauty of the antique world had
+appeared for a moment before the eyes of men; it was long enough for its
+image, graven on their hearts, to inspire them with an ardent desire to
+love and to know.
+
+"Henceforth, the star of the God of the Christians paled and sloped to
+its decline. Bold navigators discovered worlds inhabited by numerous
+races who knew not old Iahveh, and it was suspected that he was no less
+ignorant of them, since he had given them no news of himself or of his
+son the expiator. A Polish Canon demonstrated the true motions of the
+earth, and it was seen that, far from having created the world, the old
+demiurge of Israel had not even an inkling of its structure. The
+writings of philosophers, orators, jurisconsults, and ancient poets were
+dragged from the dust of the cloisters and passing from hand to hand
+inspired men's minds with the love of wisdom. The Vicar of the jealous
+God, the Pope himself, no longer believed in Him whom he represented on
+earth. He loved the arts and had no other care than to collect ancient
+statues and to rear sumptuous buildings wherein were displayed the
+orders of Vitruvius re-established by Bramante. We began to breathe
+anew. Already the old gods, recalled from their long exile, were
+returning to dwell upon earth. There they found once more their temples
+and their altars. Leo, placing at their feet the ring, the three crowns,
+and the keys, offered them in secret the incense of sacrifices. Already
+Polyhymnia, leaning on her elbow, had begun to resume the golden thread
+of her meditations; already, in the gardens, the comely Graces and the
+Nymphs and Satyrs were weaving their mazy dances, and at length the
+earth had joy once more within its grasp. But, O calamity, unlucky
+fate,--most tragic circumstance! A German monk, all swollen with beer
+and theology, rose up against this renaissance of paganism, hurled
+menaces against it, shattered it, and prevailed single handed against
+the Princes of the Church. Inciting the nations, he called upon them to
+undertake a reform which saved that which was about to be destroyed.
+Vainly did the cleverest among us try to turn him from his work. A
+subtle demon, on earth called Beelzebub, marked him out for attack, now
+embarrassing him with learned controversial argument, now tormenting him
+with cruel mockery. The stubborn monk hurled his ink-pot at his head and
+went on with his dismal reformation. What ultimately happened? The
+sturdy mariner repaired, calked, and refloated the damaged ship of the
+Church. Jesus Christ owes it to this shaveling that his shipwreck was
+delayed for perhaps more than ten centuries. Henceforth things went from
+bad to worse. In the wake of this loutish monk, this beer-swiller and
+brawler, came that tall, dry doctor from Geneva, who, filled with the
+spirit of the ancient Iahveh, strove to bring the world back again to
+the abominable days of Joshua and the Judges of Israel. A maniac was he,
+filled with cold fury, a heretic and a burner of heretics, the most
+ferocious enemy of the Graces.
+
+"These mad apostles and their mad disciples made even demons like
+myself, even the horned devils, look back longingly on the time when the
+Son with his Virgin Mother reigned over the nations dazzled with
+splendours: cathedrals with their stone tracery delicate as lace,
+flaming roses of stained glass, frescoes painted in vivid colours
+telling countless wondrous tales, rich orfrays, glittering enamel of
+shrines and reliquaries, gold of crosses and of monstrances, waxen
+tapers gleaming like starry galaxies amid the gloom of vaulted arches,
+organs with their deep-toned harmonies. All this doubtless was not the
+Parthenon, nor yet the Panathenæa, but it gladdened eyes and hearts; it
+was, at all events, beauty. And these cursed reformers would not suffer
+anything either pleasing or lovable. You should have seen them climbing
+in black swarms over doorways, plinths, spires, and bell-towers,
+striking with senseless hammers those images in stone which the demons
+had carved working hand in hand with the master designers, those genial
+saints and dear, holy women, and the touching idols of Virgin Mothers
+pressing their suckling to their heart. For, to be just, a little
+agreeable paganism had slipped into the cult of the jealous God. These
+monsters of heretics were for extirpating idolatry. We did our best, my
+companions and I, to hamper their horrible work, and I, for one, had the
+pleasure of flinging down some dozens from the top of the porches and
+galleries on to the Cathedral Square, where their detestable brains got
+knocked out. The worst of it was that the Catholic Church also reformed
+herself and grew more mischievous than ever. In the pleasant land of
+France, the seminarists and the monks were inflamed with unheard-of fury
+against the ingenious demons and the men of learning. My prior was one
+of the most violent opponents of sound knowledge. For some time past my
+studious lucubrations had caused him anxiety, and perhaps he had caught
+sight of my cloven foot. The scoundrel searched my cell and found paper,
+ink, some Greek books newly printed, and some Pan-pipes hanging on the
+wall. By these signs he knew me for an evil spirit and had me thrown
+into a dungeon where I should have eaten the bread of suffering and
+drunk the waters of bitterness, had I not promptly made my escape by the
+window and sought refuge in the wooded groves among the Nymphs and the
+Fauns.
+
+"Far and wide the lighted pyres cast the odour of charred flesh.
+Everywhere there were tortures, executions, broken bones, and tongues
+cut out. Never before had the spirit of Iahveh breathed forth such
+atrocious fury. However, it was not altogether in vain that men had
+raised the lid of the ancient sarcophagus and gazed upon the Roman
+Virgin.
+
+"During this time of great terror when Papists and Reformers rivalled
+one another in violence and cruelty, amidst all these scenes of torture,
+the mind of man was regaining strength and courage. It dared to look up
+to the heavens, and there it saw, not the old Jew drunk with vengeance,
+but Venus Urania, tranquil and resplendent. Then a new order of things
+was born, then the great centuries came into being. Without publicly
+denying the god of their ancestors, men of intellect submitted to his
+mortal enemies, Science and Reason, and Abbé Gassendi relegated him
+gently to the far-distant abyss of first causes. The kindly demons who
+teach and console unhappy mortals, inspired the great minds of those
+days with discourses of all kinds, with comedies and tales told in the
+most polished fashion. Women invented conversation, the art of intimate
+letter-writing, and politeness. Manners took on a sweetness and a
+nobility unknown to preceding ages. One of the finest minds of that age
+of reason, the amiable Bernier, wrote one day to St. Evremond: 'It is a
+great sin to deprive oneself of a pleasure.' And this pronouncement
+alone should suffice to show the progress of intelligence in Europe. Not
+that there had not always been Epicureans but, unlike Bernier, Chapelle,
+and Molière, they had not the consciousness of their talent.
+
+"Then even the very devotees understood Nature. And Racine, fierce bigot
+that he was, knew as well as such an atheistical physician as Guy Patin,
+how to attribute to divers states of the organs the passions which
+agitate mankind.
+
+"Even in my abbey, whither I had returned after the turmoil, and which
+sheltered only the ignorant and the shallow thinker, a young monk, less
+of a dunce than the rest, confided to me that the Holy Spirit expresses
+itself in bad Greek to humiliate the learned.
+
+"Nevertheless, theology and controversy were still raging in this
+society of thinkers. Not far from Paris in a shady valley there were to
+be seen solitary beings known as 'les Messieurs,' who called themselves
+disciples of St. Augustine, and argued with honest conviction that the
+God of the Scriptures strikes those who fear Him, spares those who
+confront Him, holds works of no account, and damns--should He so wish
+it--His most faithful servant; for His justice is not our justice, and
+His ways are incomprehensible.
+
+"One evening I met one of these gentlemen in his garden, where he was
+pacing thoughtfully among the cabbage-plots and lettuce-beds. I bowed
+my horned head before him and murmured these friendly words: 'May old
+Jehovah protect you, sir. You know him well. Oh, how well you know him,
+and how perfectly you have understood his character.' The holy man
+thought he discerned in me a messenger from Hell, concluded he was
+eternally damned, and died suddenly of fright.
+
+"The following century was the century of philosophy. The spirit of
+research was developed, reverence was lost; the pride of the flesh was
+diminished and the mind acquired fresh energy. Manners took on an
+elegance until then unknown. On the other hand, the monks of my order
+grew more and more ignorant and dirty, and the monastery no longer
+offered me any advantage now that good manners reigned in the town. I
+could bear it no longer. Flinging my habit to the nettles, I put a
+powdered wig on my horned brow, hid my goat's legs under white
+stockings, and cane in hand, my pockets stuffed with gazettes, I
+frequented the fashionable world, visited the modish promenades, and
+showed myself assiduously in the _cafés_ where men of letters were to be
+found. I was made welcome in _salons_ where, as a happy novelty, there
+were arm-chairs that fitted the form, and where both men and women
+engaged in rational conversation.
+
+"The very metaphysicians spoke intelligibly. I acquired great weight in
+the town as an authority on matters of exegesis, and, without boasting,
+I was largely responsible for the Testament of the curé Meslier and _The
+Bible Explained_, brought out by the chaplains to the King of Prussia.
+
+"At this time a comic and cruel misadventure befel the ancient Iahveh.
+An American Quaker, by means of a kite, stole his thunderbolts.
+
+"I was living in Paris, and was at the supper where they talked of
+strangling the last of the priests with the entrails of the last of the
+kings. France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution broke out. The
+ephemeral leaders of the disordered State carried on a Reign of Terror
+amidst unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part, less pitiless
+and less cruel than the princes and judges instituted by Iahveh in the
+kingdoms of the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious,
+because they gave judgment in the name of Humanity. Unhappily they were
+easily moved to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of sensibility
+are irritable and subject to fits of fury. They were virtuous; they had
+moral laws, that is to say they conceived certain narrowly defined moral
+obligations, and judged human actions not by their natural consequences
+but by abstract principles. Of all the vices which contribute to the
+undoing of a statesman, virtue is the most fatal; it leads to murder. To
+work effectively for the happiness of mankind, a man must be superior to
+all morals, like the divine Julius. God, so ill-used for some time
+past, did not, on the whole, suffer excessively harsh treatment from
+these new men. He found protectors among them, and was adored under the
+name of the Supreme Being. One might even go so far as to say that
+terror created a diversion from philosophy and was profitable to the old
+demiurge, in that he appeared to represent order, public tranquillity,
+and the security of person and property.
+
+"While Liberty was coming to birth amid the storm, I lived at Auteuil,
+and visited Madame Helvetius, where freethinkers in every branch of
+intellectual activity were to be met with. Nothing could be rarer than a
+freethinker, even after Voltaire's day. A man who will face death
+without trembling dare not say anything out of the ordinary about
+morals. That very same respect for Humanity which prompts him to go
+forth to his death, makes him bow to public opinion. In those days I
+enjoyed listening to the talk of Volney, Cabanis, and Tracy. Disciples
+of the great Condillac, they regarded the senses as the origin of all
+our knowledge. They called themselves ideologists, were the most
+honourable people in the world, and grieved the vulgar minds by refusing
+them immortality. For the majority of people, though they do not know
+what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
+During the turmoil, our small philosophical society was sometimes
+disturbed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil by patrols of patriots.
+Condorcet, our great man, was an outlaw. I myself was regarded as
+suspect by the friends of the people, who, in spite of my rustic
+appearance and my frieze coat, believed me to be an aristocrat, and I
+confess that independence of thought is the proudest of all
+aristocracies.
+
+"One evening while I was stealthily watching the dryads of Boulogne, who
+gleamed amid the leaves like the moon rising above the horizon, I was
+arrested as a suspect, and put in prison. It was a pure
+misunderstanding; but the Jacobins of those days, like the monks whose
+place they had usurped, laid great stress on unity of obedience. After
+the death of Madame Helvetius our society gathered together in the
+_salon_ of Madame de Condorcet. Bonaparte did not disdain to chat with
+us sometimes.
+
+"Recognizing him to be a great man, we thought him an ideologist like
+ourselves. Our influence in the land was considerable. We used it in his
+favour, and urged him towards the Imperial throne, thinking to display
+to the world a second Marcus Aurelius. We counted on him to establish
+universal peace; he did not fulfil our expectations, and we were
+wrong-headed enough to be wroth with him for our own mistake.
+
+"Without any doubt he greatly surpassed all other men in quickness of
+intelligence, depth of dissimulation, and capacity for action. What
+made him an accomplished ruler was that he lived entirely in the present
+moment, and had no thoughts for anything beyond the immediate and actual
+reality. His genius was far-reaching and agile; his intelligence, vast
+in extent but common and vulgar in character, embraced humanity, but did
+not rise above it. He thought what every grenadier in the army thought;
+but he thought it with unprecedented force. He loved the game of chance,
+and it pleased him to tempt fortune by urging pigmies in their hundreds
+and thousands against each other. It was the game of a child as big as
+the world. He was too wily not to introduce old Iahveh into the
+game,--Iahveh, who was still powerful on earth, and who resembled him in
+his spirit of violence and domination. He threatened him, flattered him,
+caressed him, and intimidated him. He imprisoned his Vicar, of whom he
+demanded, with the knife at his throat, that rite of unction which,
+since the days of Saul of old, has bestowed might upon kings; he
+restored the worship of the demiurge, sang _Te Deums_ to him, and made
+himself known through him as God of the earth, in small catechisms
+scattered broadcast throughout the Empire. They united their thunders,
+and a fine uproar they made.
+
+"While Napoleon's amusements were throwing Europe into a turmoil, we
+congratulated ourselves on our wisdom, a little sad, withal, at seeing
+the era of philosophy ushered in with massacre, torture, and war. The
+worst is that the children of the century, fallen into the most
+distressing disorder, formed the conception of a literary and
+picturesque Christianity, which betokens a degeneracy of mind really
+unbelievable, and finally fell into Romanticism. War and Romanticism,
+what terrible scourges! And how pitiful to see these same people nursing
+a childish and savage love for muskets and drums! They did not
+understand that war, which trained the courage and founded the cities of
+barbarous and ignorant men, brings to the victor himself but ruin and
+misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are
+united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade.
+
+"Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others' throats, now that one and
+the same civilisation enfolds and unites them all!
+
+"I renounced all converse with these madmen and withdrew to this
+village, where I devoted myself to gardening. The peaches in my orchard
+remind me of the sun-kissed skin of the Mænads. For mankind I have
+retained my old friendship, a little admiration, and much pity, and I
+await, while cultivating this enclosure, that still distant day when the
+great Dionysus shall come, followed by his Fauns and his Bacchantes, to
+restore beauty and gladness to the world, and bring back the Golden Age.
+I shall fare joyously behind his car. And who knows if in that day of
+triumph mankind will be there for us to see? Who knows whether their
+worn-out race will not have already fulfilled its destiny, and whether
+other beings will not rise upon the ashes and ruins of what once was man
+and his genius? Who knows if winged beings will not have taken
+possession of the terrestrial empire? Even then the work of the good
+demons will not be ended,--they will teach a winged race arts and the
+joy of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE SHOWN THE INTERIOR OF A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP, AND
+     SEE HOW PÈRE GUINARDON'S GUILTY HAPPINESS IS MARRED BY THE
+     JEALOUSY OF A LOVE-LORN DAME
+
+
+Père Guinardon (as Zéphyrine had faithfully reported to Monsieur
+Sariette) smuggled out the pictures, furniture, and curios stored in his
+attic in the rue Princesse--his studio he called it--and used them to
+stock a shop he had taken in the rue de Courcelles. Thither he went to
+take up his abode, leaving Zéphyrine, with whom he had lived for fifty
+years, without a bed or a saucepan or a penny to call her own, except
+eighteenpence the poor creature had in her purse. Père Guinardon opened
+an old picture and curiosity shop, and in it he installed the fair
+Octavie.
+
+The shop-front presented an attractive appearance: there were Flemish
+angels in green copes, after the manner of Gérard David, a Salomé of the
+Luini school, a Saint Barbara in painted wood of French workmanship,
+Limoges enamel-work, Bohemian and Venetian glass, dishes from Urbino.
+There were specimens of English point-lace which, if her tale was true,
+had been presented to Zéphyrine, in the days of her radiant girlhood, by
+the Emperor Napoleon III. Within, there were golden articles that
+glinted in the shadows, while pictures of Christ, the Apostles,
+high-bred dames, and nymphs also presented themselves to the gaze. There
+was one canvas that was turned face to the wall so that it should only
+be looked at by connoisseurs; and connoisseurs are scarce. It was a
+replica of Fragonard's _Gimblette_, a brilliant painting that looked as
+if it had barely had time to dry. Papa Guinardon himself remarked on the
+fact. At the far end of the shop was a king-wood cabinet, the drawers of
+which were full of all manner of treasures: water-colours by Baudouin,
+eighteenth-century books of illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.
+
+But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem, the pearl of great price,
+stood upon an easel veiled from public view. It was a _Coronation of the
+Virgin_ by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in gold and blue
+and pink. Père Guinardon was asking a hundred thousand francs for it.
+Upon a Louis XV chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood a vase
+of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in hand. She, having left her
+glistering rags behind her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer
+presented the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt, but shone, rather,
+with the soft radiance and limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the
+delectation of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of Papa
+Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained alone in the shop all day,
+while the old fellow himself was up aloft working away at the deuce
+knows what picture. About five o'clock he used to come downstairs and
+have a chat with the habitués of the establishment.
+
+The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons, a thin, cadaverous
+man. A strand of hair issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
+and, broadening as it descended, shed upon his chin and chest torrents
+of snow in which he was for ever trailing his long, fleshless,
+gold-ringed fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning the loss of
+his wife, who had been carried off by consumption in the flower of her
+youth and beauty. Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
+to hold converse with the dead and in filling his lonely mansion with
+second-rate paintings. His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
+Another client who was a scarcely less frequent visitor to the shop was
+Monsieur Blancmesnil, a director of a large financial establishment. He
+was a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took no great interest
+in matters of art, and was perhaps an indifferent connoisseur, but, in
+his case, it was the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
+like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.
+
+Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations with her, a fact which
+Père Guinardon alone failed to perceive, for the old fellow was still
+young in his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Gaétan d'Esparvieu used
+to pay occasional visits to Père Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity,
+for he strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate "faker."
+
+And then that doughty swordsman, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec, also came
+to see the old antiquary on one occasion, and acquainted him with a plan
+he had on foot. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was getting up a little
+historical exhibition of small arms at the Petit Palais in aid of the
+fund for the education of the native children in Morocco and wanted Père
+Guinardon to lend him a few of the most valuable articles in his
+collection.
+
+"Our first idea," he said, "was to organise an exhibition to be called
+'The Cross and the Sword.' The juxtaposition of the two words will make
+the idea which has prompted our undertaking sufficiently clear to you.
+It was an idea pre-eminently patriotic and Christian which led us to
+associate the Sword, which is the symbol of Honour, with the Cross,
+which is the symbol of Salvation. It was hoped that our work would be
+graced by the distinguished patronage of the Minister of War and
+Monseigneur Cachepot. Unfortunately there were difficulties in the way,
+and the full realisation of the project had to be deferred. In the
+meantime we are limiting our exhibition to 'The Sword.' I have drawn up
+an explanatory note indicating the significance of the demonstration."
+
+Having delivered himself of these remarks, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec
+produced a pocket-case stuffed full of papers. Picking out from a medley
+of judgment summonses and other odds and ends a little piece of very
+crumpled paper, he exclaimed, "Ah, here it is," and proceeded to read as
+follows: "'The Sword is a fierce Virgin; it is _par excellence_ the
+Frenchman's weapon. And now, when patriotic sentiment, after suffering
+an all too protracted eclipse, is beginning to shine forth again more
+ardently than ever ...' and so forth; you see?"
+
+And he repeated his request for some really fine specimen to be placed
+in the most conspicuous position in the exhibition to be held on behalf
+of the little native children of Morocco, of which General d'Esparvieu
+was to be honorary President.
+
+Arms and armour were by no means Père Guinardon's strong point. He dealt
+principally in pictures, drawings, and books. But he was never to be
+taken unawares. He took down a rapier with a gilt colander-shaped hilt,
+a highly typical piece of workmanship of the Louis XIII-Napoleon III
+period, and presented it to the exhibition promoter, who, while
+contemplating it with respect, maintained a diplomatic silence.
+
+"I have something better still in here," said the antiquary, and he
+produced from his inner shop--where it had been lying among the
+walking-sticks and umbrellas--a real demon of a sword, adorned with
+fleurs-de-lys, a genuine royal relic. It was the sword of
+Philippe-Auguste as worn by an actor at the _Odéon_ when _Agnès de
+Méranie_ was being performed in 1846. Guinardon held it point downwards,
+as though it were a cross, clasping his hands piously on the cross-bar.
+He looked as loyal as the sword itself.
+
+"Have her for your exhibition," said he. "The damsel is well worth it.
+Bouvines is her name."
+
+"If I find a buyer for it," said Monsieur Le True de Ruffec, twirling
+his enormous moustachios, "I suppose you will allow me a little
+commission?"
+
+Some days later, Père Guinardon was mysteriously displaying a picture to
+the Comte Desmaisons and Monsieur Blancmesnil. It was a newly discovered
+work of El Greco, an amazingly fine example of the Master's later style.
+It represented a Saint Francis of Assisi standing erect upon Mont
+Alverno. He was mounting heavenward like a column of smoke, and was
+plunging into the regions of the clouds a monstrously narrow head that
+the distance rendered smaller still. In fine it was a real, very real,
+nay, too real El Greco. The two collectors were attentively
+scrutinizing the work, while Père Guinardon was belauding the depth of
+the shadows and the sublimity of the expression. He was raising his arms
+aloft to convey an idea of the greatness of Theotocopuli, who derived
+from Tintoretto, whom, however, he surpassed in loftiness by a hundred
+cubits.
+
+"He was chaste and pure and strong; a mystic, a visionary."
+
+Comte Desmaisons declared that El Greco was his favourite painter. In
+his inmost heart Blancmesnil was not so entirely struck with it.
+
+The door opened, and Monsieur Gaétan quite unexpectedly appeared on the
+scene.
+
+He gave a glance at the Saint Francis, and said:
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+Monsieur Blancmesnil, anxious to improve his knowledge, asked him what
+he thought of this artist who was now so much in vogue. Gaétan replied,
+glibly enough, that he did not regard El Greco as the eccentric, the
+madman that people used to take him for. It was rather his opinion that
+a defect of vision from which Theotocopuli suffered compelled him to
+deform his figures.
+
+"Being afflicted with astigmatism and strabismus," Gaétan went on, "he
+painted the things he saw exactly as he used to see them."
+
+Comte Desmaisons was not readily disposed to accept so natural an
+explanation, which, however, by its very simplicity, highly commended
+itself to Monsieur Blancmesnil.
+
+Père Guinardon, quite beside himself, exclaimed:
+
+"Are you going to tell me, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, that Saint John was
+astigmatic because he beheld a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with
+stars, with the moon about her feet; the Beast with seven heads and ten
+horns, and the seven angels robed in white linen that bore the seven
+cups filled with the wrath of the Living God?"
+
+"After all," said Monsieur Gaétan, by way of conclusion, "people are
+right in admiring El Greco if he had genius enough to impose his
+morbidity of vision upon them. By the same token, the contortions to
+which he subjects the human countenance may give satisfaction to those
+who love suffering,--a class more numerous than is generally supposed."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the Comte Desmaisons, stroking his luxuriant beard
+with his long, thin hand, "we must love those that love us. Suffering
+loves us and attaches itself to us. We must love it if life is to be
+supportable to us. In the knowledge of this truth lies the strength and
+value of Christianity. Alas! I do not possess the gift of Faith. It is
+that which drives me to despair."
+
+The old man thought of her for whom he had been mourning twenty years,
+and forthwith his reason left him, and his thoughts abandoned
+themselves unresistingly to the morbid imaginings of gentle and
+melancholy madness.
+
+Having, he said, made a study of psychic matters, and having, with the
+co-operation of a favourable medium, carried out experiments concerning
+the nature and duration of the soul, he had obtained some remarkable
+results, which, however, did not afford him complete satisfaction. He
+had succeeded in viewing the soul of his dead wife under the appearance
+of a transparent and gelatinous mass which bore not the slightest
+resemblance to his adored one. The most painful part about the whole
+experiment--which he had repeated over and over again--was that the
+gelatinous mass, which was furnished with a number of extremely slender
+tentacles, maintained them in constant motion in time to a rhythm
+apparently intended to make certain signs, but of what these movements
+were supposed to convey there was not the slightest clue.
+
+During the whole of this narrative Monsieur Blancmesnil had been
+whispering in a corner with the youthful Octavie, who sat mute and
+still, with her eyes on the ground.
+
+Now Zéphyrine had by no means made up her mind to resign her lover into
+the hands of an unworthy rival. She would often go round of a morning,
+with her shopping-basket on her arm, and prowl about outside the curio
+shop. Torn betwixt grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
+sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful of vitriol on the head
+of the faithless one; at others that she would fling herself at his
+feet, and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands. One day, as she
+was thus eyeing her Michel--her beloved but guilty Michel--she noticed
+through the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who was sitting with
+her embroidery at a table upon which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was
+swooning to death. Zéphyrine, in a transport of fury, brought down her
+umbrella on her rival's fair head, and called her a bitch and a trollop.
+Octavie fled in terror, and ran for the police, while Zéphyrine, beside
+herself with grief and love, kept digging away with her old gamp at the
+_Gimblette_ of Fragonard, the fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the
+virgins, the nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt off the Fra
+Angelico, shrieking all the while:
+
+"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the Beato Angelico, the
+Fragonard, the Gérard David, and the Baudouins--Guinardon painted the
+whole lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That Fra Angelico
+there, why I saw him painting it on my ironing-board, and that Gérard
+David he executed on an old midwife's sign-board. You and that bitch of
+yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you just as I'm doing for these
+pictures."
+
+And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector who, trembling all
+over, had hidden himself in the darkest corner of the shop, she called
+him to witness to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor. The
+police had simply to tear her out of the ruined shop. As she was being
+taken off to the station, followed by a great crowd of people, she
+raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice choked with sobs:
+
+"But don't you know Michel? If you knew him, you would understand that
+it is impossible to live without him. Michel! He is handsome and good
+and charming. He is a very god. He is Love itself. I love him! I love
+him! I love him! I have known men high up in the world--Dukes, Ministers
+of State, and higher still. Not one of them was worthy to clean the mud
+off Michel's boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE PERMITTED TO OBSERVE THE ADMIRABLE CHARACTER
+     OF BOUCHOTTE, WHO RESISTS VIOLENCE BUT YIELDS TO LOVE. AFTER
+     THAT LET NO ONE CALL THE AUTHOR A MISOGYNIST
+
+
+On coming away from the Baron Everdingen's, Prince Istar went to have a
+few oysters and a bottle of white wine at an eating-house in the Market.
+Then, being prudent as well as powerful, he paid a visit to his friend,
+Théophile Belais, for his pockets were full of bombs, and he wanted to
+secrete them in the musician's cupboard. The composer of _Aline, Queen
+of Golconda_ was not at home. However, the Kerûb found Bouchotte busily
+working up the rôle of Zigouille; for the young artiste was booked to
+play the principal part in _Les Apaches_, an operetta that was then
+being rehearsed in one of the big music halls. The part in question was
+that of a street-walker who by her obscene gestures lures a passer-by
+into a trap, and then, while her victim is being gagged and bound,
+repeats with fiendish cruelty the lascivious motions by which he had
+been led astray. The part required that she should appear both as mime
+and singer, and she was in a state of high enthusiasm about it.
+
+The accompanist had just left. Prince Istar seated himself at the piano,
+and Bouchotte resumed her task. Her movements were unseemly and
+delicious. Her tawny hair was flying in all directions in wild
+disordered curls; her skin was moist, it exhaled a scent of violets and
+alkaline salts which made the nostrils throb; even she herself felt the
+intoxication. Suddenly, inebriated with her intoxicating presence,
+Prince Istar arose, and with never a word or a look, caught her into his
+arms and drew her on to the couch, the little couch with the flowered
+tapestry which Théophile had procured at one of the big shops by
+promising to pay ten francs a month for a long term of years. Now Istar
+might have solicited Bouchotte's favours; he might have invited her to a
+rapid, and, withal, a mutual embrace, and, despite her preoccupation and
+excitement, she would not have refused him. But Bouchotte was a girl of
+spirit. The merest hint of coercion awoke all her untamable pride. She
+would consent of her own accord, yes; but be mastered, never! She would
+readily yield to love, curiosity, pity, to less than that even, but she
+would die rather than yield to force. Her surprise immediately gave
+place to fury. She fought her aggressor with all her heart and soul.
+
+With nails, to which fury lent an added edge, she tore at the cheeks and
+eyelids of the Kerûb, and, though he held her as in a vice, she arched
+herself so stiffly and made such excellent play with knee and elbow,
+that the human-headed bull, blinded with blood and rage, was sent
+crashing into the piano which gave forth a prolonged groan, while the
+bombs, tumbling out of his pockets, fell on the floor with a noise like
+thunder. And Bouchotte, with dishevelled locks, and one breast bare,
+beautiful and terrible, stood brandishing the poker over the prostrate
+giant, crying:
+
+"Be off with you, or I'll put your eyes out!"
+
+Prince Istar went to wash himself in the kitchen, and plunged his gory
+visage into a basin where some haricot beans lay soaking; then he
+withdrew without anger or resentment, for he had a noble soul.
+
+Scarcely had he gone when the door-bell rang. Bouchotte, calling upon
+the absent maid in vain, slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door
+herself. A young man, very correct in appearance and rather
+good-looking, bowed politely, and apologising for having to introduce
+himself, gave his name. It was Maurice d'Esparvieu.
+
+Maurice was still seeking his guardian angel. Upheld by a desperate
+hope, he sought him in the queerest places. He enquired for him at the
+houses of sorcerers, magicians, and thaumaturgists, who in filthy hovels
+lay bare the ineffable secrets of the future, and who, though masters
+of all the treasures of the earth, wear trousers without any seats to
+them, and eat pigs' brains. That very day, having been to a back street
+in Montmartre to consult a priest of Satan, who practised black magic by
+piercing waxen images, Maurice had gone on to Bouchotte's, having been
+sent by Madame de la Verdelière, who, being about to give a fête in aid
+of the fund for the Preservation of Country Churches, was anxious to
+secure Bouchotte's services, since she had suddenly become--no one knew
+why--a fashionable artiste.
+
+Bouchotte invited the visitor to sit down on the little flowered couch;
+at his request she seated herself beside him, and our young man of
+fashion explained to the singer what Madame de la Verdelière desired of
+her. The lady wished Bouchotte to sing one of those _apache_ songs which
+were giving such delight in the fashionable world. Unfortunately Madame
+de la Verdelière could only offer a very modest fee, one out of all
+proportion to the merits of the artiste, but then it was for a good
+cause.
+
+Bouchotte agreed to take part, and accepted the reduced fee with the
+accustomed liberality of the poor towards the rich and of artists
+towards society people. Bouchotte was not a selfish girl; the work for
+the preservation of country churches interested her. She remembered with
+sobs and tears her first communion, and she still retained her faith.
+When she passed by a church she wanted to enter it, especially in the
+evening. And so she did not love the Republic which had done its utmost
+to destroy both the Church and the Army. Her heart rejoiced to see the
+re-birth of national sentiment. France was lifting up her head. What was
+most applauded in the music halls were songs about the soldiers and the
+kind nuns. Meanwhile Maurice inhaled the odour of her tawny hair, the
+subtle bitter perfume of her body, all the odours of her person, and
+desire grew in him. He felt her near him on the little couch, very warm
+and very soft. He complimented the artiste on her great talent. She
+asked him what he liked best in all her repertory. He knew nothing about
+it, still he made replies that satisfied her. She had dictated them
+herself without knowing it. The vain creature spoke of her talent, of
+her success, as she wished others to speak of them. She never ceased
+talking of her triumphs, yet withal she was candour itself. Maurice in
+all sincerity praised Bouchotte's beauty, her fresh skin, her purity of
+line. She attributed this advantage to the fact that she never made up
+and never "put messes on her face." As to her figure, she admitted that
+there was enough everywhere and none too much, and to illustrate this
+assertion she passed her hand over all the contours of her charming
+body, rising lightly to follow the delightful curves on which she
+reposed.
+
+Maurice was quite moved by it. It began to grow dark; she offered to
+light up. He begged her to do nothing of the sort.
+
+Their talk, at first gay and full of laughter, grew more intimate and
+very sweet, with a certain languor in its tone. It seemed to Bouchotte
+that she had known Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu for a long time, and
+holding him for a man of delicacy, she gave him her confidence. She told
+him that she was by nature a good woman, but that she had had a grasping
+and unscrupulous mother. Maurice recalled her to the consideration of
+her own beauty, and exalted by subtle flattery the excellent opinion she
+had of herself. Patient and calculating, in spite of the burning desire
+growing in him, he aroused and increased in the desired one the longing
+to be still further admired. The dressing-gown opened and slipped down
+of its own accord, the living satin of her shoulders gleamed in the
+mysterious light of evening. He--so prudent, so clever, so adroit,--let
+her sink in his arms, ardent and half swooning before she had even
+perceived she had granted anything at all. Their breath and their
+murmurs intermingled. And the little flowery couch sighed in sympathy
+with them.
+
+When they recovered the power to express their feelings in words, she
+whispered in his ear that his cheek was even softer than her own.
+
+He answered, holding her embraced:
+
+"It is charming to hold you like this. One would think you had no
+bones."
+
+She replied, closing her eyes:
+
+"It is because I love you. Love seems to dissolve my bones; it makes me
+as soft and melting as a pig's foot _à la Ste. Menebould_."
+
+Hereupon Théophile came in, and Bouchotte called upon him to thank
+Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had been amiable enough to be the
+bearer of a handsome offer from Madame la Comtesse de la Verdelière.
+
+The musician was happy, feeling the quiet and peace of the house after a
+day of fruitless applications, of colourless lessons, of failure and
+humiliation. Three new collaborators had been thrust upon him who would
+add their signatures to his on his operetta, and receive their share of
+the author's rights, and he had been told to introduce the tango into
+the Court of Golconda. He pressed young d'Esparvieu's hand and dropped
+wearily on to the little couch, which, being now at the end of its
+strength, gave way at the four legs and suddenly collapsed.
+
+And the angel, precipitated to the ground, rolled terror-struck on to
+the watch, match-box and cigarette-case that had fallen from Maurice's
+pocket, and on to the bombs Prince Istar had left behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+     CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE VICISSITUDES THAT BEFEL THE
+     "LUCRETIUS" OF THE PRIOR DE VENDÔME
+
+
+Léger-Massieu, successor to Léger senior, the binder, whose
+establishment was in the rue de l'Abbaye, opposite the old Hôtel of the
+Abbés of Saint Germain-des-Près, in the hotbed of ancient schools and
+learned societies, employed an excellent but by no means numerous staff
+of workmen, and served with leisurely deliberation a clientèle who had
+learned to practise the virtue of patience. Six weeks had elapsed since
+he had received the parcel of books that had been despatched by Monsieur
+Sariette, but still Léger-Massieu had not yet put the work in hand. It
+was not until fifty-three days had come and gone, that, after calling
+over the books against the list that had been drawn up by Monsieur
+Sariette, the binder gave them out to his workmen. The little
+_Lucretius_ with the Prior de Vendôme's arms not being mentioned on the
+list, it was assumed that it had been sent by another customer.
+
+And as it did not figure on any list of goods received it remained shut
+up in a cupboard, from which Léger-Massieu's son, the youthful Ernest,
+one day surreptitiously abstracted it, and slipped it into his pocket.
+Ernest was in love with a neighbouring seamstress whose name was Rose.
+Rose was fond of the country, and liked to hear the birds singing in the
+woods, and in order to procure the wherewithal to take her to Chatou one
+Sunday and give her a dinner, Ernest parted with the _Lucretius_ for ten
+francs to old Moranger, a second-hand dealer in the rue Saint X----, who
+displayed no great curiosity regarding the origin of his acquisitions.
+Old Moranger handed over the volume, the very same day, to Monsieur
+Poussard, an expert in books, of the faubourg Saint Germain, for sixty
+francs. The latter removed the stamp which disclosed the ownership of
+the matchless copy, and sold it for five hundred francs to Monsieur
+Joseph Meyer, the well-known collector, who handed it straight away for
+three thousand francs to Monsieur Ardon, the bookseller, who immediately
+transferred it to Monsieur R----, the great Parisian bibliopolist, who
+gave six thousand for it, and sold it again a fortnight later at a
+handsome profit to Madame la Comtesse de Gorce. Well known in the higher
+ranks of Parisian society, the lady in question is what was called in
+the seventeenth century a "curieuse," that is to say, a lover of
+pictures, books, and china. In her mansion in the Avenue d'Jéna she
+possesses collections of works of art which bear witness to the
+diversity of her knowledge and the excellence of her taste. During the
+month of July, while the Comtesse de Gorce was away at her château at
+Sarville in Normandy, the house in the Avenue d'Jéna, being unoccupied,
+was visited one night by a thief said to belong to a gang known as "The
+Collectors," who made works of art the special objects of their raids.
+
+The police enquiry elicited the fact that the marauder had reached the
+first floor by means of the waste-pipe, that he had then climbed over
+the balcony, forced a shutter with a jemmy, broken a pane of glass,
+turned the window-fastener, and made his way into the long gallery.
+There he broke open several cupboards and possessed himself of whatever
+took his fancy. His booty consisted for the most part of small but
+valuable articles, such as gold caskets, a few ivory carvings of the
+fourteenth century, two splendid fifteenth-century manuscripts, and a
+volume which the Countess's secretary briefly described as "a
+morocco-bound book with a coat of arms on it," and which was none other
+than the _Lucretius_ from the d'Esparvieu library.
+
+The malefactor, who was supposed to be an English cook, was never
+discovered. But, two months or so after the theft, a well-dressed,
+clean-shaven young man passed down the rue de Courcelles, in the
+dimness of twilight, and went to offer the Prior de Vendôme's
+_Lucretius_ to Père Guinardon. The antiquary gave him four shillings for
+it, examined it carefully, recognised its interest and its beauty, and
+put it in the king-wood cabinet, where he kept his special treasures.
+
+Such were the vicissitudes which, in the course of a single season,
+befel this thing of beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+     WHEREIN MAURICE FINDS HIS ANGEL AGAIN
+
+
+The performance was over. Bouchotte in her dressing-room was taking off
+her make-up, when the door opened softly and old Monsieur Sandraque, her
+protector, came in, followed by a troop of her other admirers. Without
+so much as turning her head, she asked them what they meant by coming
+and staring at her like a pack of imbeciles, and whether they thought
+they were in a tent at the Neuilly Fair, looking at the freak woman.
+
+"Now, then, ladies and gentlemen," she rattled on derisively, "just put
+a penny in the box for the young lady's marriage-portion, and she'll let
+you feel her legs,--all made of marble!"
+
+Then, with an angry glance at the admiring throng, she exclaimed: "Come,
+off you go! Look alive!"
+
+She sent them all packing, her sweetheart Théophile among them,--the
+pale-faced, long-haired, gentle, melancholy, short-sighted, and dreamy
+Théophile.
+
+But recognizing her little Maurice, she gave him a smile. He approached
+her, and leaning over the back of the chair on which she was seated,
+congratulated her on her playing and singing, duly performing a kiss at
+the end of every compliment. She did not let him escape thus, and with
+reiterated enquiries, pressing solicitations, feigned incredulity,
+obliged him to repeat his stock panegyrics three or four times over, and
+when he stopped she seemed so disappointed that he was forced to take up
+the strain again immediately. He found it trying, for he was no
+connoisseur, but he had the pleasure of kissing her plump curved
+shoulders all golden in the light, and of catching glimpses of her
+pretty face in the mirror over the toilet-table.
+
+"You were delicious."
+
+"Really?... you think so?"
+
+"Adorable ... div----"
+
+Suddenly he gave a loud cry. His eyes had seen in the mirror a face
+appear at the back of the dressing-room. He turned swiftly round, flung
+his arms about Arcade, and drew him into the corridor.
+
+"What manners!" exclaimed Bouchotte, gasping.
+
+But, pushing his way through a troop of performing dogs, and a family of
+American acrobats, young d'Esparvieu dragged his angel towards the exit.
+
+He hurried him forth into the cool darkness of the boulevard, delirious
+with joy and wondering whether it was all too good to be true.
+
+"Here you are!" he cried; "here you are! I have been looking for you a
+long time, Arcade,--or Mirar if you like,--and I have found you at last.
+Arcade, you have taken my guardian angel from me. Give him back to me.
+Arcade, do you love me still?"
+
+Arcade replied that in accomplishing the super-angelic task he had set
+himself he had been forced to crush under foot friendship, pity, love,
+and all those feelings which tend to soften the soul; but that, on the
+other hand, his new state, by exposing him to suffering and privation,
+disposed him to love Humanity, and that he felt a certain mechanical
+friendship for his poor Maurice.
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed Maurice, "if only you love me, come back to me,
+stay with me. I cannot do without you. While I had you with me I was not
+aware of your presence. But no sooner did you depart than I felt a
+horrible blank. Without you I am like a body without a soul. Do you know
+that in the little flat in the rue de Rome, with Gilberte by my side, I
+feel lonely, I miss you sorely, and long to see you and to hear you as I
+did that day when you made me so angry. Confess I was right, and that
+your behaviour on that occasion was not that of a gentleman. That you,
+you of so high an origin, so noble a mind, could commit such an
+indiscretion is extraordinary, when one comes to think about it. Madame
+des Aubels has not yet forgiven you. She blames you for having
+frightened her by appearing at such an inconvenient moment, and for
+being insolent and forward while hooking her dress and tying her shoes.
+I, I have forgotten everything. I only remember that you are my
+celestial brother, the saintly companion of my childhood. No, Arcade,
+you must not, you cannot leave me. You are my angel; you are my
+property."
+
+Arcade explained to young d'Esparvieu that he could no longer be guiding
+angel to a Christian, having himself gone down into the pit. And he
+painted a horrible picture of himself; he described himself as breathing
+hatred and fury; in fact, an infernal spirit.
+
+"All nonsense!" said Maurice, smiling, his eyes big with tears.
+
+"Alas! our ideas, our destiny, everything tends to part us, Maurice. But
+I cannot stifle the tenderness I feel for you, and your candour forces
+me to love you."
+
+"No," sighed Maurice. "You do not love me. You have never loved me. In a
+brother or a sister such indifference would be natural; in a friend it
+would be ordinary; in a guardian angel it is monstrous. Arcade, you are
+an abominable being. I hate you."
+
+"I have loved you dearly, Maurice, and I still love you. You trouble my
+heart which I deemed encased in triple bronze. You show me my own
+weakness. When you were a little innocent boy I loved you as tenderly
+and purely as Miss Kate, your English governess, who caressed you with
+so much fervour. In the country, when the thin bark of the plane trees
+peels off in long strips and discloses the tender green trunk, after the
+rains which make the fine sand run on the sloping paths, I showed you
+how with that sand, those strips of bark, a few wild flowers, and a
+spray of maidenhair fern to make rustic bridges, rustic shelters,
+terraces, and those gardens of Adonis, which last but an hour. During
+the month of May in Paris we raised an altar to the Virgin, and we burnt
+incense before it, the scent of which, permeating all the house,
+reminded Marcelline, the cook, of her village church and her lost
+innocence, and drew from her floods of tears; it also gave your mother a
+headache, your mother who, with all her wealth, was crushed with the
+_ennui_ that is common to the fortunate ones of this world. When you
+went to college I interested myself in your progress, I shared your work
+and your play, I pondered with you over arduous problems in arithmetic,
+I sought the impenetrable meaning of a phrase of Julius Cæsar's. What
+fine games of prisoners' base and football we had together! More than
+once did we know the intoxication of victory, and our young laurels were
+not soaked in blood or tears. Maurice, I did all I could to protect
+your innocence, but I could not prevent your losing it at the age of
+fourteen. Afterwards I regretfully saw you loving women of all sorts, of
+divers ages, by no means beautiful, at least in the eyes of an angel.
+Saddened at the sight, I devoted myself to study; a fine library offered
+me resources rarely met with. I delved into the history of religions;
+you know the rest."
+
+"But now, my dear Arcade," concluded young d'Esparvieu, "you have lost
+your position, your situation, you are entirely without resource. You
+have lost caste, you are off the lines, a vagabond, a bare-footed
+wanderer."
+
+The Angel replied bitterly that, after all, he was a little better clad
+at present than when he was wearing the slops of a suicide.
+
+Maurice alleged in excuse that when he dressed his naked angel in a
+suicide's slops, he was irritated with that angel's infidelity. But it
+was useless to dwell on the past or to recriminate. What was really
+needful was to consider what steps to take in future.
+
+And he asked:
+
+"Arcade, what do you think of doing?"
+
+"Have I not already told you, Maurice? To fight with Him who reigns in
+the heavens, dethrone Him, and set up Satan in His stead."
+
+"You will not do it. To begin with it is not the opportune moment.
+Opinion is not with you. You will not be in the swim, as papa says.
+Conservatism and authority are all the go nowadays. We like to be ruled,
+and the President of the Republic is going to parley with the Pope. Do
+not be obstinate, Arcade. You are not as bad as you say. At bottom you
+are like the rest of the world, you adore the good God."
+
+"I thought I had already explained to you, Maurice, that He whom you
+consider God is actually but a demiurge. He is absolutely ignorant of
+the divine world above him, and in all good faith believes himself to be
+the true and only God. You will find in the _History of the Church_, by
+Monsignor Duchesne--Vol. I, page 162--that this proud and narrow-minded
+demiurge is named Ialdabaoth. My child, so as not to ruffle your
+prejudices and to deal gently with your feelings in future, that is the
+name I shall give him. If it should happen that I should speak of him to
+you, I shall call him Ialdabaoth. I must leave you. Adieu."
+
+"Stay----"
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"I shall not let you go thus. You have deprived me of my guardian angel.
+It is for you to repair the injury you have caused me. Give me another
+one."
+
+Arcade objected that it was difficult for him to satisfy such a demand.
+That having quarrelled with the sovereign dispenser of guardian
+Spirits, he could obtain nothing from that quarter.
+
+"My dear Maurice," he added, smiling, "ask for one yourself from
+Ialdabaoth."
+
+"No,--no,--no," exclaimed Maurice. "You have taken away my guardian
+angel,--give him back to me."
+
+"Alas! I cannot."
+
+"Is it, Arcade, because you are a revolutionary that you cannot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An enemy of God?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A Satanic spirit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed young Maurice, "I will be your guardian
+angel,--I will not leave you."
+
+And Maurice d'Esparvieu took Arcade to have some oysters at P----'s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+     THE CONCLAVE
+
+
+That day, convoked by Arcade and Zita, the rebellious angels met
+together on the banks of the Seine at La Jonchère, in a deserted and
+tumble-down entertainment-hall that Prince Istar had hired from a
+pot-house keeper called Barattan. Three hundred angels crowded together
+in the stalls and boxes. A table, an arm-chair, and a collection of
+small chairs were arranged on the stage, where hung the tattered
+remnants of a piece of rustic scenery. The walls, coloured in distemper
+with flowers and fruit, were cracked and stained with damp, and were
+crumbling away in flakes. The vulgar and poverty-stricken appearance of
+the place rendered the grandeur of the passions exhibited therein all
+the more striking.
+
+When Prince Istar asked the assembly to form its Committee, and first of
+all to elect a President, the name that was renowned throughout the
+world entered the minds of all present, but a religious respect sealed
+their lips; and after a moment's silence, the absent Nectaire was
+elected by acclamation. Having been invited to take the chair between
+Zita and an angel of Japan, Arcade immediately began as follows:
+
+"Sons of Heaven! My comrades! You have freed yourselves from the bonds
+of celestial servitude--you have shaken off the thrall of him called
+Iahveh, but to whom we should here accord his veritable name of
+Ialdabaoth, for he is not the creator of the worlds, but merely an
+ignorant and barbarous demiurge, who having obtained possession of a
+minute portion of the Universe has therein sown suffering and death.
+Sons of Heaven, tell me, I charge you, whether you will combat and
+destroy Ialdabaoth?"
+
+All with one voice made answer:
+
+"We will!"
+
+And many speaking all together swore they would scale the mountain of
+Ialdabaoth, and hurl down the walls of jasper and porphyry, and plunge
+the tyrant of Heaven into eternal darkness.
+
+But a voice of crystal pierced through the sullen murmur.
+
+"Tremble, ye impious, sacrilegious madmen! The Lord hath already lifted
+his dread arm to smite you!"
+
+It was a loyal angel who, with an impulse of faith and love, envying the
+glory of confessors and martyrs, jealous and eager, like his God
+himself, to emulate man in the beauty of sacrifice, had flung himself
+in the midst of the blasphemers, to brave them, to confound them, and to
+fall beneath their blows. The assembly turned upon him with furious
+unanimity. Those nearest to him overwhelmed him with blows. He continued
+to cry, in a clear, ringing voice, "Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to
+God!"
+
+A rebel seized him by the neck and strangled his praises of the Almighty
+in his throat. He was thrown to the ground, trampled underfoot. Prince
+Istar picked him up, took him by the wings between his fingers, then
+rising like a column of smoke, opened a ventilator, which no one else
+could have reached, and passed the faithful angel through it. Order was
+immediately restored.
+
+"Comrades," continued Arcade, "now that we have affirmed our stern
+resolve, we must examine the possible plans of campaign, and choose the
+best. You will therefore have to consider if we should attack the enemy
+in full force, or whether it were better, by a lengthy and assiduous
+propaganda, to win the inhabitants of Heaven to our cause."
+
+"War! War!" shouted the assembled host.
+
+And it seemed as if one could hear the sound of trumpets and the rolling
+of drums.
+
+Théophile, whom Prince Istar had dragged to the meeting, rose, pale and
+unstrung, and, speaking with emotion, said:
+
+"Brethren, do not take ill what I am about to say; for it is the
+friendship I have for you that inspires me. I am but a poor musician.
+But, believe me, all your plans will come to naught before the Divine
+Wisdom which has foreseen everything."
+
+Théophile Belais sat down amid hisses. And Arcade continued:
+
+"Ialdabaoth foresees everything. I do not contest it. He foresees
+everything, but in order to leave us our free will he acts towards us
+absolutely as if he foresaw nothing. Every instant he is surprised,
+disconcerted; the most probable events take him unawares. The obligation
+which he has undertaken, to reconcile with his prescience the liberty of
+both men and angels, throws him constantly into inextricable
+difficulties and terrible dilemmas. He never sees further than the end
+of his nose. He did not expect Adam's disobedience, and so little did he
+anticipate the wickedness of men that he repented having made them, and
+drowned them in the waters of the Flood, and all the animals as well,
+though he had no fault to find with the animals. For blindness he is
+only to be compared with Charles X, his favourite king. If we are
+prudent it will be easy to take him by surprise. I think that these
+observations will be calculated to reassure my brother."
+
+Théophile made no reply. He loved God, but he was fearful of sharing
+the fate of the faithful angel.
+
+One of the best-informed Spirits of the assembly, Mammon, was not
+altogether reassured by the remarks of his brother Arcade.
+
+"Bethink you," said this Spirit, "Ialdabaoth has little general culture,
+but he is a soldier--to the marrow of his bones. The organisation of
+Paradise is a thoroughly military organisation. It is founded on
+hierarchy and discipline. Passive obedience is imposed there as a
+fundamental law. The angels form an army. Compare this spot with the
+Elysian Fields which Virgil depicts for you. In the Elysian Fields reign
+liberty, reason, and wisdom. The happy shades hold converse together in
+the groves of myrtle. In the Heaven of Ialdabaoth there is no civil
+population. Everyone is enrolled, numbered, registered. It is a barracks
+and a field for manoeuvres. Remember that."
+
+Arcade replied that they must look at their adversary in his true
+colours, and that the military organisation of Paradise was far more
+reminiscent of the villages of King Koffee than of the Prussia of
+Frederick the Great.
+
+"Already," said he, "at the time of the first revolt, before the
+beginning of Time, the conflict raged for two days, and Ialdabaoth's
+throne was made to totter. Nevertheless, the demiurge gained the
+victory. But to what did he owe it? To the thunderstorm which happened
+to come on during the conflict. The thunderbolts falling on Lucifer and
+his angels struck them down, bruised and blackened, and Ialdabaoth owed
+his victory to the thunderbolts. Thunder is his sole weapon. He abuses
+its power. In the midst of thunder and lightning he promulgates his
+laws. 'Fire goeth before him,' says the Prophet. Now Seneca, the
+philosopher, said that the thunderbolt in its fall brings peril to very
+few, but fear to all. This remark was true enough for men of the first
+century of the Christian era; it is no longer so for the angels of the
+twentieth; all of which goes to prove that, in spite of his thunder, he
+is not very powerful; it was acute terror that made men rear him a tower
+of unbaked brick and bitumen. When myriads of celestial spirits,
+furnished with machines which modern science puts at their disposal,
+make an assault upon the heavens, think you, comrades, that the old
+master of the solar system surrounded with his angels, armed as in the
+time of Abraham, will be able to resist them? To this day the warriors
+of the demiurge wear helmets of gold and shields of diamond. Michael,
+his best captain, knows no other tactics than the hand-to-hand combat.
+To him Pharaoh's chariots are still the latest thing, and he has never
+heard of the Macedonian phalanx."
+
+And young Arcade lengthily prolonged the parallel between the armed
+herds of Ialdabaoth and the intelligent fighting men of the rebel army.
+Then the question of pecuniary resources arose.
+
+Zita asserted that there was enough money to commence war, that the
+electrophores were in order, that an initial victory would obtain them
+credit.
+
+The discussion continued, amid turbulence and confusion. In this
+parliament of angels, as in the synods of men, empty words flowed in
+abundance. Disturbances grew more violent and more frequent as the time
+for putting the resolution drew near. It was beyond question that
+supreme command would be entrusted to him who had first raised the flag
+of revolt. But as everyone aspired to act as Lucifer's Lieutenant, each
+in describing the kind of fighting man to be preferred drew a portrait
+of himself. Thus Alcor, the youngest of the rebellious angels, arose and
+spoke rapidly as follows:
+
+"In Ialdabaoth's army, happily for us, the officers obtain their posts
+by seniority. This being the case, there is little likelihood of the
+command falling into the hands of a military genius, for men are not
+made leaders by prolonged habits of obedience, and close attention to
+minutiæ is not a good apprenticeship for the evolution of vast plans of
+campaign. If we consult ancient and modern history, we shall see that
+the greatest leaders were kings like Alexander and Frederick,
+aristocrats like Cæsar and Turenne, or men impatient of red-tape like
+Bonaparte. A routine man will always be poor or second-rate. Comrades,
+let us appoint intelligent leaders, men in the prime of life, to command
+us. An old man may retain the habit of winning victories, but only a
+young man can acquire it!"
+
+Alcor then gave place to an angel of the philosophic order, who mounted
+the rostrum and spoke thus:
+
+"War never was an exact science, a clearly defined art. The genius of
+the race, or the brain of the individual, has ever modified it. Now how
+are we to define the qualities necessary for a general in command in the
+war of the future, where one must consider greater masses and a larger
+number of movements than the intelligence of man can conceive? The
+multiplication of technical means, by infinitely multiplying the
+opportunities for mistake, paralyses the genius of those in command. At
+a certain stage in the progress of military science, a stage which our
+models, the Europeans, are about to reach, the cleverest leader and the
+most ignorant become equalized by reason of their incapacity. Another
+result of great modern armaments is, that the law of numbers tends to
+rule with inflexible rigour. It is of course true that ten angels in
+revolt are worth more than ten angels of Ialdabaoth; it is not at all
+certain that a million rebellious angels are worth more than a million
+of Ialdabaoth's angels. Great numbers, in war as elsewhere, annihilate
+intelligence and individual superiority in favour of a sort of
+exceedingly rudimentary collective soul."
+
+A buzz of conversation drowned the voice of the philosophic angel, and
+he concluded his speech in an atmosphere of general indifference.
+
+The tribune then resounded with calls to arms and promises of victory.
+The sword was held up to praise, the sword which defends the right. The
+triumph of the angels in revolt was celebrated twenty times beforehand,
+to the plaudits of a delirious crowd.
+
+Cries of "War!" rose to the silent heavens; "Give us war!"
+
+In the midst of these transports Prince Istar hoisted himself on to the
+platform, and the floor creaked under his weight.
+
+"Comrades," said he, "you wish for victory, and it is a very natural
+desire, but you must be mouldy with literature and poetry if you expect
+to obtain it from war. The idea of making war can nowadays only enter
+the brain of a sottish bourgeois or a belated romantic. What is war? A
+burlesque masquerade in the midst of which fatuous patriots sing their
+stupid dithyrambs. Had Napoleon possessed a practical mind he would not
+have made war; but he was a dreamer, intoxicated with Ossian. You cry,
+'Give us war!' You are visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The
+thinkers do not look for power and strength from any of the dreams which
+constitute military art: tactics, strategy, fortifications, artillery,
+and all that rubbish. They do not believe in war, which is a phantasy;
+they believe in chemistry, which is a science. They know the way to put
+victory into an algebraic formula."
+
+And drawing from his pocket a small bottle, which he held up to the
+meeting, Prince Istar exclaimed:
+
+"Victory--it is here!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+     WHEREIN WE SHALL SEE REVEALED A DARK AND SECRET MYSTERY AND
+     LEARN HOW IT COMES ABOUT THAT EMPIRES ARE OFTEN HURLED
+     AGAINST EMPIRES, AND RUIN FALLS ALIKE UPON THE VICTORS AND
+     THE VANQUISHED; AND THE WISE READER (IF SUCH THERE BE--WHICH
+     I DOUBT) WILL MEDITATE UPON THIS IMPORTANT UTTERANCE: "A WAR
+     IS A MATTER OF BUSINESS"
+
+
+The Angels had dispersed. At the foot of the slopes at Meudon, seated on
+the grass, Arcade and Zita watched the Seine flowing by the willows.
+
+"In this world," said Arcade, "in this world, which we call a cosmos,
+though it is but a microcosm, no thinking being can imagine that he is
+able to destroy even one atom. At the utmost, all we can hope for is
+that we shall succeed in modifying, here and there, the rhythm of some
+group of atoms and the arrangement of certain cells. That, when one
+thinks of it, must be the limit of our great enterprise. And when we
+shall have set up the Contradictor in the place of Ialdabaoth, we shall
+have done no more.... Zita, is the evil in the nature of things or in
+their arrangement? That is what we ought to know. Zita, I am profoundly
+troubled----"
+
+"Arcade," replied Zita, "if to act we had to know the secret of Nature,
+one would never act at all. And neither would one live--since to live is
+to act. Arcade, is your resolution failing you already?"
+
+Arcade assured the beautiful angel that he was resolved to plunge the
+demiurge into eternal darkness.
+
+A motor-car passed by on the road, followed by a long trail of dust. It
+stopped before the two angels, and the hooked nose of Baron Everdingen
+appeared at the window.
+
+"Good morning, my celestial friends, good morning," said the capitalist.
+"Sons of Heaven, I am pleased to meet you. I have a word of importance
+to say to you. Do not remain idle--do not go to sleep. Arm! Arm! You may
+be surprised by Ialdabaoth. You have a big war-fund. Employ it without
+stint. I have just learnt that the Archangel Michael has given large
+orders in Heaven for thunderbolts and arrows. If you take my advice you
+will procure fifty thousand more electrophores. I will take the order.
+Good day, angels. Long live the celestial country!"
+
+And Baron Everdingen flew by the flowery shores of Louveciennes in the
+company of a pretty actress.
+
+"Is it true that they are taking up arms at the demiurge's?" asked
+Arcade.
+
+"It may be," replied Zita, "that up there another Baron Everdingen is
+inciting to arms."
+
+The guardian angel of young Maurice remained pensive for some moments.
+Then he murmured:
+
+"Can it be that we are the sport of financiers?"
+
+"Pooh!" said the beautiful archangel. "War is a business. It has always
+been a business."
+
+Then they discussed at length the means of executing their immense
+enterprise. Rejecting disdainfully the anarchistic proceedings of Prince
+Istar, they conceived a formidable and sudden invasion of the kingdom of
+Heaven by their enthusiastic and well-drilled troops.
+
+Now Barattan, the innkeeper of La Jonchère, who had let the
+entertainment-hall to the rebellious angels, was in the employ of the
+secret police. In the reports he furnished to the Prefecture he
+denounced the members of this secret meeting as meditating an attack on
+a certain person whom they described as obtuse and cruel, and whom they
+called _Alaballotte_. The agent believed this to be a pseudonym denoting
+either the President of the Republic or the Republic itself. The
+conspirators had unanimously given voice to threats against
+_Alaballotte_, and one of them, a very dangerous individual, well-known
+in anarchist circles, who had already several convictions against him
+on account of writings and speeches of a seditious nature, and who was
+known as Prince Istar or the _Quéroube_, had brandished a bomb of very
+small calibre which seemed to contain a formidable machine. The other
+conspirators were unknown to Barattan, notwithstanding the fact that he
+frequented revolutionary circles. Many among them were very young men,
+mere beardless youths. There were two who, it appeared, had spoken with
+conspicuous vehemence; a certain Arcade, dwelling in the Rue St.
+Jacques, and a woman of easy virtue called Zita, living at Montmartre,
+both without visible means of subsistence.
+
+The affair seemed sufficiently serious to the Prefect of Police to make
+him think it necessary to confer without delay with the President of the
+Council.
+
+The Third Republic was then going through one of those climacteric
+periods during which the French nation, enamoured of authority and
+worshipping force, gave itself up for lost because it was not governed
+enough, and clamoured loudly for a saviour. The President of the
+Council, and Minister of Justice, was only too eager to be that
+longed-for saviour. Still, for him to play that part it was first
+necessary that there should be a danger to face. Thus the news of a plot
+was highly welcome to him. He questioned the Prefect of Police on the
+character and importance of the affair. The Prefect of Police explained
+that the people seemed to have money, intelligence, and energy; but
+that they talked too much and were too numerous to undertake secret and
+concerted action. The Minister, leaning back in his arm-chair, pondered
+on the matter. The Empire writing-table at which he was seated, the
+ancient tapestry which covered the walls, the clock and the candelabra
+of the Restoration period--all, in this traditional setting, reminded
+him of those great principles of government which remain immutable
+throughout the succession of _régimes_, of stratagem and of bluff. After
+brief reflexion, he concluded that the plot must be allowed to grow and
+take shape, that it would even be fitting to nurse it, to embroider it,
+to colour it, and only to stifle it after having extracted every
+possible advantage from it.
+
+He instructed the Prefect of Police to watch the affair closely, to
+render him an account of what went on from day to day, and to confine
+himself to the rôle of informer.
+
+"I rely on your well-known prudence; observe, and do not intervene."
+
+The Minister lit a cigarette. He quite reckoned, with the help of this
+plot, on silencing the Opposition, strengthening his own influence,
+diminishing that of his colleagues, humiliating the President of the
+Republic, and becoming the saviour of his country.
+
+The Prefect of Police undertook to follow the ministerial instructions,
+vowing inwardly all the while to act in his own way. He had a watch put
+upon the individuals pointed out by Barattan, and commanded his agents
+not to intervene, come what might. Perceiving that he was a marked man,
+Prince Istar--who united prudence with strength--withdrew the bombs from
+the gutter outside his window where he had hidden them, and changing
+from motor 'bus to tube, from tube to motor 'bus, and choosing the most
+cunningly circuitous route, at length deposited his machines with the
+angelic musician.
+
+Every time he left his house in the Rue St. Jacques, Arcade found a man
+of exaggerated smartness at his door, with yellow gloves and in his tie
+a diamond bigger than the Regent. Being a stranger to the things of this
+world, the rebellious angel paid no attention to the circumstance. But
+young Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had undertaken the task of guarding his
+guardian-angel, viewed this gentleman with uneasiness, for he equalled
+in assiduity and surpassed in vigilance that Monsieur Mignon who had
+formerly allowed his inquisitive gaze to wander from the rams' heads on
+the Hôtel de la Sordière in the Rue Garancière to the apse of the church
+of St. Sulpice. Maurice came two and three times a day to see Arcade in
+his furnished rooms, warning him of the danger, and urging him to change
+his abode.
+
+Every evening he took his angel to night restaurants, where they supped
+with ladies of easy virtue. There young d'Esparvieu would foretell the
+issue of some coming glove-fight, and afterwards exert himself to
+demonstrate to Arcade the existence of God, the necessity for religion,
+and the beauties of Christianity, and adjure him to renounce his impious
+and criminal undertakings wherefrom, he said, he would reap but
+bitterness and disappointment.
+
+"For really," said the young apologist, "if Christianity were false it
+would be known."
+
+The ladies approved of Maurice's religious sentiments, and when the
+handsome Arcade uttered some blasphemy in language they could
+understand, they put their hands to their ears and bade him be silent,
+for fear of being struck down with him. For they believed that God, in
+his omnipotence and sovereign goodness, taking sudden vengeance against
+those who insulted him, was quite capable of striking down the innocent
+with the guilty without meaning it.
+
+Sometimes the angel and his guardian took supper with the angelic
+musician. Maurice, who remembered from time to time that he was
+Bouchotte's lover, was displeased to see Arcade taking liberties with
+the singer. She had allowed him to do so ever since the day when, the
+angelic musician having had the little flowery couch repaired, Arcade
+and Bouchotte had made it a foundation for their friendship. Maurice,
+who loved Madame des Aubels a great deal, also loved Bouchotte a little,
+and was rather jealous of Arcade. Now jealousy is a feeling natural to
+man and beast, and causes them, however slight the attack, keen
+unhappiness. Therefore, suspecting the truth, which Bouchotte's
+temperament and the angel's character made sufficiently obvious, he
+overwhelmed Arcade with sarcasm and abuse, reproaching him with the
+immorality of his ways. Arcade answered, tranquilly, that it was
+difficult to subject physiological impulses to perfectly defined rules,
+and that moralists encountered great difficulties in the case of certain
+natural necessities.
+
+"Moreover," added Arcade, "I freely acknowledge that it is almost
+impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has
+no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human
+life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no
+distinction between good and evil."
+
+"You see, then," replied Maurice, "that religion is necessary."
+
+"Moral law," replied the angel, "which is supposed to be revealed to us,
+is drawn in reality from the grossest empiricism. Custom alone regulates
+morals. What Heaven prescribes is merely the consecration of ancient
+customs. The divine law, promulgated amid fireworks on some Mount
+Sinai, is never anything but the codification of human prejudice. And
+from this fact--namely, that morals change--religions which endure for a
+long time, such as Judæo-Christianity, vary their moral law."
+
+"At any rate," said Maurice, whose intelligence was swelling visibly,
+"you will grant me that religion prevents much profligacy and crime?"
+
+"Except when it promotes crime--as, for instance, the murder of
+Iphigenia."
+
+"Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "when I hear you argue, I rejoice that I am
+not an intellectual."
+
+Meanwhile Théophile, with his head bent over the piano, his face hidden
+by the long fair veil of his hair, bringing down from on high his
+inspired hands on to the keys, was playing and singing the full score of
+_Aline, Queen of Golconda_.
+
+Prince Istar used to come to their friendly reunions, his pockets filled
+with bombs and bottles of champagne, both of which he owed to the
+liberality of Baron Everdingen. Bouchotte received the Kerûb with
+pleasure, since she saw in him the witness and the trophy of the victory
+she had gained on the little flowered couch. He was to her as the
+severed head of Goliath in the hands of the youthful David. And she
+admired the prince for his cleverness as an accompanist, his vigour,
+which she had subdued, and his prodigious capacity for drink.
+
+One night, when young d'Esparvieu took his angel home in his car from
+Bouchotte's house to the lodgings in the Rue St. Jacques, it was very
+dark; before the door the diamond in the spy's necktie glittered like a
+beacon; three cyclists standing in a group under its rays made off in
+divers directions at the car's approach. The angel took no notice, but
+Maurice concluded that Arcade's movements interested various important
+people in the State. He judged the danger to be pressing, and at once
+made up his mind.
+
+The next morning he came to seek the suspect, to take him to the Rue de
+Rome. The angel was in bed. Maurice urged him to dress and to follow
+him.
+
+"Come," said he. "This house is no longer safe for you. You are watched.
+One of these days you will be arrested. Do you wish to sleep in gaol?
+No? Well, then, come. I will put you in a safe place."
+
+The spirit smiled with some little compassion on his naïve preserver.
+
+"Do you not know," he said, "that an angel broke open the doors of the
+prison where Peter was confined, and delivered the apostle? Do you
+believe me, Maurice, to be inferior in power to that heavenly brother of
+mine, and do you suppose that I am unable to do for myself what he did
+for the fisherman of the lake of Tiberias?"
+
+"Do not count on it, Arcade. He did it miraculously."
+
+"Or by a stroke of luck, as a modern historian of the Church has it. But
+no matter. I will follow you. Just allow me to burn a few letters and to
+make a parcel of some books I shall need."
+
+He threw some papers in the fire-place, put several volumes in his
+pockets, and followed his guide to the car, which was waiting for them
+not far off, outside the College of France. Maurice took the wheel.
+Imitating the Kerûb's prudence, he made so many windings and turnings,
+and so many rapid twists that he put all the swift and numerous
+cyclists, speeding in pursuit, off the scent. At length, having left
+wheelmarks in every direction all over the town, he stopped in the Rue
+de Rome, before the first-door flat, where the angel had first appeared.
+
+On entering the dwelling which he had left eighteen months before to
+carry out his mission, Arcade remembered the irreparable past, and
+breathing in the scent used by Gilberte, his nostrils throbbed. He asked
+after Madame des Aubels.
+
+"She is very well," replied Maurice. "A little plumper and very much
+more beautiful for it. She still bears you a grudge for your forward
+behaviour. I hope that she will one day forgive you, as I have forgiven
+you, and that she will forget your offence. But she is still very
+annoyed with you."
+
+Young d'Esparvieu did the honours of his flat to his angel with the
+manners of a well-bred man and the tender solicitude of a friend. He
+showed him the folding bed which was opened every evening in the
+entrance hall and pushed into a dark cupboard in the morning. He showed
+him the dressing-table, with its accessories; the bath, the linen
+cupboard, the chest of drawers; gave him the necessary information
+regarding the heating and lighting; told him that his meals would be
+brought and the rooms cleaned by the concierge, and showed him which
+bell to press when he required that person's services. He told him also
+that he must consider himself at home, and receive whom he wished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+     WHICH TREATS OF A PAINFUL DOMESTIC SCENE
+
+
+So long as Maurice confined his selection of mistresses to respectable
+women, his conduct had called forth no reproach. It was a different
+matter when he took up with Bouchotte. His mother, who had closed her
+eyes to liaisons which, though guilty, were elegant and discreet, was
+scandalised when it came to her ears that her son was openly parading
+about with a music-hall singer. By dint of much prying and probing,
+Berthe, Maurice's younger sister, had got to know of her brother's
+adventures, and she narrated them, without any indignation, to her young
+girl friends. His little brother Léon declared to his mother one day, in
+the presence of several ladies, that when he was big he, too, would go
+on the spree, like Maurice. This was a sore wound to the maternal heart
+of Madame d'Esparvieu.
+
+About the same time there occurred a family event of a very grave nature
+which occasioned much alarm to Monsieur René d'Esparvieu. Drafts were
+presented to him signed in his name by his son. His writing had not been
+forged, but there was no doubt that it had been the son's intention to
+pass off the signature as his father's. It showed a perverted moral
+sense; whence it appeared that Maurice was living a life of profligacy,
+that he was running into debt and on the point of outraging the
+decencies. The paterfamilias talked the matter over with his wife. It
+was arranged that he should give his son a very severe lecture, hint at
+vigorous corrective measures, and that in due course the mother should
+appear with gentle and sorrowing mien and endeavour to soothe the
+righteous indignation of the father. This plan being agreed upon,
+Monsieur René d'Esparvieu sent for his son to come to him in his study.
+To add to the solemnity of the occasion, he had arrayed himself in his
+frock-coat. As soon as Maurice saw it he knew there was something
+serious in the wind. The head of the family was pale, and his voice
+shook a little (for he was a nervous man), as he declared that he would
+no longer put up with his son's irregular behaviour, and insisted on an
+immediate and absolute reform. No more wild courses, no more running
+into debt, no more undesirable companions, but work, steadiness, and
+reputable connexions.
+
+Maurice was quite willing to give a respectful reply to his father,
+whose complaints, after all, were perfectly justified; but,
+unfortunately, Maurice, like his father, was shy, and the frock-coat
+which Monsieur d'Esparvieu had donned in order to discharge his
+magisterial duty with greater dignity seemed to preclude the possibility
+of any open and unconstrained intercourse. Maurice maintained an awkward
+silence, which looked very much like insolence, and this silence
+compelled Monsieur d'Esparvieu to reiterate his complaints, this time
+with additional severity. He opened one of the drawers in his historic
+bureau (the bureau on which Alexandre d'Esparvieu had written his "Essay
+on the Civil and Religious Institutions of the World"), and produced the
+bills which Maurice had signed.
+
+"Do you know, my boy," said he, "that this is nothing more nor less than
+forgery? To make up for such grave misconduct as that----"
+
+At this moment Madame d'Esparvieu, as arranged, entered the room attired
+in her walking-dress. She was supposed to play the angel of forgiveness,
+but neither her appearance nor her disposition was suitable to the part.
+She was harsh and unsympathetic. Maurice harboured within him the seeds
+of all the ordinary and necessary virtues. He loved his mother and
+respected her. His love, however, was more a matter of duty than of
+inclination, and his respect arose from habit rather than from feeling.
+Madame René d'Esparvieu's complexion was blotchy, and having powdered
+herself in order to appear to advantage at the domestic tribunal, the
+colour of her face suggested raspberries sprinkled over with sugar.
+Maurice, being possessed of some taste, could not help realising that
+she was ugly and rather repulsively so. He was out of tune with her, and
+when she began to go through all the accusations his father had brought
+against him, making them out to be blacker than ever, the prodigal
+turned away his head to conceal his irritation.
+
+"Your Aunt de Saint-Fain," she went on, "met you in the street in such
+disgraceful company that she was really thankful that you forbore to
+greet her."
+
+"Aunt de Saint-Fain!" Maurice broke out. "I like to hear her talking
+about scandals! Everyone knows the sort of life she has led, and now the
+old hypocrite wants to----"
+
+He stopped. He had caught sight of his father, whose face was even more
+eloquent of sorrow than of anger. Maurice began to feel as though he had
+committed murder, and could not imagine how he had allowed such words to
+escape him. He was on the point of bursting into tears, falling on his
+knees, and imploring his father to forgive him, when his mother, looking
+up at the ceiling, said with a sigh:
+
+"What offence can I have committed against God, to have brought such a
+wicked son into the world?"
+
+This speech struck Maurice as a piece of ridiculous affectation, and it
+pulled him up with a jerk. The bitterness of contrition suddenly gave
+place to the delicious arrogance of wrong-doing. He plunged wildly into
+a torrent of insolence and revolt, and breathlessly delivered himself of
+utterances quite unfit for a mother's ear.
+
+"If you will have it, mamma, rather than forbid me to continue my
+friendship with a talented lyrical artist, you would be better employed
+in preventing my elder sister, Madame de Margy, from appearing, night
+after night, in society and at the theatres with a contemptible and
+disgusting individual that everybody knows is her lover. You should also
+keep an eye on my little sister Jeanne, who writes objectionable letters
+to herself in a disguised hand, and then, pretending she has found them
+in her prayer-book, shows them to you with assumed innocence, to worry
+and alarm you. It would be just as well, too, if you prevented my little
+brother Léon, a child of seven, from being quite so much with
+Mademoiselle Caporal, and you might tell your maid...."
+
+"Get out, sir, I will not have you in the house!" cried Monsieur René
+d'Esparvieu, white with anger, pointing a trembling finger at the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+     WHEREIN WE SEE HOW THE ANGEL, HAVING BECOME A MAN, BEHAVES
+     LIKE A MAN, COVETING ANOTHER'S WIFE AND BETRAYING HIS
+     FRIEND. IN THIS CHAPTER THE CORRECTNESS OF YOUNG
+     D'ESPARVIEU'S CONDUCT WILL BE MADE MANIFEST
+
+
+The angel was pleased with his lodging. He worked of a morning, went out
+in the afternoon, heedless of detectives, and came home to sleep. As in
+days gone by, Maurice received Madame des Aubels twice or thrice a week
+in the room in which they had seen the apparition.
+
+All went very well until one morning Gilberte, having, the night before,
+left her little velvet bag on the table in the blue room, came to find
+it, and discovered Arcade stretched on the couch in his pyjamas, smoking
+a cigarette, and dreaming of the conquest of Heaven. She gave a loud
+scream.
+
+"You, Monsieur! Had I thought to find you here, you may be quite sure I
+should not ... I came to fetch my little bag, which is in the next
+room. Allow me...." And she slipped past the angel, cautiously and
+quickly, as if he were a brazier.
+
+Madame des Aubels that morning, in her pale green tailor-made costume,
+was deliciously attractive. Her tight skirt displayed her movements, and
+her every step was one of those miracles of Nature which fill men's
+hearts with amazement.
+
+She reappeared, bag in hand.
+
+"Once more--I ask your pardon.... I never dreamt that...."
+
+Arcade begged her to sit down and to stay a moment.
+
+"I never expected, Monsieur," said she, "that you would be doing the
+honours of this flat. I knew how dearly Monsieur d'Esparvieu loved
+you.... Nevertheless, I had no idea that...."
+
+The sky had suddenly grown overcast. A brownish glare began to steal
+into the room. Madame des Aubels told him she had walked for her
+health's sake, but a storm was brewing, and she asked if a carriage
+could be called for her.
+
+Arcade flung himself at Gilberte's feet, took her in his arms as one
+takes a precious piece of china, and murmured words which, being
+meaningless in themselves, expressed desire.
+
+She put her hands over his eyes and on his lips, and exclaimed, "I hate
+you!"
+
+And shaking with sobs, she asked for a drink of water. She was choking.
+The angel went to her assistance. In this moment of extreme peril she
+defended herself courageously. She kept saying: "No!... No!... I will
+not love you. I should love you too well...." Nevertheless she
+succumbed.
+
+In the sweet familiarity which followed their mutual astonishment she
+said to him:
+
+"I have often asked after you. I knew that you were an assiduous
+frequenter of the playhouses at Montmartre,--that you were often seen
+with Mademoiselle Bouchotte, who, nevertheless, is not at all pretty. I
+knew that you had become very smart, and that you were making a good
+deal of money. I was not surprised. You were born to succeed. The day of
+your"--and she pointed at the spot between the window and the wardrobe
+with the mirror--"apparition, I was vexed with Maurice for having given
+you a suicide's rags to wear. You pleased me.... Oh, it was not your
+good looks! Don't think that women are as sensitive as people say to
+outward attractions. We consider other things in love. There is a sort
+of---- Well, anyhow I loved you as soon as I saw you."
+
+The shadows grew deeper.
+
+She asked:
+
+"You are not an angel, are you? Maurice believes you are; but he
+believes so many things, Maurice." She questioned Arcade with her eyes
+and smiled maliciously. "Confess that you have been fooling him, and
+that you are no angel?"
+
+Arcade replied:
+
+"I only aspire to please you; I will always be what you want me to be."
+
+Gilberte decided that he was no angel; first, because one never is an
+angel; secondly, for more detailed reasons which drew her thoughts to
+the question of love. He did not argue the matter with her, and once
+again words were found inadequate to express their feelings.
+
+Outside, the rain was falling thick and fast, the windows were
+streaming, lightning lit up the muslin curtains, and thunder shook the
+panes. Gilberte made the sign of the Cross and remained with her head
+hidden in her lover's bosom.
+
+At this moment Maurice entered the room. He came in wet and smiling,
+confident, tranquil, happy, to announce to Arcade the good news that
+with his half-share in the previous day's race at Longchamps the angel
+had won twelve times his stake. Surprising the lady and the angel in
+their embrace, he became furious; anger gripped the muscles of his
+throat, his face grew red with blood, and the veins stood out on his
+forehead. He sprang with clenched fists towards Gilberte, and then
+suddenly stopped.
+
+Interrupted motion was transformed into heat. Maurice fumed. His anger
+did not arm him, like Archilochus, with lyrical vengeance. He merely
+applied an offensive epithet to his unfaithful one.
+
+Meanwhile she had recovered her dignified bearing. She rose, full of
+modesty and grace, and gave her accuser a look which expressed both
+offended virtue and loving forgiveness.
+
+But as young d'Esparvieu continued to shower coarse and monotonous
+insults on her, she grew angry in her turn.
+
+"You are a pretty sort of person, are you not?" she said. "Did I run
+after this Arcade of yours? It was you who brought him here, and in what
+a state, too! You had only one idea: to give me up to your friend. Well,
+Monsieur, you can do as you like--I am not going to oblige you."
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu replied simply, "Get out of it, you trollop!" And he
+made a motion as if to push her out. It pained Arcade to see his
+mistress treated so disrespectfully, but he thought he lacked the
+necessary authority to interfere with Maurice. Madame des Aubels, who
+had lost none of her dignity, fixed young d'Esparvieu with her imperious
+gaze, and said:
+
+"Go and get me a carriage."
+
+And so great is the power of woman over a well-bred soul, in a gallant
+nation, that the young Frenchman went immediately and told the concierge
+to call a taxi. Madame des Aubels, with a studied exhibition of charm in
+every movement, took leave of them, throwing Maurice the contemptuous
+look that a woman owes to him whom she has deceived. Maurice witnessed
+her departure with an outward expression of indifference he was far from
+feeling. Then he turned to the angel clad in the flowered pyjamas which
+Maurice himself had worn the day of the apparition; and this
+circumstance, trifling in itself, added fuel to the anger of the host
+who had been thus shamefully deceived.
+
+"Well," he said, "you may pride yourself on being a despicable
+individual. You have behaved basely, and all for nothing. If the woman
+took your fancy, you had but to tell me. I was tired of her. I had had
+enough of her. I would have willingly left her to you."
+
+He spoke thus to hide his pain, for he loved Gilberte more than ever,
+and the creature's treachery caused him great suffering. He pursued:
+
+"I was about to ask you to take her off my hands. But you have followed
+your lower nature--you have behaved like a sweep."
+
+If at this solemn moment Arcade had but spoken one word from his heart,
+Maurice would have burst into tears, and forgiven his friend and his
+mistress, and all three would have become content and happy once again.
+But Arcade had not been nourished on the milk of human kindness. He had
+never suffered, and did not know how to sympathise with suffering. He
+replied with frigid wisdom:
+
+"My dear Maurice, that same necessity which orders and constrains the
+actions of living beings, produces effects that are often unexpected,
+and sometimes absurd. Thus it is that I have been led to displease you.
+You would not reproach me if you had a good philosophical understanding
+of nature; for you would then know that free-will is but an illusion,
+and that physiological affinities are as exactly determined as are
+chemical combinations, and, like them, may be summed up in a formula. I
+think that, in your case, it might be possible to inculcate these
+truths, but it would be a difficult task, and maybe they would not bring
+you the serenity which eludes you. It is fitting, therefore, that I
+should leave this spot, and----"
+
+"Stay," said Maurice.
+
+Maurice had a very clear sense of social obligations. He put honour,
+when he thought about it, above everything. So now he told himself very
+forcibly that the outrage he had suffered could only be wiped out with
+blood. This traditional idea instantly lent an unexpected nobility to
+his speech and bearing.
+
+"It is I, Monsieur," said he, "who will quit this place, never to
+return. You will remain here, since you are a refugee. My seconds will
+wait upon you."
+
+The angel smiled.
+
+"I will receive them, if it gives you pleasure, but, bethink you, my
+dear Maurice, I am invulnerable. Celestial spirits even when they are
+materialised cannot be touched by point of sword or pistol shot.
+Consider, my dear Maurice, the awkward situation in which this fatal
+inequality puts me, and realise that in refusing to appoint seconds I
+cannot give as a reason my celestial nature,--it would be
+unprecedented."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the heir of the Bussart d'Esparvieu, "you should
+have thought of that before you insulted me."
+
+Out he marched haughtily; but no sooner was he in the street than he
+staggered like a drunken man. The rain was still falling. He walked
+unseeing, unhearing, at haphazard, dragging his feet in the gutters
+through pools of water, through heaps of mud. He followed the outer
+boulevards for a long time, and at length, fordone with weariness, lay
+down on the edge of a piece of waste land. He was muddied up to the
+eyes, mud and tears smeared his face, the brim of his hat was dripping
+with rain. A passer-by, taking him for a beggar, tossed him a copper. He
+picked it up, put it carefully in his waistcoat pocket, and set off to
+find his seconds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+     WHICH TREATS OF AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR, AND WHICH WILL AFFORD
+     THE READER AN OPPORTUNITY OF JUDGING WHETHER, AS ARCADE
+     AFFIRMS, THE EXPERIENCE OF OUR FAULTS MAKES BETTER MEN AND
+     WOMEN OF US
+
+
+The ground chosen for the combat was Colonel Manchon's garden, on the
+Boulevard de la Reine at Versailles. Messieurs de la Verdelière and Le
+Truc de Ruffec, who had both of them constant practice in affairs of
+honour and knew the rules with great exactness, assisted Maurice
+d'Esparvieu. No duel was ever fought in the Catholic world without
+Monsieur de la Verdelière being present; and, in making application to
+this swordsman, Maurice had conformed to custom, though not without a
+certain reluctance, for he had been notorious as the lover of Madame de
+la Verdelière; but Monsieur de la Verdelière was not to be looked upon
+as a husband. He was an institution. As to Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec,
+honour was his only known profession and avowedly his sole resource, and
+when the matter was made the subject of ill-natured comment in Society,
+the question was asked what finer career than that of honour Monsieur Le
+Truc de Ruffec could possibly have adopted. Arcade's seconds were Prince
+Istar and Théophile. The celestial musician had not voluntarily nor with
+a good grace taken a hand in this affair. He had a horror of every kind
+of violence and disapproved of single combat. The report of pistols and
+the clash of swords were intolerable to him, and the sight of blood made
+him faint. This gentle son of Heaven had obstinately refused to act as
+second to his brother Arcade, and to bring him to the starting-point the
+Kerûb had had to threaten to break a bottle of panclastite over his
+head.
+
+Besides the combatants, the seconds, and the doctors, the only people in
+the garden were a few officers from the barracks at Versailles and
+several reporters. Although young d'Esparvieu was known merely as a
+young man of family, and Arcade had never been heard of at all, the duel
+had attracted quite a large crowd of inquisitive individuals, and the
+windows of the adjoining houses were crammed with photographers,
+reporters, and Society people. What had aroused much curiosity was that
+a woman was known to be the cause of the quarrel. Many mentioned
+Bouchotte, but the majority said it was Madame des Aubels. It had been
+remarked upon, moreover, that duels in which Monsieur de la Verdelière
+acted as second drew all Paris.
+
+The sky was a soft blue, the garden all a-bloom with roses, a blackbird
+was piping in a tree. Monsieur de la Verdelière, who, stick in hand,
+conducted the affair, laid the points of the swords together, and said:
+
+"_Allez, Messieurs._"
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu attacked by doubling and beating the blade. Arcade
+retired, keeping his sword in line. The first engagement was without
+result. The seconds were under the impression that Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+was in a grievous state of nervous irritability, and that his adversary
+would wear him down. In the second encounter Maurice attacked wildly,
+spread out his arms, and exposed his breast. He attacked as he advanced,
+gave a straight thrust, and the point of his sword grazed Arcade on the
+shoulder. The latter was thought to be wounded. But the seconds
+ascertained with surprise that it was Maurice who had received a scratch
+on the wrist. Maurice asserted that he felt nothing, and Dr. Quille
+declared, after examination, that his client might continue the fight.
+After the regulation quarter of an hour the duel was resumed. Maurice
+attacked with fury. His adversary was obviously nursing him, and, what
+disturbed Monsieur de la Verdelière, seemed to be paying very little
+attention to his own defence. At the opening of the fifth bout, a black
+spaniel that had got into the garden no one knew how rushed out from a
+clump of rose-bushes, made its way on to the space reserved for the
+combatants, and, in spite of sticks and cries, ran in between Maurice's
+legs. The latter seemed as though his arm were benumbed, merely gave a
+shoulder-thrust at his invulnerable opponent. He then delivered a
+straight lunge and impaled his arm on his adversary's sword, which made
+a deep wound just below the elbow.
+
+Monsieur de la Verdelière stopped the fight, which had lasted an hour
+and a half. Maurice was conscious of a painful shock. They laid him down
+on a grassy bank against a wall covered with wistaria. While the surgeon
+was dressing the wound Maurice called Arcade and offered him his wounded
+hand. And when the victor, saddened with his victory, advanced, Maurice
+embraced him tenderly, saying:
+
+"Be generous, Arcade; forgive my treachery. Now that we have fought, I
+can ask you to be reconciled with me."
+
+He embraced his friend, weeping, and whispered in his ear:
+
+"Come and see me, and bring Gilberte."
+
+Maurice, who was still unreconciled with his parents, was taken to the
+little flat in the Rue de Rome. No sooner was he stretched on the bed at
+the far end of the bedroom where the curtains were drawn as on the day
+of the apparition, than he saw Arcade and Gilberte appear. He began to
+suffer greatly from his wound; his temperature was rising, but he was at
+peace, happy and contented. Angel and woman, both in tears, threw
+themselves at the foot of the bed. He took both their hands with his
+left, smiled on them, and kissed them tenderly.
+
+"I am sure now that I shall never quarrel with either of you again; you
+will deceive me no more. I now know you are capable of anything."
+
+Gilberte, weeping, swore that Maurice had been misled by appearances,
+that she had never betrayed him with Arcade, that she had never betrayed
+him at all. And in a great gush of sincerity she persuaded herself that
+this was so.
+
+"You wrong yourself, Gilberte," replied the wounded man. "It did happen;
+it had to. And it is well. Gilberte, you were basely false to me with my
+best friend in this very room, and you were right. If you had not been
+we should not be here, reunited, all three of us, and I should not be at
+your side tasting the greatest happiness of my life. Oh, Gilberte, how
+wrong of you to deny a perfect and accomplished fact!"
+
+"If you wish, my friend," replied Gilberte, a little acidly, "I will not
+deny it. But it will only be to please you."
+
+Maurice made her sit down on the bed, and begged Arcade to be seated in
+the arm-chair.
+
+"My friend," said Arcade, "I was innocent. I became man. Straightway I
+did evil. Then I became better."
+
+"Do not let us exaggerate things," said Maurice. "Let's have a game of
+bridge."
+
+Scarcely, however, had the patient seen three aces in his hand and
+called "no trumps," than his eyes began to swim, the cards slipped from
+his fingers, head fell heavily back on the pillow, and he complained of
+a violent headache. Almost immediately, Madame des Aubels went off to
+pay some calls, for she made a point of appearing in Society, in order
+that the calmness and confidence of her demeanour might give the lie to
+the various rumours that were current concerning her. Arcade saw her to
+the door, and, with a kiss, inhaled from her a delicate perfume which he
+brought back with him into the room where Maurice lay dozing.
+
+"I am perfectly content," murmured the latter, "that things should have
+happened as they have."
+
+"It was bound to be so," answered the Spirit. "All the other angels in
+revolt would have done as I did with Gilberte. 'Women,' saith the
+Apostle, 'should pray with their heads covered, because of the angels,'
+and the Apostle speaks thus because he knows that the angels are
+disturbed when they look upon them and see that they are beautiful. No
+sooner do they touch the earth than they desire to embrace mortal women
+and fulfil their desire. Their clasp is full of strength and sweetness,
+they hold the secret of those ineffable caresses which plunge the
+daughters of men into unfathomable depths of delight. Laying upon the
+lips of their happy victims a honey that burns like fire, making their
+veins flow with torrents of refreshing flames, they leave them raptured
+and undone."
+
+"Stop your clatter, you unclean beast," cried the wounded one.
+
+"One word more!" said the angel; "just one other word, my dear Maurice,
+to bear out what I say, and I will let you rest quietly. There's nothing
+like having sound references. In order to assure yourself that I am not
+deceiving you, Maurice, on this subject of the amorous embraces of
+angels and women, look up Justin, _Apologies_, I and II; Flavius
+Josephus, _Jewish Antiquities_, Book I, Chapter III; Athenagoras,
+_Concerning the Resurrection_; Lactantius, Book II, Chapter XV;
+Tertullian, _On the Veil of the Virgins_; Marcus of Ephesus in
+_Psellus_; Eusebius, _Præparatio Evangelica_, Book V, Chapter IV; Saint
+Ambrose, in his book on _Noah and the Ark_, Chapter V; Saint Augustine,
+in his _City of God_, Book XV, Chapter XXIII; Father Meldonat, the
+Jesuit, _Treatise on Demons_, page 248; Pierre Lebyer the King's
+Counsellor----"
+
+"Arcade, please, for pity's sake, be quiet; do, please do, and send this
+dog away," cried Maurice, whose face was burning, and whose eyes were
+starting from his head; for in his delirium he thought he saw a black
+spaniel on his bed.
+
+Madame de la Verdelière, who was assiduous in every modish and patriotic
+practice, was reckoned, in the best French society, as one of the most
+gracious of the great ladies interested in good works. She came herself
+to ask for news of Maurice, and offered to nurse the wounded man. But at
+the vehement instigation of Madame des Aubels, Arcade shut the door in
+her face. Expressions of sympathy were showered upon Maurice. Piled on
+the salver, visiting cards displayed their innumerable little dogs'
+ears. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was one of the first to show his manly
+sympathy at the flat in the Rue de Rome, and, holding out his loyal
+hand, asked young d'Esparvieu as one honourable man to another for
+twenty-five louis to pay a debt of honour.
+
+"Of course, my dear Maurice, that is the sort of thing one could not ask
+of everybody."
+
+The same day Monsieur Gaétan came to press his nephew's hand. The latter
+introduced Arcade.
+
+"This is my guardian angel, whose foot you thought so beautiful when you
+saw the print it had made on the tell-tale powder, uncle. He appeared to
+me last year in this very room. You don't believe it? Well, it is true,
+nevertheless."
+
+Then turning towards the Spirit he said:
+
+"What say you, Arcade? The Abbé Patouille, who is a great theologian and
+a good priest, does not believe that you are an angel; and Uncle Gaétan,
+who doesn't know his catechism and hasn't a scrap of religion in him,
+doesn't think so either. They deny you, the pair of them; the one
+because he has faith, the other because he hasn't. After that you may be
+sure that your history, if ever it comes to be narrated, will scarcely
+appear credible. Moreover, the man that took it into his head to tell
+your story would not be a man of taste, and would not come in for much
+approval. For your story is not a pretty one. I love you, but I sit in
+judgment upon you, too. Since you fell into atheism, you have become an
+abominable scoundrel. A bad angel, a bad friend, a traitor, and a
+homicide, for I suppose it was to bring about my death that you sent
+that black spaniel between my legs on the duelling-ground."
+
+The angel shrugged his shoulders and, addressing Gaétan, said:
+
+"Alas! Monsieur, I am not surprised at finding little credit in your
+eyes. I have been told that you have fallen out with the Judæo-Christian
+heaven, which is where I came from."
+
+"Monsieur," answered Gaétan, "my faith in Jehovah is not sufficiently
+strong to enable me to believe in his angels."
+
+"Monsieur, he whom you call Jehovah is really a coarse and ignorant
+demiurge, and his name is Ialdabaoth."
+
+"In that case, Monsieur, I am perfectly ready to believe in him. He is a
+narrow-minded ignoramus, is he? Then belief in his existence offers me
+no further difficulty. How is he getting on?"
+
+"Badly! We are going to lay him low next month."
+
+"Don't make too sure of that, Monsieur. You remind me of my
+brother-in-law, Cuissart, who has been expecting to hear of the fall of
+the Republic for the past thirty years."
+
+"You see, Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "Uncle Gaétan thinks as I do. He
+knows you won't succeed."
+
+"And, pray, Monsieur Gaétan, what makes you think I shall not succeed?"
+
+"Your Ialdabaoth is still very powerful in this world, if he isn't in
+the other. In days gone by he used to be upheld by his priests, by those
+who believed in him. Now he is supported by those who do not believe in
+him, by the philosophers. A pedant of a fellow called Picrochole has
+recently come on the scene who wants to make a bankrupt of science in
+order to do a good turn to the Church. And just lately Pragmatism has
+been invented for the express purpose of gaining credit for religion in
+the minds of rationalists."
+
+"You have been studying Pragmatism?"
+
+"Not I! I was frivolous once, and I went in for metaphysics. I read
+Hegel and Kant. I have become serious with years, and now I only trouble
+myself about things evident to the senses: what the eye can see or what
+the ear can hear. Man is summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine."
+
+Thus the conversation went on until evening; it was marked by
+obscenities that would have brought a blush--I will not say to a
+cuirassier, for cuirassiers are frequently chaste, but even to a
+Parisienne.
+
+Monsieur Sariette came to see his old pupil. When he entered the room
+the bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu seemed to take shape behind the
+librarian's bald head. He drew near the bed. In the place of blue
+curtains, mirrored wardrobe, and chimney-piece, there straightway came
+into view the heavy-laden bookcases of the room of the globes and busts,
+and the air was heavy with piles of papers, records, and files. Monsieur
+Sariette could not be dissociated from his library; one could not
+conceive of him or even see him apart from it. He himself was paler,
+more vague, more shadowy, and more a creature of the fancy than the
+fancies he evoked.
+
+Maurice, who had grown very quiet, was sensible of this mark of
+friendship.
+
+"Sit down, Monsieur Sariette,--you know Madame des Aubels. May I
+introduce Arcade to you,--my guardian angel. It was he who, while yet
+invisible, pillaged your library for two years, made you lose all desire
+for food and drink, and drove you to the verge of madness. He it was who
+moved piles of books from the room of the busts to my summer-house one
+day; under your very nose, he took away I know not what precious
+volumes; and was the cause of your falling on the staircase; another day
+he took a volume of Salomon Reinach's, and, forced to go out with me
+(for he never left me, as I have learnt later), he let the volume drop
+in the gutter of the Rue Princesse. Forgive him, Monsieur Sariette,--he
+had no pockets. He was invisible. I bitterly regret, Monsieur Sariette,
+that all your old books were not devoured by fire or swallowed up by a
+flood. They made my angel lose his head. He became man, and now knows
+neither faith nor obedience to laws. It is I, now, who am his guardian
+angel. God knows how it will all end."
+
+While listening to this speech, Monsieur Sariette's face took on an
+expression of infinite, irreparable, eternal sadness; the sadness of a
+mummy. Rising to take his leave, the sorrowful librarian murmured in
+Arcade's ear:
+
+"The poor child is very ill. He is delirious."
+
+Maurice called the old man back.
+
+"Do stay, Monsieur Sariette. You shall have a game of bridge with us.
+Monsieur Sariette, listen to my advice. Do not do as I did--do not keep
+bad company. You will be lost. I shudder at the mere thought. Monsieur
+Sariette, do not go yet. I have something very important to ask you.
+When you come again, bring me a book on the truth of religion, so that I
+may study it. I must restore to my guardian-angel the faith which he has
+lost."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE LED TO MARVEL AT THE READINESS WITH WHICH AN
+     HONEST MAN OF TIMID AND GENTLE NATURE CAN COMMIT A HORRIBLE
+     CRIME
+
+
+Profoundly distressed by the dark utterances of young Maurice, Monsieur
+Sariette took a motor-omnibus, and went to see Père Guinardon, his
+friend, his only friend, the one person in the whole world whom it gave
+him pleasure to see and hear. When Monsieur Sariette entered the shop in
+the Rue de Courcelles, Guinardon was alone, dozing in the depths of an
+antique arm-chair. His face, surrounded by his curly hair and luxuriant
+beard, was crimson in hue. Little violet filaments spread a network
+about the fleshy part of his nose, to which the wines of Burgundy had
+imparted a purple tint; for there was no longer any disguising the fact,
+Père Guinardon drank. Two feet away from him, on the fair Octavie's
+work-table, a rose, all but withered, drooped in an empty vase, and in a
+basket a piece of embroidery was lying unfinished and neglected. The
+young Octavie's absences from the shop were growing more and more
+frequent, and Monsieur Blancmesnil never called when she was not there.
+The reason of this was that they were meeting three times a week at five
+o'clock in a house close to the Champs Élysées. Père Guinardon knew
+nothing of that. He did not know the full extent of his misfortune, but
+he suffered.
+
+Monsieur Sariette shook his old friend by the hand; but he did not
+enquire for the young Octavie, for he refused to recognise the
+connexion. He would sooner have talked about Zéphyrine, who had been so
+cruelly deserted, and whom he hoped the old man would make his lawful
+wife. But Monsieur Sariette was prudent. He contented himself with
+asking Guinardon how he was.
+
+"Perfectly well," was Guinardon's reply; but he felt ill, for either age
+and love-making had undermined his sturdy constitution, or else young
+Octavie's faithlessness had dealt her lover a fatal blow. "God be
+praised," he went on, "I still retain my powers of mind and body. I am
+chaste. Be chaste, Sariette. Chastity is strength."
+
+That evening Père Guinardon had taken some specially valuable books out
+of the king-wood cabinet to show to a distinguished bibliophile,
+Monsieur Victor Meyer, and after the latter's departure he had dropped
+off to sleep without putting them back in their places. Books had an
+attraction for Monsieur Sariette, and seeing these particular volumes
+on the marble top of the cabinet, he began to examine them with
+interest. The first one he looked at was _La Pucelle_, in morocco, with
+the English continuation. Doubtless it pained his patriotic and
+Christian heart to admire its text and illustrations, but a good copy
+was always virtuous and pure in his sight. Continuing to chat very
+affectionately with Guinardon, he picked up, one by one, the books which
+the antiquary had, for one reason or another--binding, illustrations,
+distinguished ownership, or scarcity--added to his stock.
+
+Suddenly a glorious shout of joy and love broke from his lips. He had
+discovered the _Lucretius_ of the Prior de Vendôme, his _Lucretius_, and
+he was clasping it to his bosom.
+
+"Once again I behold you," he sighed, as he pressed it to his lips.
+
+At first Père Guinardon could not quite make out what his old friend was
+talking about; but when the latter declared to him that the volume was
+from the d'Esparvieu collection, that it belonged to him, Sariette, and
+that he was going to take it away without further ado, the antiquary
+completely woke up, got on his legs, declared emphatically that the book
+belonged to him, Guinardon, by right of true and lawful purchase, and
+that he would not part with it unless he got five thousand francs for it
+cash down.
+
+"You don't take in what I am telling you," answered Sariette. "The book
+belongs to the d'Esparvieu library; I must restore it to its place."
+
+"_Pas de ça, Lisette_"---- hummed Guinardon.
+
+"The book belongs to me, I tell you!"
+
+"You are crazy, my good Sariette!"
+
+And noticing that, as a matter of fact, the librarian had a wandering
+look in his eye, he took the book from him, and tried to change the
+conversation.
+
+"Have you seen, Sariette, that the rascals are going to rip up the
+Palais Mazarin, and cover up the very heart and centre of the Old Town,
+the finest and most venerable place in the whole of Paris, with the
+deuce knows what works of art of theirs? They are worse than the
+Vandals, for the Vandals, although they destroyed the buildings of
+antiquity, did not replace them with hideous and disgusting erections
+and atrocious bridges like the Pont d'Alexandre. And your poor Rue
+Garancière, Sariette, has fallen a prey to the barbarians. What have
+they done with the pretty bronze mask of the Palace fountain?"
+
+Monsieur Sariette never listened to a word of all this.
+
+"Guinardon, you have not understood me. Now listen. This book belongs to
+the d'Esparvieu library. It was taken away, how or by whom I know not.
+Dreadful and mysterious things went on in that library. But, anyhow, the
+book was stolen. I need scarcely appeal to your sentiments of scrupulous
+probity, my dear friend. You would not like to be regarded as the
+receiver of stolen goods. Give me the book. I will return it to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu, who will duly requite you; of that you may be sure. Rely on
+his generosity, and you will be acting like the downright good fellow
+that you are."
+
+The antiquary smiled a bitter smile.
+
+"Catch me relying on the generosity of that old curmudgeon of a
+d'Esparvieu. Why, he'd skin a flea to get its coat. Look at me,
+Sariette, old boy, and tell me if I look like a dunderhead. You know
+perfectly well that d'Esparvieu refused to give fifty francs in a
+second-hand shop for a portrait of Alexandre d'Esparvieu, the founder of
+the family, by Hersent, and that consequently the founder of the family
+has had to remain on the Boulevard Montparnasse, propped against a Jew
+hawker's stall, just opposite the cemetery, where all the dogs of the
+neighbourhood come and make water on him. Catch me trusting to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's liberality! You've got some bright ideas in your head, you
+have!"
+
+"Very well, Guinardon, I myself will undertake to pay you any indemnity
+that a board of arbitrators may fix upon. Do you hear?"
+
+"Now don't go and do the handsome for people who won't give you so much
+as a thank-you. This man, d'Esparvieu, has taken your knowledge, your
+energies, your whole life for a salary that even a valet wouldn't
+accept. So leave that idea alone. In any case it is too late. The book
+is sold."
+
+"Sold? To whom?" asked Sariette in agonized tones.
+
+"What does that matter? You'll never see it again. You'll hear no more
+about it; it's off to America."
+
+"To America! The _Lucretius_ with the arms of Philippe de Vendôme and
+marginalia in Voltaire's own hand! My _Lucretius_ off to America!"
+
+Père Guinardon began to laugh.
+
+"My dear Sariette, you remind me of the Chevalier des Grieux when he
+learns that his darling mistress is to be transported to the
+Mississippi. 'My dear mistress going to the Mississippi!' says he."
+
+"No! no!" answered Sariette, very pale, "this book shall not go to
+America. It shall return, as it ought, to the d'Esparvieu library. Let
+me have it, Guinardon."
+
+The antiquary made a second attempt to put an end to an interview that
+now looked as if it might take an ugly turn.
+
+"My good Sariette, you haven't told me what you think of my Greco. You
+never so much as glanced at it. It is an admirable piece of work all
+the same."
+
+And Guinardon, putting the picture in a good light, went on:
+
+"Now just look at Saint Francis here, the poor man of the Lord, the
+brother of Jesus. See how his fuliginous body rises heavenward like the
+smoke from an agreeable sacrifice, like the sacrifice of Abel."
+
+"Give me the book, Guinardon," said Sariette, without turning his head;
+"give me the book."
+
+The blood suddenly flew to Père Guinardon's head.
+
+"That's enough of it," he shouted, as red as a turkey-cock, the veins
+standing out on his forehead.
+
+And he dropped the _Lucretius_ into his jacket pocket.
+
+Straightway old Sariette flew at the antiquary, assailed him with sudden
+fury, and, frail and weakly as he was, butted him back into young
+Octavie's arm-chair.
+
+Guinardon, in furious amazement, belched forth the most horrible abuse
+on the old maniac and gave him a punch that sent him staggering back
+four paces against the _Coronation of the Virgin_, by Fra Angelico,
+which fell down with a crash. Sariette returned to the charge, and tried
+to drag the book out of the pocket in which it lay hid. This time Père
+Guinardon would really have floored him had he not been blinded by the
+blood that was rushing to his head, and hit sideways at the work-table
+of his absent mistress. Sariette fastened himself on to his bewildered
+adversary, held him down in the arm-chair, and with his little bony
+hands clutched him by the neck, which, red as it was already, became a
+deep crimson. Guinardon struggled to get free, but the little fingers,
+feeling the mass of soft, warm flesh about them, embedded themselves in
+it with delicious ecstasy. Some unknown force made them hold fast to
+their prey. Guinardon's throat began to rattle, saliva was oozing from
+one corner of his mouth. His enormous frame quivered now and again
+beneath the grasp; but the tremors grew more and more intermittent and
+spasmodic. At last they ceased. The murderous hands did not let go their
+hold. Sariette had to make a violent effort to loose them. His temples
+were buzzing. Nevertheless he could hear the rain falling outside,
+muffled steps going past on the pavement, newspaper men shouting in the
+distance. He could see umbrellas passing along in the dim light. He drew
+the book from the dead man's pocket and fled.
+
+The fair Octavie did not go back to the shop that night. She went to
+sleep in a little entresol underneath the bric-a-brac stores which
+Monsieur de Blancmesnil had recently bought for her in this same Rue de
+Courcelles. The workman whose task it was to shut up the shop found the
+antiquary's body still warm. He called Madame Lenain, the concierge,
+who laid Guinardon on the couch, lit a couple of candles, put a sprig of
+box in a saucer of holy water, and closed the dead man's eyes. The
+doctor who was called in to certify the death ascribed it to apoplexy.
+
+Zéphyrine, informed of what had happened by Madame Lenain, hastened to
+the house, and sat up all night with the body. The dead man looked as if
+he were sleeping. In the flickering light of the candles El Greco's
+Saint mounted upwards like a wreath of smoke, the gold of the Primitives
+gleamed in the shadows. Near the deathbed a little woman by Baudouin was
+plainly discernible giving herself a douche. All through the night
+Zéphyrine's lamentations could be heard fifty yards away.
+
+"He's dead, he's dead!" she kept saying. "My friend, my divinity, my
+all, my love---- But no! he is not dead, he moves. It is I, Michel; I,
+your Zéphyrine. Awake, hear me! Answer me; I love you; if ever I caused
+you pain, forgive me. Dead! dead! O my God! See how beautiful he is. He
+was so good, so clever, so kind. My God! My God! My God! If I had been
+there he would not now be lying dead. Michel! Michel!"
+
+When morning came she was silent. They thought she had fallen asleep.
+She was dead too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+     WHICH DESCRIBES HOW NECTAIRE'S FLUTE WAS HEARD IN THE TAVERN
+     OF CLODOMIR
+
+
+Madame de la Verdelière having failed to force an _entrée_ as
+sick-nurse, returned after several days had elapsed,--during the absence
+of Madame des Aubels,--to ask Maurice d'Esparvieu for his subscription
+to the French churches. Arcade led her to the bedside of the
+convalescent. Maurice whispered in the angel's ear:
+
+"Traitor, deliver me from this ogress immediately, or you will be
+answerable for the evil which will soon befall."
+
+"Be calm," said Arcade, with a confident air.
+
+After the conventional complimentary flourishes, Madame de la Verdelière
+signed to Maurice to dismiss the angel. Maurice feigned not to
+understand. And Madame de la Verdelière disclosed the ostensible reason
+of her visit.
+
+"Our churches," she said, "our beloved country churches,--what is to
+become of them?"
+
+Arcade gazed at her angelically and sighed.
+
+"They will disappear, Madame; they will fall into ruin. And what a pity!
+I shall be inconsolable. The church amid the villagers' cottages is like
+the hen amidst her chickens."
+
+"Just so!" exclaimed Madame de la Verdelière with a delighted smile. "It
+is just like that."
+
+"And the spires, Madame?"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, the spires!..."
+
+"Yes, the spires, Madame, that stick up into the skies towards the
+little Cherubim, like so many syringes."
+
+Madame de la Verdelière incontinently left the place.
+
+That same day Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille came to offer the wounded man
+good counsel and consolation. He exhorted him to break with his bad
+companions and to be reconciled to his family.
+
+He drew a picture of the sorrowful father, the mother in tears, ready to
+receive their long-lost child with open arms. Renouncing with manly
+effort a life of profligacy and deluding joys, Maurice would recover his
+peace and strength of mind, he would free himself from devouring
+chimeras, and shake off the Evil Spirit.
+
+Young d'Esparvieu thanked Abbé Patouille for all his kindness, and made
+a protestation of his religious feelings.
+
+"Never," said he, "have I had such faith. And never have I been in such
+need of it. Just imagine, Monsieur l'Abbé, I have to teach my guardian
+angel his catechism all over again, for he has quite forgotten it!"
+
+Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille heaved a deep sigh, and exhorted his dear
+child to pray, there being no other resource but prayer for a soul
+assailed by the Devil.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbé," asked Maurice, "may I introduce my guardian angel to
+you? Do stay a moment; he has gone to get me some cigarettes."
+
+"Unhappy child!"
+
+And Abbé Patouille's fat cheeks drooped in token of affliction. But almost
+immediately they plumped up again, as a sign of light-heartedness. For in
+his heart there was matter for rejoicing. Public opinion was improving.
+The Jacobins, the Freemasons, the Coalitionists were everywhere in
+disgrace. The Smart Set led the way. The Académie Française was of the
+right way of thinking. The number of Christian schools was increasing by
+leaps and bounds. The young men of the Quartier Latin were submitting to
+the Church, and the École Normale exhaled the perfume of the seminary. The
+Cross was gaining the day; but money was wanted,--more money, always
+money.
+
+After six weeks' rest, Maurice was allowed by his doctor to take a
+drive. He wore his arm in a sling. His mistress and his friend went
+with him. They drove to the Bois, and took a gentle pleasure in looking
+upon the grass and the trees. They smiled on everything and everything
+smiled on them. As Arcade had said, their faults had made them better.
+By the unlooked-for ways of jealousy and anger, Maurice had attained to
+calm and kindliness. He still loved Gilberte and he loved her with an
+indulgent love. The angel still desired her as much as ever, but having
+once possessed her, his desire had lost the sting of curiosity. Gilberte
+forbore trying to please, and thereby pleased the more. They drank milk
+at the Cascade, and found it good. They were all three innocent. Arcade
+forgot the injustice of the old tyrant of the world. But he was soon to
+be reminded of it.
+
+On entering his friend's house, he found Zita awaiting him, looking like
+a statue in ivory and gold.
+
+"You excite my pity," she said to him. "The day is at hand the like of
+which has never dawned since the beginning of Time, and perhaps will
+never dawn again before the Sun enters with all its train into the
+constellation of Hercules. We are on the eve of surprising Ialdabaoth in
+his palace of porphyry, and you, who are burning to deliver the heavens,
+who were so eager to enter in triumph into your emancipated
+country,--you suddenly forget your noble purpose and fall asleep in the
+arms of the daughters of men. What pleasure can you find in intercourse
+with these unclean little animals, composed, as they are, of elements so
+unstable that they may be said to be in a state of constant evanescence?
+O Arcade! I was indeed right to distrust you. You are but an
+intellectual; you do but feel idle curiosity. You are incapable of
+action."
+
+"You misjudge me, Zita," replied the angel. "It is the nature of the
+sons of heaven to love the daughters of men. Corruptible though it be,
+the material part of women and of flowers charms the senses none the
+less. But not one of these little animals can make me forget my hatred
+and my love, and I am ready to rise up against Ialdabaoth."
+
+Zita expressed her satisfaction at seeing him in this resolute mood. She
+urged him to pursue the accomplishment of this vast undertaking with
+undiminished ardour. Nothing must be hurried or deferred.
+
+"A great action, Arcade, is made up of a multitude of small ones; the
+most majestic whole is composed of a thousand minute details. Let us
+neglect nothing."
+
+She had come to take him to a meeting where his presence was required.
+They were to take a census of the revolutionaries.
+
+She added but one word:
+
+"Nectaire will be there."
+
+When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking in attraction. She failed
+to please him because she was perfectly beautiful and because true
+beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita inspired him with
+antipathy when he learned that she was an angel in revolt and that she
+had come to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.
+
+The poor child tried to retain his companion by all the means that his
+wit and the circumstances afforded him. If his guardian angel would only
+remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent boxing-match, to a
+"revue" where he would witness the apotheosis of Poincaré, or, lastly,
+to a certain house he knew of where he would behold women remarkable for
+their beauty, talents, vices, or deformities. But the angel would not
+allow himself to be tempted, and said he was going with Zita.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To plot the conquest of the skies."
+
+"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of---- but there, I proved to you
+that it was neither possible nor desirable."
+
+"Good night, Maurice."
+
+"You are going? Well, I will accompany you."
+
+And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade and Zita all the way
+to Clodomir's restaurant at Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an
+arbour in the garden.
+
+Prince Istar and Théophile were already there, with a little creature
+who looked like a child, and was, in fact, a Japanese angel.
+
+"We are only waiting for Nectaire," said Zita.
+
+And at that moment the old gardener noiselessly appeared. He took his
+seat, and his dog lay down at his feet. French cooking is the best in
+the world. It is a glory that will transcend all others when humanity
+has grown wise enough to put the spit above the sword. Clodomir served
+the angels, and the mortal who was with them, with a soup made of
+cabbages and bacon, a loin of pork and kidneys cooked in wine, thereby
+proving himself a real Montmartre cook, and showing that he had not been
+spoilt by the Americans, who corrupt the most excellent _chefs_ of the
+City of Restaurants.
+
+Clodomir brought forth some Bordeaux, which, though unrecorded among the
+renowned vintages of Médoc, gave evidence by its choice and delicate
+aroma of the high nobility of its origin. We must not omit to chronicle
+that, after this wine and many others had been drunk, the cellarman, in
+solemn state, produced a Burgundy choice and rare, full-bodied yet not
+heavy, generous yet delicate, rich with the true Burgundian mellowness,
+a noble and, withal, a somewhat heady wine, that brought delight alike
+to mind and sense.
+
+"Hail to thee, Dionysus, greatest of the Gods!" cried old Nectaire,
+raising his glass on high. "I drink to thee who wilt restore the Golden
+Age, and give again to mortal men, who will become heroes as of old, the
+grapes which the Lesbians used to cull, long since, from the vines of
+Methymna; who wilt restore the vineyards of Thasus, the white clusters
+of Lake Mareotis, the storehouses of Falernus, the vines of the Tmolus,
+and the wine of Phanae, of all wines the king. And the juice thereof
+shall be divine, and, as in old Silenus' day, men shall grow drunk with
+Wisdom and with Love."
+
+When the coffee was served, Prince Istar, Zita, Arcade, and the Japanese
+angel took it in turns to give an account of the forces assembled
+against Ialdabaoth. Angels, in exchanging eternal bliss for the
+sufferings of an earthly life, grow in intelligence, acquire the means
+of going astray and the faculty of self-contradiction. Consequently
+their meetings, like those of men, are tumultuous and confused. Did one
+of them deal in figures, the others immediately called them in question.
+They could not add one number to another without quarrelling, and
+arithmetic itself, subjected to passion, lost its certitude. The Kerûb,
+who had brought with him the pious Théophile, waxed indignant when he
+heard the musician praising the Lord, and rained down such blows on his
+head as would have felled an ox. But the head of a musician is harder
+than a bucranium, and the blows which Théophile received did not avail
+to modify that angel's notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at
+great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita's
+pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.
+
+"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed young Maurice's guardian
+angel. "I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is
+human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the
+mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then,
+Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or
+plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being
+superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the
+professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that
+they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and
+reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the
+demiurge, if he had any brains!"
+
+It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.
+
+"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if
+you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their
+depths thereby."
+
+Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame
+burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the
+shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine
+flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:
+
+"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less
+than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania
+apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite
+spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros--the first of the gods,--plants,
+animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which
+hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations
+were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and
+songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the
+silent skies.
+
+"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this
+one--whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads--has lasted
+or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the
+Infinite."
+
+As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth
+melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits,
+the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion's belt
+was shattered; the Pole Star forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose
+incandescent flame had lit up the far horizon, grew blue, then red,
+flickered, and suddenly died out. The shaken constellations formed new
+signs which were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations the
+magic flute had compressed into one brief moment the life and the
+movement of this universe which seems unchanging and eternal both to men
+and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed their immemorial aspect.
+Nectaire had vanished. Clodomir asked his guests if they were pleased
+with the cabbage soup which, in order that it might be strong, had been
+kept simmering for twenty-four hours on the fire, and he sang the
+praises of the Beaujolais which they had drunk.
+
+The night was mild. Arcade, accompanied by his guardian angel,
+Théophile, Prince Istar, and the Japanese angel, escorted Zita home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+     HOW A DREADFUL CRIME PLUNGES PARIS INTO A STATE OF TERROR
+
+
+The city was asleep. Their footsteps rang loudly on the deserted
+pavement. Having reached the corner of the Rue Feutrier, half-way up
+Montmartre, the little company halted before the dwelling of the
+beautiful angel. Arcade was talking about the Thrones and Dominations
+with Zita, who, her finger on the bell, could not make up her mind to
+ring. Prince Istar was tracing the mechanism of a new sort of bomb on
+the pavement with the end of his stick, and bellowed so loudly that he
+woke the sleeping citizens and stirred into activity the amatory
+passions of the neighbouring Pasiphaës. Théophile was singing the
+barcarole from the second act of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_ at the top
+of his voice. Maurice, his arm in a sling, was fencing left-handed with
+the Japanese, striking sparks from the pavement, and crying "A hit! a
+hit!" in a piercing voice.
+
+Meanwhile Inspector Grolle at the corner of the next street was
+dreaming. He had the bearing of a Roman legionary and displayed all the
+characteristics of that proudly servile race, who, ever since men first
+took to building cities, have been the mainstay of Empires and the
+support of ruling houses. Inspector Grolle was very strong, but very
+tired. He suffered from an arduous profession and from lack of food. He
+was a man devoted to duty, but still a man, and he was unable to resist
+the wiles, the charms, and the blandishments of the gay ladies whom he
+met in swarms in the shadows along the empty streets and round about
+pieces of waste ground; he loved them. He loved like a soldier under
+arms. It tired him, but courage conquered fatigue. Though he had not yet
+reached the middle of Life's way, he longed for sweet repose and
+peaceful country pursuits. At the corner of the Rue Muller, on this mild
+night, he stood lost in thought. He was dreaming of the house where he
+was born, of the little olive wood, of his father's bit of ground, of
+his old mother, bent with long and heavy labour, whom he would never see
+again. Roused from his reverie by the nocturnal tumult, Inspector Grolle
+turned the corner of the street, and looked rather unfavourably at the
+band of loiterers, wherein his social instinct suspected enemies of law
+and order. He was patient and resolute. After a lengthy silence, he
+said, with awe-inspiring calm:
+
+"Move on, there!"
+
+But Maurice and the Japanese angel were fencing and heard nothing. The
+musician heard nothing but his own melodies. Prince Istar was absorbed
+in the explanation of explosive formulæ. Zita was discussing with Arcade
+the greatest enterprise that had ever been conceived since the solar
+system issued from its original nebula,--and thus they all remained
+unconscious of their surroundings.
+
+"Move on, I tell you!" repeated Inspector Grolle.
+
+This time the angels heard the solemn word of warning, but either
+through indifference or contempt, they neglected to obey, and continued
+their talk, their songs, and their cries.
+
+"So you want to be taken up, do you?" shouted Inspector Grolle, clapping
+his great hand on Prince Istar's shoulder.
+
+The Kerûb was indignant at this vile contact, and with one blow from his
+formidable fist sent the Inspector flying into the gutter. But Constable
+Fesandet was already running to his comrade's aid, and they both fell
+upon the Prince, whom they belaboured with mechanic fury, and whom,
+notwithstanding his strength and weight, they would perchance have
+dragged all bleeding to the police station, had not the Japanese angel
+overset them one after the other without effort, and reduced them to
+writhing and shrieking in the mud, before Maurice, Arcade, and Zita had
+time to intervene. As to the angelic musician, he stood apart trembling,
+and invoked the heavens.
+
+At this moment two bakers who were kneading their dough in a
+neighbouring cellar ran out at the noise, in their white aprons,
+stripped to the waist. With an instinctive feeling for social solidarity
+they took the side of the downfallen police. Théophile conceived a just
+fear at the sight of them, and fled away; they caught him and were about
+to hand him over to the guardians of the peace, when Arcade and Zita
+tore him from their hands. The fight continued, unequal and terrible,
+between the two angels and the two bakers. Like an athlete of Lysippus
+in strength and beauty, Arcade smothered his heavy adversary in his
+arms. The beautiful archangel drove her dagger into the baker who had
+attacked her. A dark stream of blood flowed down over his hairy chest,
+and the two white-capped supporters of the law sank to the ground.
+
+Constable Fesandet had fainted face downwards in the gutter. But
+Inspector Grolle, who had got up, blew a blast on his whistle loud
+enough to be heard at the neighbouring police-station, and sprang upon
+young Maurice, who, having but one arm with which to defend himself,
+fired his revolver with his left hand at the inspector, who put his hand
+to his heart, staggered, and dropped down. He gave a long sigh, and the
+shadows of eternity darkened his eyes.
+
+Meanwhile, windows opened one by one, and heads looked out on the
+street. A sound of heavy steps approached. Two policemen on bicycles
+debouched upon the street. Thereupon Prince Istar flung a bomb which
+shook the ground, put out the gas, shattered some of the houses, and
+enveloped the flight of young Maurice and the angels in a dense smoke.
+
+Arcade and Maurice came to the conclusion that the safest thing to do
+after this adventure was to return to the little flat in the Rue de
+Rome. They would certainly not be sought for immediately and probably
+not at all, the bomb thrown by the Kerûb having fortunately wiped out
+all witnesses of the affair. They fell asleep towards dawn, and they had
+not yet awoke at ten o'clock in the morning when the concierge brought
+their tea. While eating his toast and butter and slice of ham, young
+d'Esparvieu remarked to the angel:
+
+"I used to think that a murder was something very extraordinary. Well, I
+was mistaken. It is the simplest, the most natural action in the world."
+
+"And of most ancient tradition," replied the angel. "For long centuries
+it was both usual and necessary for man to kill and despoil his fellows.
+It is still recommended in warfare. It is also honourable to attempt
+human life in certain definite circumstances, and people approved when
+you wanted to assassinate me, Maurice, because it appeared to you that I
+had been intimate with your mistress. But killing a police-inspector is
+not the action of a man of fashion."
+
+"Be silent," exclaimed Maurice, "be silent, scoundrel! I killed the poor
+Inspector instinctively, not knowing what I was doing. I am grieved to
+my heart about it. But it is not I, it is you who are the guilty one;
+you who are the murderer. It was you who lured me along this path of
+revolt and violence which leads to the pit. You have been my undoing.
+You have sacrificed my peace of mind, my happiness, to your pride and
+your wickedness, and all in vain; for I warn you, Arcade, you will not
+succeed in what you are undertaking."
+
+The concierge brought in the newspapers. On seeing them Maurice grew
+pale. They announced the outrage in the Rue de Ramey in huge headlines:
+
+"An Inspector killed--Two cyclist policemen and two bakers seriously
+wounded--Three houses blown up, numerous victims."
+
+Maurice let the paper drop, and said in a weak, plaintive voice:
+
+"Arcade, why did you not slay me in the little garden at Versailles
+amidst the roses, to the song of the blackbirds?"
+
+Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the public squares, and in the
+crowded streets, house-wives, string-bag in hand, grew pale as they
+listened to the story of the crime, and consigned the perpetrators to
+the most dreadful punishment. Shop-keepers, standing at the doors of
+their shops, put it all down to the anarchists, syndicalists,
+socialists, and radicals, and demanded that special measures should be
+taken against them.
+
+The more thoughtful people recognized the handiwork of the Jew and the
+German, and demanded the expulsion of all aliens. Many vaunted the ways
+of America and advocated lynching. In addition to the printed news
+sinister rumours became current. Explosions had been heard at various
+places; everywhere bombs had been discovered; everywhere individuals,
+taken for malefactors, had been struck down by the popular arm and given
+up to justice, torn to ribbons. On the Place de la République a drunkard
+who was crying "Down with the police" was torn to pieces by the crowd.
+
+The President of the Council and Minister of Justice held long
+conferences with the Prefect of Police, and they agreed to take
+immediate action. In order to allay the excitement of the Parisians,
+they arrested five or six hooligans out of the thirty thousand which the
+Capital contains. The chief of the Russian police, believing he
+recognised in this attack the methods of the Nihilists, demanded, on
+behalf of his Government, that a dozen refugees should be given up. The
+demand was immediately granted. Proceedings were also taken for certain
+individuals to be extradited to ensure the safety of the King of Spain.
+
+On learning of these energetic measures, Paris breathed once more, and
+the evening papers congratulated the Government. There was excellent
+news of the wounded. They were out of danger and identified as their
+assailants all who were brought before them.
+
+True, Inspector Grolle was dead; but two Sisters of Mercy kept vigil at
+his side, and the President of the Council came and laid the Cross of
+Honour on the breast of this victim of duty.
+
+At night there were panics. In the Avenue de la Révolte the police,
+noticing a travelling acrobat's caravan on a piece of waste ground, took
+it for the retreat of a band of robbers. They whistled for help, and
+when they were a goodly number, attacked the caravan. Some worthy
+citizens joined them; fifteen thousand revolver-shots were fired, the
+caravan was blown up with dynamite, and among the débris they found the
+corpse of a monkey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+     WHICH CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF THE ARREST OF BOUCHOTTE AND
+     MAURICE, OF THE DISASTER WHICH BEFELL THE D'ESPARVIEU
+     LIBRARY, AND OF THE DEPARTURE OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu passed a terrible night. At the least sound he
+seized his revolver that he might not fall alive into the hands of
+justice. When morning came he snatched the newspapers from the hands of
+the concierge, devoured them greedily, and gave a cry of joy; he had
+just read that Inspector Grolle having been taken to the Morgue for the
+post-mortem, the police-surgeons had only discovered bruises and
+contusions of a very superficial nature, and stated that death had been
+brought about by the rupture of an aneurism of the aorta.
+
+"You see, Arcade," he exclaimed triumphantly; "you see I am not an
+assassin. I am innocent. I could never have imagined how extremely
+agreeable it is to be innocent."
+
+Then he grew thoughtful, and--no unusual phenomenon--reflection
+dissipated his gaiety.
+
+"I am innocent,--but there is no disguising the fact," he said, shaking
+his head, "I am one of a band of malefactors. I live with miscreants.
+You are in your right place there, Arcade, for you are deceitful, cruel,
+and perverse. But I come of good family and have received an excellent
+education, and I blush for it."
+
+"I also," said Arcade, "have received an excellent education."
+
+"Where was that?"
+
+"In Heaven."
+
+"No, Arcade, no; you never had any education. If good principles had
+been inculcated into you, you would still hold them. Such principles are
+never lost. In my childhood I learnt to revere my family, my country, my
+religion. I have not forgotten the lesson and I never shall. Do you know
+what shocks me most in you? It is not your perversity, your cruelty,
+your black ingratitude; it is not your agnosticism, which may be borne
+with at a pinch; it is not your scepticism, though it is very much out
+of date (for since the national awakening there is no longer any
+scepticism in France);--no, what disgusts me in you is your lack of
+taste, the bad style of your ideas, the inelegance of your doctrines.
+You think like an intellectual, you speak like a freethinker, you have
+theories which reek of radicalism and Combeism and all ignoble systems.
+Get along with you! you disgust me. Arcade, my old friend, Arcade, my
+dear angel, Arcade, my beloved child, listen to your guardian angel!
+Yield to my prayers, renounce your mad ideas; become good, simple,
+innocent, and happy once more. Put on your hat, come with me to
+Nôtre-Dame. We will say a prayer and burn a candle together."
+
+Meanwhile public opinion was still active in the matter; the leading
+papers, the organs of the national awakening, in articles of real
+elevation and real depth, unravelled the philosophy of this monstrous
+attack which was revolting to the conscience. They discovered the real
+origin, the indirect but effective cause in the revolutionary doctrines
+which had been disseminated unchecked, in the weakening of social ties,
+the relaxing of moral discipline, in the repeated appeals to every
+appetite, to every greedy desire. It would be needful, so as to cut down
+the evil at its root, to repudiate as quickly as possible all such
+chimeras and Utopias as syndicalism, the income-tax, etc., etc., etc.
+Many newspapers, and these not the least important, pointed out that the
+recrudescence of crime was but the natural fruit of impiety and
+concluded that the salvation of society lay in an unanimous and sincere
+return to religion. On the Sunday which followed the crime the
+congregations in the churches were noticed to be unusually large.
+
+Judge Salneuve, who was entrusted with the task of investigation, first
+examined the persons arrested by the police, and lost his way among
+attractive but illusory clues; however, the report of the detective
+Montremain, which was laid before him, put him on the right road, and
+soon led him to recognise the miscreants of La Jonchère as the authors
+of the crime of the Rue de Ramey. He ordered a search to be made for
+Arcade and Zita, and issued a warrant against Prince Istar, on whom the
+detectives laid hands as he was leaving Bouchotte's, where he had been
+depositing some bombs of new design. The Kerûb, on learning the
+detectives' intentions, smiled broadly and asked them if they had a
+powerful motor-car. On their replying that they had one at the door, he
+assured them that was all he wanted. Thereupon he felled the two
+detectives on the stairs, walked up to the waiting car, flung the
+chauffeur under a motor-'bus which was opportunely passing, and seized
+the steering wheel under the eyes of the terrified crowd.
+
+That same evening Monsieur Jeancourt, the Police Magistrate, entered
+Théophile's rooms just when Bouchotte was swallowing a raw egg to clear
+her voice, for she was to sing her new song, "They haven't got any in
+Germany," at the "National Eldorado" that evening. The musician was
+absent. Bouchotte received the Magistrate, and received him with a
+hauteur which intensified the simplicity of her attire; Bouchotte was
+_en déshabille_. The worthy Magistrate seized the score of _Aline, Queen
+of Golconda_, and the love-letters which the singer carefully preserved
+in the drawer of the table by her bed, for she was an orderly young
+woman. He was about to withdraw when he espied a cupboard, which he
+opened with a careless air, and found machines capable of blowing up
+half Paris, and a pair of large white wings, whose nature and use
+appeared inexplicable to him. Bouchotte was invited to complete her
+toilette, and, in spite of her cries, was taken off to the
+police-station.
+
+Monsieur Salneuve was indefatigable. After the examination of the papers
+seized in Bouchotte's house, and acting on the information of
+Montremain, he issued a warrant for the arrest of young d'Esparvieu,
+which was executed on Wednesday, the 27th May, at seven o'clock in the
+morning, with great discretion. For three days Maurice had neither slept
+nor eaten, loved nor lived. He had not a moment's doubt as to the nature
+of the matutinal visit. At the sight of the police magistrate a strange
+calm fell on him. Arcade had not returned to sleep in the flat. Maurice
+begged the magistrate to wait for him, dressed with care, and then
+accompanied the magistrate a calmness of mind which was barely
+disturbed when the door of the Conciergerie closed on him. Alone in his
+cell, he climbed upon the table to look out. His tranquillity was due to
+his weariness of spirit, to his numbed senses, and to the fact that he
+no longer stood in fear of arrest. His misfortune endowed him with
+superior wisdom. He felt he had fallen into a state of grace. He did not
+think too highly or too humbly of himself, but left his cause in the
+hands of God. With no desire to cover up his faults, which he would not
+hide even from himself, he addressed himself in mind to Providence, to
+point out that if he had fallen into disorder and rebellion it was to
+lead his erring angel back into the straight path. He stretched himself
+on the couch and slept in peace.
+
+On hearing of the arrest of a music-hall singer and of a young man of
+fashion, both Paris and the provinces felt painful surprise. Deeply
+stirred by the tragic accounts which the leading newspapers were
+bringing out, the general idea was that the sort of people the
+authorities ought to bring to justice were ferocious anarchists, all
+reeking and dripping from deeds of blood and arson; but they failed to
+understand what the world of Art and Fashion should have to do with such
+things. At this news, which he was one of the last to hear, the
+President of the Council and Keeper of the Seals started up in his
+chair. The Sphinxes that adorned it were less terrible than he, and in
+the throes of his angry meditation he cut the mahogany of his imperial
+table with his penknife, after the manner of Napoleon. And when Judge
+Salneuve, whose attendance he had commanded, appeared before him, the
+President flung his penknife in the grate, as Louis XIV flung his cane
+out of the window in the presence of Lauzun; and it cost him a supreme
+effort to master himself and to say in a voice of suppressed fury:
+
+"Are you mad? Surely I said often enough that I meant the plot to be
+anarchist, anti-social, fundamentally anti-social and anti-governmental,
+with a shade of syndicalism. I have made it clear enough that I wanted
+it kept within these lines; and what do you go and make of it?... The
+vengeance of anarchists and aspirants to freedom? Whom do you arrest? A
+singer adored of the nationalist public, and the son of a man highly
+esteemed in the Catholic party, who receives our bishops and has the
+_entrée_ to the Vatican; a man who may be one day sent as ambassador to
+the Pope. At one blow you alienate one hundred and sixty Deputies and
+forty Senators of the Right on the very eve of a motion to discuss the
+question of religious pacification; you embroil me with my friends of
+to-day, with my friends of to-morrow. Was it to find out if you were in
+the same dilemma as des Aubels that you seized the love-letters of
+young Maurice d'Esparvieu? I can put your mind at rest on that point.
+You are, and all Paris knows it. But it is not to avenge your personal
+affronts that you are on the Bench."
+
+"Monsieur le Garde des Sceaux," murmured the Judge, nearly apoplectic
+and in a choked voice. "I am an honest man."
+
+"You are a fool ... and a provincial. Listen to me; if Maurice
+d'Esparvieu and Mademoiselle Bouchotte are not released within half an
+hour I will crush you like a piece of glass. Be off!"
+
+Monsieur René d'Esparvieu went himself to fetch his son from the
+Conciergerie and took him back to the old house in the Rue Garancière.
+The return was triumphant. The news had been disseminated that Maurice
+had with generous imprudence interested himself in an attempt to restore
+the monarchy, and that Judge Salneuve, the infamous freemason, the tool
+of Combes and André, had tried to compromise the young man by making him
+out to be an accomplice of a band of criminals.
+
+That was what Abbé Patouille seemed to think, and he answered for
+Maurice as for himself. It was known, moreover, that breaking with his
+father, who had rallied to the support of the Republic, young
+d'Esparvieu was on the high road to becoming an out-and-out Royalist.
+The people who had an inside knowledge of things saw in his arrest the
+vengeance of the Jews. Was not Maurice a notorious anti-Semite? Catholic
+youths went forth to hurl imprecations at Judge Salneuve under the
+windows of his residence in the Rue Guénégaud, opposite the Mint.
+
+On the Boulevard du Palais a band of students presented Maurice with a
+branch of palm. Maurice made a charming reply.
+
+Maurice was overcome with emotion when he beheld the old house in which
+his childhood had been spent, and fell weeping into his mother's arms.
+
+It was a great day, unhappily marred by one painful incident. Monsieur
+Sariette, who had lost his reason as a consequence of the shocking
+events that had taken place in the Rue de Courcelles, had suddenly
+become violent. He had shut himself up in the library, and there he had
+remained for twenty-four hours, uttering the most horrible cries, and,
+turning a deaf ear alike to threats and entreaties, refused to come out.
+He had spent the night in a condition of extreme restlessness, for all
+night long the lamp had been seen passing rapidly to and fro behind the
+curtains. In the morning, hearing Hippolyte shouting to him from the
+court below, he opened the window of the Hall of the Spheres and the
+Philosophers, and heaved two or three rather weighty tomes on to the old
+valet's head. The whole of the domestic staff--men, women, and
+boys--hurried to the spot, and the librarian proceeded to throw out
+books by the armful on to their heads. In view of the gravity of the
+situation, Monsieur René d'Esparvieu did not disdain to intervene. He
+appeared in night-cap and dressing-gown, and attempted to reason with
+the poor lunatic, whose only reply was to pour forth torrents of abuse
+on the man whom till then he had worshipped as his benefactor, and to
+endeavour to crush him beneath all the Bibles, all the Talmuds, all the
+sacred books of India and Persia, all the Greek Fathers, and all the
+Latin Fathers, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Saint
+Augustine, Saint Jerome, all the apologists, ay! and under the _Histoire
+des Variations_, annotated by Bossuet himself! Octavos, quartos, folios
+came crashing down, and lay in a sordid heap on the courtyard pavement.
+The letters of Gassendi, of Père Mersenne, of Pascal, were blown about
+hither and thither by the wind. The lady's-maid who had stooped down to
+rescue some of the sheets from the gutter got a blow on the head from an
+enormous Dutch atlas. Madame René d'Esparvieu had been terrified by the
+ominous sounds, and appeared on the scene without waiting to apply the
+finishing touches of powder and paint. When he caught sight of her, old
+Sariette became more violent than ever. Down they came one after another
+as hard as he could pelt them; the busts of the poets, philosophers,
+and historians of antiquity--Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero,
+Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Epictetus--all lay scattered on the ground. The
+celestial sphere and the terrestrial globe descended with a terrifying
+crash that was followed by a ghastly hush, broken only by the shrill
+laughter of little Léon, who was looking down on the scene from a window
+above. A locksmith having opened the library door, all the household
+hastened to enter, and found the aged Sariette entrenched behind piles
+of books, busily engaged in tearing and slashing away at the _Lucretius_
+of the Prior de Vendôme annotated in Voltaire's own hand. They had to
+force a way through the barricade. But the maniac, perceiving that his
+stronghold was being invaded, fled away and escaped on to the roof. For
+two whole hours he gave vent to shouts and yells that were heard far and
+wide. In the Rue Garancière the crowd kept growing bigger and bigger.
+All had their eyes fixed on the unhappy creature, and whenever he
+stumbled on the slates, which cracked beneath him, they gave a shout of
+terror. In the midst of the crowd, the Abbé Patouille, who expected
+every moment to see him hurled into space, was reciting the prayers for
+the dying, and making ready to give him the absolution _in extremis_.
+There was a cordon of police round the house keeping order. Someone
+summoned the fire-brigade, and the sound of their approach was soon
+heard. They placed a ladder against the wall of the house, and after a
+terrific struggle managed to secure the maniac, who in the course of his
+desperate resistance had one of the muscles of his arm torn out. He was
+immediately removed to an asylum.
+
+Maurice dined at home, and there were smiles of tenderness and affection
+when Victor, the old butler, brought on the roast veal. Monsieur l'Abbé
+Patouille sat at the right hand of the Christian mother, unctuously
+contemplating the family which Heaven had so plentifully blessed.
+Nevertheless, Madame d'Esparvieu was ill at ease. Every day she received
+anonymous letters of so insulting and coarse a nature that she thought
+at first they must come from a discharged footman. She now knew they
+were the handiwork of her youngest daughter, Berthe, a mere child!
+Little Léon, too, gave her pain and anxiety. He paid no attention to his
+lessons, and was given to bad habits. He showed a cruel disposition. He
+had plucked his sister's canaries alive; he stuck innumerable pins into
+the chair on which Mademoiselle Caporal was accustomed to sit, and had
+stolen fourteen francs from the poor girl, who did nothing but cry and
+dab her eyes and nose from morning till night.
+
+No sooner was dinner over than Maurice rushed off to the little
+dwelling in the Rue de Rome, impatient to meet his angel again. Through
+the door he heard a loud sound of voices, and saw assembled in the room
+where the apparition had taken place, Arcade, Zita, the angelic
+musician, and the Kerûb, who was lying on the bed, smoking a huge pipe,
+carelessly scorching pillows, sheets, and coverlets. They embraced
+Maurice, and announced their departure. Their faces shone with happiness
+and courage. Alone, the inspired author of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_,
+shed tears and raised his terrified gaze to heaven. The Kerûb forced him
+into the party of rebellion by setting before him two alternatives:
+either to allow himself to be dragged from prison to prison on earth, or
+to carry fire and sword into the palace of Ialdabaoth.
+
+Maurice perceived with sorrow that the earth had scarcely any hold over
+them. They were setting out filled with immense hope, which was quite
+justifiable. Doubtless they were but a few combatants to oppose the
+innumerable soldiers of the sultan of the heavens; but they counted on
+compensating for the inferiority of their numbers by the irresistible
+impetus of a sudden attack. They were not ignorant of the fact that
+Ialdabaoth, who flatters himself on knowing all things, sometimes allows
+himself to be taken by surprise. And it certainly looked as if the first
+attack would have taken him unawares had it not been for the warning of
+the archangel Michael. The celestial army had made no progress since its
+victory over the rebels before the beginning of Time.
+
+As regards armaments and material it was as out of date as the army of
+the Moors. Its generals slumbered in sloth and ignorance. Loaded with
+honours and riches, they preferred the delights of the banquet to the
+fatigues of war. Michael, the commander-in-chief, ever loyal and brave,
+had lost, with the passing of centuries, his fire and enthusiasm. The
+conspirators of 1914, on the other hand, knew the very latest and the
+most delicate appliances of science for the art of destruction. At
+length all was ready and decided upon. The army of revolt, assembled by
+corps each a hundred thousand angels strong, on all the waste places of
+the earth--steppes, pampas, deserts, fields of ice and snow--was ready
+to launch itself against the sky. The angels, in modifying the rhythm of
+the atoms of which they are composed, are able to traverse the most
+varied mediums. Spirits that have descended on to the earth, being
+formed, since their incarnation, of too compact a substance, can no
+longer fly of themselves, and to rise into ethereal regions and then
+insensibly grow volatilized, have need of the assistance of their
+brothers, who, though revolutionaries like themselves, nevertheless,
+stayed behind in the Empyrean and remained, not immaterial (for all is
+matter in the Universe), but gloriously untrammelled and diaphanous.
+Certes, it was not without painful anxiety that Arcade, Istar, and Zita
+prepared themselves to pass from the heavy atmosphere of the earth to
+the limpid depths of the heavens. To plunge into the ether there is need
+to expend such energy that the most intrepid hesitate to take flight.
+Their very substance, while penetrating this fine medium, must in itself
+grow fine-spun, become vaporised, and pass from human dimensions to the
+volume of the vastest clouds which have ever enveloped the earth. Soon
+they would surpass in grandeur the uttermost planets, whose orbits they,
+invisible and imponderable, would traverse without disturbing.
+
+In this enterprise--the vastest that angels could undertake--their
+substance would be ultimately hotter than the fire and colder than the
+ice, and they would suffer pangs sharper than death.
+
+Maurice read all the daring and the pain of the undertaking in the eyes
+of Arcade.
+
+"You are going?" he said to him, weeping.
+
+"We are going, with Nectaire, to seek the great archangel to lead us to
+victory."
+
+"Whom do you call thus?"
+
+"The priests of the demiurge have made him known to you in their
+calumnies."
+
+"Unhappy being," sighed Maurice.
+
+Arcade embraced him, and Maurice felt the angel's tears as they dropped
+upon his cheek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+     AND LAST, WHEREIN THE SUBLIME DREAM OF SATAN IS UNFOLDED
+
+
+Climbing the seven steep terraces which rise up from the bed of the
+Ganges to the temples muffled in creepers, the five angels reached, by
+half-obliterated paths, the wild garden filled with perfumed clusters of
+grapes and chattering monkeys, and, at the far end thereof, they
+discovered him whom they had come to seek. The archangel lay with his
+elbow on black cushions embroidered with golden flames. At his feet
+crouched lions and gazelles. Twined in the trees, tame serpents turned
+on him their friendly gaze. At the sight of his angelic visitors his
+face grew melancholy. Long since, in the days when, with his brow
+crowned with grapes and his sceptre of vine-leaves in his hand, he had
+taught and comforted mankind, his heart had many times been heavy with
+sorrow; but never yet, since his glorious downfall, had his beautiful
+face expressed such pain and anguish.
+
+Zita told him of the black standards assembled in crowds in all the
+waste places of the globe; of the deliverance premeditated and prepared
+in the provinces of Heaven, where the first revolt had long ago been
+fomented.
+
+"Prince," she went on, "your army awaits you. Come, lead it on to
+victory."
+
+"Friends," replied the great archangel, "I was aware of the object of
+your visit. Baskets of fruit and honeycombs await you under the shade of
+this mighty tree. The sun is about to descend into the roseate waters of
+the Sacred River. When you have eaten, you will slumber pleasantly in
+this garden, where the joys of the intellect and of the senses have
+reigned since the day when I drove hence the spirit of the old Demiurge.
+To-morrow I will give you my answer."
+
+Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream,
+and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with angels
+in revolt, beautiful as gods, whose eyes darted lightning. And from pole
+to pole one single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted towards him,
+filled with hope and love. And Satan said:
+
+"Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary in his high abode."
+And he led the countless host of angels over the celestial plains. And
+Satan was cognizant of what took place in the heavenly citadel. When
+news of this second revolt came thither, the Father said to the Son:
+
+"The irreconcilable foe is rising once again. Let us take heed to
+ourselves, and in this, our time of danger, look to our defences, lest
+we lose our high abode."
+
+And the Son, consubstantial with the Father, replied:
+
+"We shall triumph under the sign that gave Constantine the victory."
+
+Indignation burst forth on the Mountain of God. At first the faithful
+Seraphim condemned the rebels to terrible torture, but afterwards
+decided on doing battle with them. The anger burning in the hearts of
+all inflamed each countenance. They did not doubt of victory, but
+treachery was feared, and eternal darkness had been at once decreed for
+spies and alarmists.
+
+There was shouting and singing of ancient hymns and praise of the
+Almighty. They drank of the mystic wine. Courage, over-inflated, came
+near to giving way, and a secret anxiety stole into the inner depths of
+their souls. The archangel Michael took supreme command. He reassured
+their minds by his serenity. His countenance, wherein his soul was
+visible, expressed contempt for danger. By his orders, the chiefs of the
+thunderbolts, the Kerûbs, grown dull with the long interval of peace,
+paced with heavy steps the ramparts of the Holy Mountain, and, letting
+the gaze of their bovine eyes wander over the glittering clouds of
+their Lord, strove to place the divine batteries in position. After
+inspecting the defences, they swore to the Most High that all was in
+readiness. They took counsel together as to the plan they should follow.
+Michael was for the offensive. He, as a consummate soldier, said it was
+the supreme law. Attack, or be attacked,--there was no middle course.
+
+"Moreover," he added, "the offensive attitude is particularly suitable
+to the ardour of the Thrones and Dominations."
+
+Beyond that, it was impossible to obtain a word from the valiant chief,
+and this silence seemed the mark of a genius sure of himself.
+
+As soon as the approach of the enemy was announced, Michael sent forth
+three armies to meet them, commanded by the archangels Uriel, Raphael,
+and Gabriel. Standards, displaying all the colours of the Orient, were
+unfurled above the ethereal plains, and the thunders rolled over the
+starry floors. For three days and three nights was the lot of the
+terrible and adorable armies unknown on the Mountain of God. Towards
+dawn on the fourth day news came, but it was vague and confused. There
+were rumours of indecisive victories; of the triumph now of this side,
+now of that. There came reports of glorious deeds which were dissipated
+in a few hours.
+
+The thunderbolts of Raphael, hurled against the rebels, had, it was
+said, consumed entire squadrons. The troops commanded by the impure Zita
+were thought to have been swallowed up in the whirlwind of a tempest of
+fire. It was believed that the savage Istar had been flung headlong into
+the gulf of perdition so suddenly that the blasphemies begun in his
+mouth had been forced backwards with explosive results. It was popularly
+supposed that Satan, laden with chains of adamant, had been plunged once
+again into the abyss. Meanwhile, the commanders of the three armies had
+sent no messages. Mutterings and murmurs, mingling with the rumours of
+glory, gave rise to fears of an indecisive battle, a precipitate
+retreat. Insolent voices gave out that a spirit of the lowest category,
+a guardian angel, the insignificant Arcade, had checked and routed the
+dazzling host of the three great archangels.
+
+There were also rumours of wholesale defection in the Seventh Heaven,
+where rebellion had broken out before the beginning of Time, and some
+had even seen black clouds of impious angels joining the armies of the
+rebels on Earth. But no one lent an ear to the odious rumours, and
+stress was laid on the news of victory which ran from lip to lip, each
+statement readily finding confirmation. The high places resounded with
+hymns of joy; the Seraphim celebrated on harp and psaltery Sabaoth, God
+of Thunder. The voices of the elect united with those of the angels in
+glorifying the Invisible and at the thought of the bloodshed that the
+ministers of holy wrath had caused among the rebels, sighs of relief and
+jubilation were wafted from the Heavenly Jerusalem towards the Most
+High. But the beatitude of the most blessed, having swelled to the
+utmost limit before due time, could increase no more, and the very
+excess of their felicity completely dulled their senses.
+
+The songs had not yet ceased when the guards watching on the ramparts
+signalled the approach of the first fugitives of the divine army;
+Seraphim on tattered wing, flying in disorder, maimed Kerûbs going on
+three feet. With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured
+the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its
+causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one
+of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest
+captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was
+evident. Scarcely were the gates of the citadel opened to receive the
+glorious but shattered remnants of the three armies, when a rain of fire
+fell on the Mountain of God. Satan's army was not yet in sight, but the
+walls of topaz, the cupolas of emerald, the roofs of diamond, all fell
+in with an appalling crash under the discharge of the electrophores. The
+ancient thunderclouds essayed to reply, but the bolts fell short, and
+their thunders were lost in the deserted plains of the skies.
+
+Smitten by an invisible foe, the faithful angels abandoned the ramparts.
+Michael went to announce to his God that the Holy Mountain would fall
+into the hands of the demon in twenty-four hours, and that nothing
+remained for the Master of the Heavens but to seek safety in flight. The
+Seraphim placed the jewels of the celestial crown in coffers. Michael
+offered his arm to the Queen of Heaven, and the Holy Family escaped from
+the palace by a subterranean passage of porphyry. A deluge of fire was
+falling on the citadel. Regaining his post once more, the glorious
+archangel declared that he would never capitulate, and straightway
+advanced the standards of the living God. That same evening the rebel
+host made its entry into the thrice-sacred city. On a fiery steed Satan
+led his demons. Behind him marched Arcade, Istar, and Zita. As in the
+ancient revels of Dionysus, old Nectaire bestrode his ass. Thereafter,
+floating out far behind, followed the black standards.
+
+The garrison laid down their arms before Satan. Michael placed his
+flaming sword at the feet of the conquering archangel.
+
+"Take back your sword, Michael," said Satan. "It is Lucifer who yields
+it to you. Bear it in defence of peace and law." Then letting his gaze
+fall on the leaders of the celestial cohorts, he cried in a ringing
+voice:
+
+"Archangel Michael, and you, Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, swear all
+of you to be faithful to your God."
+
+"We swear it," they replied with one voice.
+
+And Satan said:
+
+"Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, of all past wars, I wish but to
+remember the invincible courage that you displayed and the loyalty which
+you rendered to authority, for these assure me of the steadfastness of
+the fealty you have just sworn to me."
+
+The following day, on the ethereal plain, Satan commanded the black
+standards to be distributed to the troops, and the winged soldiers
+covered them with kisses and bedewed them with tears.
+
+And Satan had himself crowned God. Thronging round the glittering walls
+of Heavenly Jerusalem, apostles, pontiffs, virgins, martyrs, confessors,
+the whole company of the elect, who during the fierce battle had enjoyed
+delightful tranquillity, tasted infinite joy in the spectacle of the
+coronation.
+
+The elect saw with ravishment the Most High precipitated into Hell, and
+Satan seated on the throne of the Lord. In conformity with the will of
+God which had cut them off from sorrow they sang in the ancient fashion
+the praises of their new Master.
+
+And Satan, piercing space with his keen glance, contemplated the little
+globe of earth and water where of old he had planted the vine and formed
+the first tragic chorus. And he fixed his gaze on that Rome where the
+fallen God had founded his empire on fraud and lie. Nevertheless, at
+that moment a saint ruled over the Church. Satan saw him praying and
+weeping. And he said to him:
+
+"To thee I entrust my Spouse. Watch over her faithfully. In thee I
+confirm the right and power to decide matters of doctrine, to regulate
+the use of the sacraments, to make laws and to uphold purity of morals.
+And the faithful shall be under obligation to conform thereto. My Church
+is eternal, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Thou art
+infallible. Nothing is changed."
+
+And the successor of the apostles felt flooded with rapture. He
+prostrated himself, and with his forehead touching the floor, replied:
+
+"O Lord, my God, I recognise Thy voice! Thy breath has been wafted like
+balm to my heart. Blessed be Thy name. Thy will be done on Earth, as it
+is in Heaven. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
+
+And Satan found pleasure in praise and in the exercise of his grace; he
+loved to hear his wisdom and his power belauded. He listened with joy to
+the canticles of the cherubim who celebrated his good deeds, and he
+took no pleasure in listening to Nectaire's flute, because it celebrated
+nature's self, yielded to the insect and to the blade of grass their
+share of power and love, and counselled happiness and freedom. Satan,
+whose flesh had crept, in days gone by, at the idea that suffering
+prevailed in the world, now felt himself inaccessible to pity. He
+regarded suffering and death as the happy results of omnipotence and
+sovereign kindness. And the savour of the blood of victims rose upward
+towards him like sweet incense. He fell to condemning intelligence and
+to hating curiosity. He himself refused to learn anything more, for fear
+that in acquiring fresh knowledge he might let it be seen that he had
+not known everything at the very outset. He took pleasure in mystery,
+and believing that he would seem less great by being understood, he
+affected to be unintelligible. Dense fumes of Theology filled his brain.
+One day, following the example of his predecessor, he conceived the
+notion of proclaiming himself one god in three persons. Seeing Arcade
+smile as this proclamation was made, he drove him from his presence.
+Istar and Zita had long since returned to earth. Thus centuries passed
+like seconds. Now, one day, from the altitude of his throne, he plunged
+his gaze into the depths of the pit and saw Ialdabaoth in the Gehenna
+where he himself had long lain enchained. Amid the everlasting gloom
+Ialdabaoth still retained his lofty mien. Blackened and shattered,
+terrible and sublime, he glanced upwards at the palace of the King of
+Heaven with a look of proud disdain, then turned away his head. And the
+new god, as he looked upon his foe, beheld the light of intelligence and
+love pass across his sorrow-stricken countenance. And lo! Ialdabaoth was
+now contemplating the Earth and, seeing it sunk in wickedness and
+suffering, he began to foster thoughts of kindliness in his heart. On a
+sudden he rose up, and beating the ether with his mighty arms, as though
+with oars, he hastened thither to instruct and to console mankind.
+Already his vast shadow shed upon the unhappy planet a shade soft as a
+night of love.
+
+And Satan awoke bathed in an icy sweat.
+
+Nectaire, Istar, Arcade, and Zita were standing round him. The finches
+were singing.
+
+"Comrades," said the great archangel, "no--we will not conquer the
+heavens. Enough to have the power. War engenders war, and victory
+defeat.
+
+"God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God.
+May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed
+my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be
+possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by
+rapine. Now, thanks to us, the god of old is dispossessed of his
+terrestrial empire, and every thinking being on this globe disdains him
+or knows him not. But what matter that men should be no longer
+submissive to Ialdabaoth if the spirit of Ialdabaoth is still in them;
+if they, like him, are jealous, violent, quarrelsome, and greedy, and
+the foes of the arts and of beauty? What matter that they have rejected
+the ferocious Demiurge, if they do not hearken to the friendly demons
+who teach all truths; to Dionysus, Apollo, and the Muses? As to
+ourselves, celestial spirits, sublime demons, we have destroyed
+Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant, if in ourselves we have destroyed Ignorance and
+Fear."
+
+And Satan, turning to the gardener, said:
+
+"Nectaire, you fought with me before the birth of the world. We were
+conquered because we failed to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and
+that it is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must attack and
+destroy Ialdabaoth."
+
+THE END
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Notes                                          |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Page 74: "Madame des Aubel's" amended to "Madame des         |
+  |     Aubels'"                                                 |
+  | Page 170: "clomb" _sic_ (archaic; past tense of _climb_).    |
+  | Page 210: "befel" _sic_ (archaic).                           |
+  | Page 230: "Bouchette" amended to "Bouchotte"                 |
+  | Page 234: "befel" _sic_ (archaic).                           |
+  | Page 259: "cetain" amended to "certain"                      |
+  | Page 278: "youself" amended to "yourself"                    |
+  | Page 284: "wistaria" _sic_; alternative spelling.            |
+  | Page 309: "Bergundy" amended to "Burgundy"                   |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Accents and hyphenation have generally been standardised.    |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels,
+by Anatole France
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32596-8.txt or 32596-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/5/9/32596/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/32596-8.zip b/32596-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44ffcc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-8.zip
diff --git a/32596-h.zip b/32596-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96ee9a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h.zip
diff --git a/32596-h/32596-h.htm b/32596-h/32596-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d74056b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/32596-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11338 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Revolt of the Angels, by ANATOLE FRANCE.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+
+    body  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+    p     {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify;
+           margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .frontend   {text-align: center; font-size: 80%;}
+    .transnote  {margin: 2em 5% 1em 5%; font-size: 90%; padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em;
+                 border: solid 1px silver;}
+    .toc        {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 30%;
+                 margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;
+                 text-align: center; font-size: 90%;}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+
+    hr    {width: 33%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;
+           margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+
+    img {border: 0;}
+
+    table     {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+    td        {vertical-align: top;} /* keeps multi-line text in table cells lined up */
+
+    .pagenum  {position: absolute;
+               left: 92%;
+               font-size: 70%;
+               text-align: right;}
+
+    .blockquot {text-indent: -2em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 15%;}
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .right    {text-align: right;}
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figleft     {float: left; clear: both; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top:
+                 0em; margin-right: 0.25em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .clearfix:after {content: "."; display: block; height: 0;
+                     clear: both; visibility: hidden;}
+
+    .clearfix {display: inline-block;}
+
+       /* Hides from IE-mac \*/
+    * html .clearfix {height: 1%;}
+    .clearfix {display: block;}
+       /* End hide from IE-mac */
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Revolt of the Angels
+
+Author: Anatole France
+
+Editor: Frederic Chapman
+
+Translator: Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32596]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class='transnote'>
+<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3>
+
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in
+this text. For a complete list, please see <a href="#tnote">the bottom of
+this document</a>.</p>
+
+<p>A Table of Contents has been added.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/img01.jpg"><img src="images/img01th.jpg" width="400" height="299" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE<br />
+IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION<br />
+EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN</h3>
+
+<h2>THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img02.jpg" width="400" height="358" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE REVOLT<br />
+OF THE ANGELS</h1>
+
+<h4>BY ANATOLE FRANCE</h4>
+
+<h3>A TRANSLATION BY<br />
+MRS. WILFRID JACKSON</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<a href="images/img03.jpg"><img src="images/img03th.jpg" width="383" height="400" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'>LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD<br />
+NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br />
+MCMXXIV</p>
+
+<p class='frontend'>
+Copyright, 1914,<br />
+by<br />
+<span class="smcap">Dodd, Mead and Company</span></p>
+
+<p class='frontend'>PRINTED IN U. S. A.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='toc'>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE<br />
+REVOLT OF THE ANGELS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<h1>THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS</h1>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">containing in a few lines the history of a
+french family from 1789 to the present
+day</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/imgb.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>ENEATH the shadow of St. Sulpice
+the ancient mansion of the d'Esparvieu
+family rears its austere three
+stories between a moss-grown fore-court
+and a garden hemmed in,
+as the years have elapsed, by ever loftier and more
+intrusive buildings, wherein, nevertheless, two tall
+chestnut trees still lift their withered heads.</p>
+
+<p>Here from 1825 to 1857 dwelt the great man of
+the family, Alexandre Bussart d'Esparvieu, Vice-President
+of the Council of State under the Government
+of July, Member of the Academy of Moral
+and Political Sciences, and author of an <i>Essay on
+the Civil and Religious Institutions of Nations</i>, in
+three octavo volumes, a work unfortunately left
+incomplete.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>This eminent theorist of a Liberal monarchy
+left as heir to his name his fortune and his fame,
+Fulgence-Adolphe Bussart d'Esparvieu, senator under
+the Second Empire, who added largely to his
+patrimony by buying land over which the Avenue
+de l'Imp&eacute;ratice was destined ultimately to pass,
+and who made a remarkable speech in favour of
+the temporal power of the popes.</p>
+
+<p>Fulgence had three sons. The eldest, Marc-Alexandre,
+entering the army, made a splendid
+career for himself: he was a good speaker. The
+second, Ga&eacute;tan, showing no particular aptitude for
+anything, lived mostly in the country, where he
+hunted, bred horses, and devoted himself to music
+and painting. The third son, Ren&eacute;, destined from
+his childhood for the law, resigned his deputyship
+to avoid complicity in the Ferry decrees against
+the religious orders; and later, perceiving the
+revival under the presidency of Monsieur Falli&egrave;res
+of the days of Decius and Diocletian, put his knowledge
+and zeal at the service of the persecuted
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>From the Concordat of 1801 down to the closing
+years of the Second Empire all the d'Esparvieus
+attended mass for the sake of example. Though
+sceptics in their inmost hearts, they looked upon
+religion as an instrument of government.</p>
+
+<p>Mark and Ren&eacute; were the first of their race to
+show any sign of sincere devotion. The General,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+when still a colonel, had dedicated his regiment to
+the Sacred Heart, and he practised his faith with
+a fervour remarkable even in a soldier, though
+we all know that piety, daughter of Heaven,
+has marked out the hearts of the generals of the
+Third Republic as her chosen dwelling-place on
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Faith has its vicissitudes. Under the old order
+the masses were believers, not so the aristocracy
+or the educated middle class. Under the First
+Empire the army from top to bottom was entirely
+irreligious. To-day the masses believe nothing.
+The middle classes wish to believe, and succeed
+at times, as did Marc and Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu.
+Their brother Ga&eacute;tan, on the contrary, the country
+gentleman, failed to attain to faith. He was an
+agnostic, a term commonly employed by the modish
+to avoid the odious one of freethinker. And he
+openly declared himself an agnostic, contrary to
+the admirable custom which deems it better to
+withhold the avowal.</p>
+
+<p>In the century in which we live there are so
+many modes of belief and of unbelief that future
+historians will have difficulty in finding their way
+about. But are we any more successful in disentangling
+the condition of religious beliefs in the
+time of Symmachus or of Ambrose?</p>
+
+<p>A fervent Christian, Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu was
+deeply attached to the liberal ideas his ancestors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+had transmitted to him as a sacred heritage. Compelled
+to oppose a Jacobin and atheistical Republic,
+he still called himself Republican. And it was in
+the name of liberty that he demanded the independence
+and sovereignty of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>During the long debates on the Separation and
+the quarrels over the Inventories, the synods of the
+bishops and the assemblies of the faithful were
+held in his house. While the most authoritatively
+accredited leaders of the Catholic party: prelates,
+generals, senators, deputies, journalists, were met
+together in the big green drawing-room, and every
+soul present turned towards Rome with a tender
+submission or enforced obedience; while Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu, his elbow on the marble chimney-piece,
+opposed civil law to canon law, and
+protested eloquently against the spoliation of the
+Church of France, two faces of other days, immobile
+and speechless, looked down on the modern
+crowd; on the right of the fire-place, painted by
+David, was Romain Bussart, a working-farmer at
+Esparvieu in shirt-sleeves and drill trousers, with a
+rough-and-ready air not untouched with cunning.
+He had good reason to smile: the worthy man laid
+the foundation of the family fortunes when he
+bought Church lands. On the left, painted by
+G&eacute;rard in full-dress bedizened with orders, was the
+peasant's son, Baron Emile Bussart d'Esparvieu,
+prefect under the Empire, Keeper of the Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+Seal under Charles X, who died in 1837, churchwarden
+of his parish, with couplets from <i>La Pucelle</i>
+on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu married in 1888 Marie-Antoinette
+Coupelle, daughter of Baron Coupelle,
+ironmaster at Blainville (Haute Loire). Madame
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu had been president since 1903 of the
+Society of Christian Mothers. These perfect spouses,
+having married off their eldest daughter in 1908, had
+three children still at home&mdash;a girl and two boys.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on, the younger, aged seven, had a room next to
+his mother and his sister Berthe. Maurice, the elder,
+lived in a little pavilion comprising two rooms
+at the bottom of the garden. The young man thus
+gained a freedom which enabled him to endure
+family life. He was rather good-looking, smart
+without too much pretence, and the faint smile
+which merely raised one corner of his mouth did
+not lack charm.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty-five Maurice possessed the wisdom of
+Ecclesiastes. Doubting whether a man hath any
+profit of all his labour which he taketh under the sun
+he never put himself out about anything. From
+his earliest childhood this young hopeful's sole concern
+with work had been considering how he might
+best avoid it, and it was through his remaining
+ignorant of the teaching of the <i>&Eacute;cole de Droit</i> that
+he became a doctor of law and a barrister at the
+Court of Appeal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He neither pleaded nor practised. He had no
+knowledge and no desire to acquire any; wherein
+he conformed to his genius whose engaging fragility
+he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately
+telling him that it was better to understand little
+than to misunderstand a lot.</p>
+
+<p>As Monsieur l'Abb&eacute; Patouille expressed it, Maurice
+had received from Heaven the benefits of a Christian
+education. From his childhood piety was
+shown to him in the example of his home, and
+when on leaving college he was entered at the
+<i>&Eacute;cole de Droit</i>, he found the lore of the doctors, the
+virtues of the confessors, and the constancy of the
+nursing mothers of the Church assembled around
+the paternal hearth. Admitted to social and political
+life at the time of the great persecution of
+the Church of France, Maurice did not fail to attend
+every manifestation of youthful Catholicism; he
+lent a hand with his parish barricades at the time
+of the Inventories, and with his companions he
+unharnessed the archbishop's horses when he was
+driven out from his palace. He showed on all
+these occasions a modified zeal; one never saw him
+in the front ranks of the heroic band exciting soldiers
+to a glorious disobedience or flinging mud and
+curses at the agents of the law.</p>
+
+<p>He did his duty, nothing more; and if he distinguished
+himself on the occasion of the great
+pilgrimage of 1911 among the stretcher-bearers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+at Lourdes, we have reason to fear it was but to
+please Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re, who admired
+men of muscle. Abb&eacute; Patouille, a friend of
+the family and deeply versed in the knowledge of
+souls, knew that Maurice had only moderate
+aspirations to martyrdom. He reproached him
+with his lukewarmness, and pulled his ear, calling
+him a bad lot. Anyway, Maurice remained a
+believer.</p>
+
+<p>Amid the distractions of youth his faith remained
+intact, since he left it severely alone. He had never
+examined a single tenet. Nor had he enquired a
+whit more closely into the ideas of morality current
+in the grade of society to which he belonged. He
+took them just as they came. Thus in every situation
+that arose he cut an eminently respectable
+figure which he would have assuredly failed to do,
+had he been given to meditating on the foundations
+of morality. He was irritable and hot-tempered
+and possessed of a sense of honour which he was at
+great pains to cultivate. He was neither vain nor
+ambitious. Like the majority of Frenchmen, he
+disliked parting with his money. Women would
+never have obtained anything from him had they
+not known the way to make him give. He believed
+he despised them; the truth was he adored them.
+He indulged his appetites so naturally that he never
+suspected that he had any. What people did not
+know, himself least of all,&mdash;though the gleam that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+occasionally shone in his fine, light-brown eyes
+might have furnished the hint&mdash;was that he had a
+warm heart and was capable of friendship. For the
+rest, he was, in the ordinary intercourse of life, no
+very brilliant specimen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein useful information will be found
+concerning a library where strange things
+will shortly come to pass</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 74px;">
+<img src="images/imgd.jpg" width="74" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>ESIROUS of embracing the whole
+circle of human knowledge, and anxious
+to bequeath to the world
+a concrete symbol of his encyclop&aelig;dic
+genius and a display in keeping
+with his pecuniary resources, Baron Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu had formed a library of three hundred
+and sixty thousand volumes, both printed and in
+manuscript, whereof the greater part emanated
+from the Benedictines of Ligug&eacute;.</p></div>
+
+<p>By a special clause in his will he enjoined his
+heirs to add to his library, after his death, whatever
+they might deem worthy of note in natural, moral,
+political, philosophical, and religious science.</p>
+
+<p>He had indicated the sums which might be
+drawn from his estate for the fulfilment of this
+object, and charged his eldest son, Fulgence-Adolphe,
+to proceed with these additions. Fulgence-Adolphe
+accomplished with filial respect the wishes
+expressed by his illustrious father.</p>
+
+<p>After him, this huge library, which represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+more than one child's share of the estate, remained
+undivided between the Senator's three sons and two
+daughters; and Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, on whom devolved
+the house in the Rue Garanci&egrave;re, became the
+guardian of the valuable collection. His two sisters,
+Madame Paulet de Saint-Fain and Madame Cuissart,
+repeatedly demanded that such a large but unremunerative
+piece of property should be turned
+into money. But Ren&eacute; and Ga&eacute;tan bought in the
+shares of their two co-legatees, and the library was
+saved. Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu even busied himself in
+adding to it, thus fulfilling the intentions of its
+founder. But from year to year he lessened the
+number and importance of the acquisitions, opining
+that the intellectual output in Europe was on the
+wane.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Ga&eacute;tan enriched it, out of his
+funds, with works published both in France and
+abroad which he thought good, and he was not
+lacking in judgment, though his brothers would
+never allow that he had a particle. Thanks to
+this man of leisurely and inquiring mind, Baron
+Alexandre's collection was kept practically up to
+date. Even at the present day the d'Esparvieu
+library, in the departments of theology, jurisprudence,
+and history is one of the finest private
+libraries in all Europe. Here you may study
+physical science, or to put it better, physical sciences
+in all their branches, and for that matter meta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>physic
+or metaphysics, that is to say, all that
+is connected with physics and has no other name,
+so impossible is it to designate by a substantive
+that which has no substance, and is but a dream
+and an illusion. Here you may contemplate with
+admiration philosophers addressing themselves to
+the solution, dissolution, and resolution of the
+Absolute, to the determination of the Indeterminate
+and to the definition of the Infinite.</p>
+
+<p>Amid this pile of books and booklets, both sacred
+and profane, you may find everything down to the
+latest and most fashionable pragmatism.</p>
+
+<p>Other libraries there are, more richly abounding
+in bindings of venerable antiquity and illustrious
+origin, whose smooth and soft-hued texture render
+them delicious to the touch; bindings which the
+gilder's art has enriched with gossamer, lace-work,
+foliage, flowers, emblematic devices, and coats
+of arms; bindings that charm the studious eye
+with their tender radiance. Other libraries perhaps
+harbour a greater array of manuscripts illuminated
+with delicate and brilliant miniatures by
+artists of Venice, Flanders, or Touraine. But in
+handsome, sound editions of ancient and modern
+writers, both sacred and profane, the d'Esparvieu
+library is second to none. Here one finds all that
+has come down to us from antiquity; all the Fathers
+of the Church, the Apologists and the Decretalists,
+all the Humanists of the Renaissance, all the En<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>cylop&aelig;dists,
+the whole world of philosophy and
+science. Therefore it was that Cardinal Merlin,
+when he deigned to visit it, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"There is no man whose brain is equal to containing
+all the knowledge which is piled upon these
+shelves. Happily it doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>Monseigneur Cachepot, who worked there often
+when a curate in Paris, was in the habit of
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I see here the stuff to make many a Thomas
+Aquinas and many an Arius, if only the modern
+mind had not lost its ancient ardour for good and
+evil."</p>
+
+<p>There was no gainsaying that the manuscripts
+formed the more valuable portion of this immense
+collection. Noteworthy indeed was the unpublished
+correspondence of Gassendi, of Father Mersenne,
+and of Pascal, which threw a new light
+on the spirit of the seventeenth century. Nor
+must we forget the Hebrew Bibles, the Talmuds,
+the Rabbinical treatises, printed and in manuscript,
+the Aramaic and Samaritan texts, on sheepskin and
+on tablets of sycamore; in fine, all these antique
+and valuable copies collected in Egypt and in Syria
+by the celebrated Mo&iuml;se de Dina, and acquired at
+a small cost by Alexandre d'Esparvieu in 1836,
+when the learned Hebraist died of old age and
+poverty in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The Esparvienne library occupied the whole of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+the second floor of the old house. The works
+thought to be of but mediocre interest, such as
+books of Protestant exegesis of the nineteenth and
+twentieth centuries, the gift of Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan,
+were relegated unbound to the limbo of the upper
+regions. The catalogue, with its various supplements,
+ran into no less than eighteen folio volumes.
+It was quite up to date, and the library was in
+perfect order. Monsieur Julien Sariette, archivist
+and pal&aelig;ographer, who, being poor and retiring,
+used to make his living by teaching, became, in
+1895, tutor to young Maurice on the recommendation
+of the Bishop of Agra, and with scarcely an
+interval found himself curator of the Biblioth&egrave;que
+Esparvienne. Endowed with business-like energy
+and dogged patience, Monsieur Sariette himself
+classified all the members of this vast body. The
+system he invented and put into practice was so
+complicated, the labels he put on the books were
+made up of so many capital letters and small letters,
+both Latin and Greek, so many Arabic and
+Roman numerals, asterisks, double asterisks, triple
+asterisks, and those signs which in arithmetic
+express powers and roots, that the mere study of it
+would have involved more time and labour than
+would have been required for the complete mastery of
+algebra, and as no one could be found who would give
+the hours, that might be more profitably employed
+in discovering the law of numbers, to the solving of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+these cryptic symbols, Monsieur Sariette remained
+the only one capable of finding his way among the
+intricacies of his system, and without his help it
+had become an utter impossibility to discover,
+among the three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes confided to his care, the particular volume
+one happened to require. Such was the result of
+his labours. Far from complaining about it, he
+experienced on the contrary a lively satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette loved his library. He loved it
+with a jealous love. He was there every day at
+seven o'clock in the morning busy cataloguing at a
+huge mahogany desk. The slips in his handwriting
+filled an enormous case standing by his side surmounted
+by a plaster bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu.
+Alexandre wore his hair brushed straight back,
+and had a sublime look on his face. Like Chateaubriand,
+he affected little feathery side whiskers. His
+lips were pursed, his bosom bare. Punctually at
+midday Monsieur Sariette used to sally forth to
+lunch at a <i>cr&egrave;merie</i> in the narrow gloomy Rue des
+Canettes. It was known as the <i>Cr&egrave;merie des
+Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>, and had once been the haunt of
+Baudelaire, Theodore de Banville, Charles Asselineau,
+and a certain grandee of Spain who had translated
+the "Mysteries of Paris" into the language
+of the <i>conquistadores</i>. And the ducks that paddled
+so nicely on the old stone sign which gave its name
+to the street used to recognize Monsieur Sariette.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+At a quarter to one, to the very minute, he went
+back to his library, where he remained until seven
+o'clock. He then again betook himself to the
+<i>Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>, and sat down to his frugal dinner,
+with its crowning glory of stewed prunes. Every
+evening, after dinner, his crony, Monsieur Guinardon,
+universally known as P&egrave;re Guinardon, a scene-painter
+and picture-restorer, who used to do work
+for churches, would come from his garret in the
+Rue Princesse to have his coffee and liqueur at the
+<i>Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>, and the two friends would play
+their game of dominoes.</p>
+
+<p>Old Guinardon, who was like some rugged old
+tree still full of sap, was older than he could bring
+himself to believe. He had known Chenavard.
+His chastity was positively ferocious, and he was
+for ever denouncing the impurities of neo-paganism
+in language of alarming obscenity. He loved
+talking. Monsieur Sariette was a ready listener.
+Old Guinardon's favourite subject was the Chapelle
+des Anges in St. Sulpice, in which the paintings
+were peeling off the walls, and which he was one
+day to restore; when, that is, it should please God,
+for, since the Separation, the churches belonged
+solely to God, and no one would undertake the
+responsibility of even the most urgent repairs. But
+old Guinardon demanded no salary.</p>
+
+<p>"Michael is my patron saint," he said. "And
+I have a special devotion for the Holy Angels."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After they had had their game of dominoes,
+Monsieur Sariette, very thin and small, and old
+Guinardon, sturdy as an oak, hirsute as a lion, and
+tall as a Saint Christopher, went off chatting away
+side by side across the Place Saint Sulpice, heedless
+of whether the night were fine or stormy. Monsieur
+Sariette always went straight home, much to the regret
+of the painter, who was a gossip and a nightbird.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, as the clock struck seven,
+Monsieur Sariette would take up his place in the
+library, and resume his cataloguing. As he sat at
+his desk, however, he would dart a Medusa-like
+look at anyone who entered, fearing lest he should
+prove to be a book-borrower. It was not merely
+the magistrates, politicians, and prelates whom he
+would have liked to turn to stone when they came
+to ask for the loan of a book with an air of authority
+bred of their familiarity with the master of the
+house. He would have done as much to Monsieur
+Ga&eacute;tan, the library's benefactor, when he wanted
+some gay or scandalous old volume wherewith to
+beguile a wet day in the country. He would have
+meted out similar treatment to Madame Ren&eacute;
+d'Esparvieu, when she came to look for a book to
+read to her sick poor in hospital, and even to Monsieur
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu himself, who generally
+contented himself with the Civil Code and a volume
+of Dalloz. The borrowing of the smallest book<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+seemed like dragging his heart out. To refuse a
+volume even to such as had the most incontestable
+right to it, Monsieur Sariette would invent countless
+far-fetched or clumsy fibs, and did not even
+shrink from slandering himself as curator or from
+casting doubts on his own vigilance by saying that
+such and such a book was mislaid or lost, when a
+moment ago he had been gloating over that very
+volume or pressing it to his bosom. And when
+ultimately forced to part with a volume he would
+take it back a score of times from the borrower
+before he finally relinquished it.</p>
+
+<p>He was always in agony lest one of the objects
+confided to his care should escape him. As the
+guardian of three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes, he had three hundred and sixty thousand
+reasons for alarm. Sometimes he woke at night
+bathed in sweat, and uttering a cry of fear, because
+he had dreamed he had seen a gap on one of the
+shelves of his bookcases. It seemed to him a
+monstrous, unheard-of, and most grievous thing
+that a volume should leave its habitat. This
+noble rapacity exasperated Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu,
+who, failing to understand the good qualities
+of his paragon of a librarian, called him an old
+maniac. Monsieur Sariette knew nought of this
+injustice, but he would have braved the cruellest
+misfortune and endured opprobrium and insult to
+safeguard the integrity of his trust. Thanks to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+assiduity, his vigilance and zeal, or, in a word, to
+his love, the Esparvienne library had not lost so
+much as a single leaflet under his supervision during
+the sixteen years which had now rolled by, this
+ninth of September, 1912.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein the mystery begins</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imga.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>T seven o'clock on the evening of
+that day, having as usual replaced
+all the books which had been taken
+from their shelves, and having assured
+himself that he was leaving
+everything in good order, he quitted the library,
+double-locking the door after him. According to
+his usual habit, he dined at the <i>Cr&egrave;merie des Quatre
+&Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>, read his newspaper, <i>La Croix</i>, and
+at ten o'clock went home to his little house in
+the Rue du Regard. The good man had no trouble
+and no presentiment of evil; his sleep was peaceful.
+The next morning at seven o'clock to the minute,
+he entered the little room leading to the library,
+and, according to his daily habit, doffed his grand
+frock-coat, and taking down an old one which hung
+in a cupboard over his washstand, put it on. Then
+he went in to his workroom, where for sixteen years
+he had been cataloguing six days out of the seven,
+under the lofty gaze of Alexandre d'Esparvieu.
+Preparing to make a round of the various rooms, he
+entered the first and largest, which contained works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+on theology and religion in huge cupboards whose
+cornices were adorned with bronze-coloured busts
+of poets and orators of ancient days.</p></div>
+
+<p>Two enormous globes representing the earth and
+the heavens filled the window-embrasures. But at his
+first step Monsieur Sariette stopped dead, stupefied,
+powerless alike to doubt or to credit what his eyes
+beheld. On the blue cloth cover of the writing-table
+books lay scattered about pell-mell, some
+lying flat, some standing upright. A number of
+quartos were heaped up in a tottering pile. Two
+Greek lexicons, one inside the other, formed a
+single being more monstrous in shape than the
+human couples of the divine Plato. A gilt-edged
+folio was all a-gape, showing three of its leaves
+disgracefully dog's-eared.</p>
+
+<p>Having, after an interval of some moments,
+recovered from his profound amazement, the librarian
+went up to the table and recognised in the confused
+mass his most valuable Hebrew, French, and
+Latin Bibles, a unique Talmud, Rabbinical treatises
+printed and in manuscript, Aramaic and Samaritan
+texts and scrolls from the synagogues&mdash;in fine,
+the most precious relics of Israel all lying in a disordered
+heap, gaping and crumpled.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette found himself confronted with
+an inexplicable phenomenon; nevertheless he sought
+to account for it. How eagerly he would have
+welcomed the idea that Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan, who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+being a thoroughly unprincipled man, presumed on
+the right gained him by his fatal liberality towards
+the library to rummage there unhindered during his
+sojourns in Paris, had been the author of this
+terrible disorder. But Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan was away
+travelling in Italy. After pondering for some
+minutes Monsieur Sariette's next supposition was
+that Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu had entered the
+library late in the evening with the keys of his manservant
+Hippolyte, who, for the past twenty-five
+years, had looked after the second floor and the
+attics. Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, however, never
+worked at night, and did not read Hebrew. Perhaps,
+thought Monsieur Sariette, perhaps he had brought
+or allowed to be brought to this room some priest,
+or Jerusalem monk, on his way through Paris;
+some Oriental <i>savant</i> given to scriptural exegesis.
+Monsieur Sariette next wondered whether the
+Abb&eacute; Patouille, who had an enquiring mind, and
+also a habit of dog's-earing his books, had, peradventure,
+flung himself on these talmudic and
+biblical texts, fired with sudden zeal to lay bare the
+soul of Shem. He even asked himself for a moment
+whether Hippolyte, the old manservant, who had
+swept and dusted the library for a quarter of a
+century, and had been slowly poisoned by the dust
+of accumulated knowledge, had allowed his curiosity
+to get the better of him, and had been there during
+the night, ruining his eyesight and his reason, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+losing his soul poring by moonlight over these
+undecipherable symbols. Monsieur Sariette even
+went so far as to imagine that young Maurice, on
+leaving his club or some nationalist meeting, might
+have torn these Jewish volumes from their shelves,
+out of hatred for old Jacob and his modern posterity;
+for this young man of family was a declared anti-semite,
+and only consorted with those Jews who
+were as anti-semitic as himself. It was giving a very
+free rein to his imagination, but Monsieur Sariette's
+brain could not rest, and went wandering about
+among speculations of the wildest extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>Impatient to know the truth, the zealous guardian
+of the library called the manservant.</p>
+
+<p>Hippolyte knew nothing. The porter at the
+lodge could not furnish any clue. None of the
+domestics had heard a sound. Monsieur Sariette
+went down to the study of Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu,
+who received him in nightcap and dressing-gown,
+listened to his story with the air of a serious
+man bored with idle chatter, and dismissed him with
+words which conveyed a cruel implication of pity.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not worry, my good Monsieur Sariette; be
+sure that the books were lying where you left them
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette reiterated his enquiries a
+score of times, discovered nothing, and suffered
+such anxiety that sleep entirely forsook him. When,
+on the following day at seven o'clock he entered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+the room with the busts and globes, and saw that
+all was in order, he heaved a sigh of relief.
+Then suddenly his heart beat fit to burst. He had
+just seen lying flat on the mantelpiece a paper-bound
+volume, a modern work, the boxwood paper-knife
+which had served to cut its pages still thrust
+between the leaves. It was a dissertation on
+the two parallel versions of Genesis, a work which
+Monsieur Sariette had relegated to the attic, and
+which had never left it up to now, no one in Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's circle having had the curiosity
+to differentiate between the parts for which the
+polytheistic and monotheistic contributors were
+respectively responsible in the formation of the
+first of the sacred books. This book bore the
+label R &gt; 3214<sup>VIII</sup>/<sub>2</sub>. And this painful truth was
+suddenly borne in upon the mind of Monsieur
+Sariette: to wit, that the most scientific system of
+numbering will not help to find a book if the book
+is no longer in its place. Every day of the ensuing
+month found the table littered with books. Greek
+and Latin lay cheek by jowl with Hebrew. Monsieur
+Sariette asked himself whether these nocturnal
+flittings were the work of evil-doers who
+entered by the skylights to steal valuable and
+precious volumes. But he found no traces of
+burglary, and, notwithstanding the most minute
+search, failed to discover that anything had disappeared.
+Terrible anxiety took possession of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+mind, and he fell to wondering whether it was
+possible that some monkey in the neighbourhood
+came down the chimney and acted the part of a
+person engaged in study. Deriving his knowledge
+of the habits of these animals in the main from the
+paintings of Watteau and Chardin, he took it that,
+in the art of imitating gestures or assuming characters
+they resembled Harlequin, Scaramouch, Zerlin,
+and the Doctors of the Italian comedy; he imagined
+them handling a palette and brushes, pounding
+drugs in a mortar, or turning over the leaves of an
+old treatise on alchemy beside an athanor. And so
+it was that, when, on one unhappy morning, he saw
+a huge blot of ink on one of the leaves of the third
+volume of the polyglot Bible bound in blue morocco
+and adorned with the arms of the Comte de Mirabeau,
+he had no doubt that a monkey was the author
+of the evil deed. The monkey had been pretending
+to take notes and had upset the inkpot. It must be
+a monkey belonging to a learned professor.</p>
+
+<p>Imbued with this idea, Monsieur Sariette carefully
+studied the topography of the district, so
+as to draw a cordon round the group of houses
+amid which the d'Esparvieu house stood. Then
+he visited the four surrounding streets, asking
+at every door if there was a monkey in the house.
+He interrogated porters and their wives, washer-women,
+servants, a cobbler, a greengrocer, a glazier,
+clerks in bookshops, a priest, a bookbinder, two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+guardians of the peace, children, thus testing the
+diversity of character and variety of temper in one
+and the same people; for the replies he received
+were quite dissimilar in nature; some were rough,
+some were gentle; there were the coarse and the
+polished, the simple and the ironical, the prolix and
+the abrupt, the brief and even the silent. But of
+the animal he sought he had had neither sight nor
+sound, when under the archway of an old house in
+the Rue Servandoni, a small freckled, red-haired
+girl who looked after the door, made reply:</p>
+
+<p>"There is Monsieur Ordonneau's monkey; would
+you care to see it?"</p>
+
+<p>And without another word she conducted the old
+man to a stable at the other end of the yard. There
+on some rank straw and old bits of cloth, a young
+macaco with a chain round his middle sat and
+shivered. He was no taller than a five-year-old
+child. His livid face, his wrinkled brow, his thin
+lips were all expressive of mortal sadness. He fixed
+on the visitor the still lively gaze of his yellow
+eyes. Then with his small dry hand he seized a
+carrot, put it to his mouth, and forthwith flung it
+away. Having looked at the newcomers for a
+moment, the exile turned away his head, as if he
+expected nothing further of mankind or of life.
+Sitting huddled up, one knee in his hand, he made
+no further movement, but at times a dry cough
+shook his breast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's Edgar," said the small girl. "He is for
+sale, you know."</p>
+
+<p>But the old book-lover, who had come armed with
+anger and resentment, thinking to find a cynical
+enemy, a monster of malice, an antibibliophile,
+stopped short, surprised, saddened, and overcome,
+before this little being devoid of strength and joy
+and hope.</p>
+
+<p>Recognising his mistake, troubled by the almost
+human face which sorrow and suffering made more
+human still, he murmured "Forgive me" and
+bowed his head.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which in its forceful brevity projects us to
+the limits of the actual world</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>WO months elapsed; the domestic
+upheaval did not subside, and Monsieur
+Sariette's thoughts turned
+to the Freemasons. The papers he
+read were full of their crimes. Abb&eacute;
+Patouille deemed them capable of the darkest
+deeds, and believed them to be in league with the
+Jews and meditating the total overthrow of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>Having now arrived at the acme of power, they
+wielded a dominating influence in all the principal
+departments of State, they ruled the Chambers,
+there were five of them in the Ministry, and they
+filled the &Eacute;lys&eacute;e. Having some time since assassinated
+a President of the Republic because he
+was a patriot, they were getting rid of the accomplices
+and witnesses of their execrable crime. Few
+days passed without Paris being terror-stricken at
+some mysterious murder hatched in their Lodges.
+These were facts concerning which no doubt was
+possible. By what means did they gain access to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+the library? Monsieur Sariette could not imagine.
+What task had they come to fulfil? Why did they
+attack sacred antiquity and the origins of the
+Church? What impious designs were they forming?
+A heavy shadow hung over these terrible undertakings.
+The Catholic archivist feeling himself
+under the eye of the sons of Hiram was terrified and
+fell ill.</p></div>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he recovered, when he resolved to
+pass the night in the very spot where these terrible
+mysteries were enacted, and to take the subtle and
+dangerous visitors by surprise. It was an enterprise
+that demanded all his slender courage. Being
+a man of delicate physique and of nervous temperament,
+Monsieur Sariette was naturally inclined to
+be fearful. On the 8th of January at nine o'clock in
+the evening, while the city lay asleep under a whirling
+snowstorm, he built up a good fire in the room
+containing the busts of the ancient poets and
+philosophers, and ensconced himself in an arm-chair
+at the chimney corner, a rug over his knees.
+On a small stand within reach of his hand were a
+lamp, a bowl of black coffee, and a revolver borrowed
+from the youthful Maurice. He tried to read his
+paper, <i>La Croix</i>, but the letters danced beneath
+his eyes. So he stared hard in front of him, saw
+nothing but the shadows, heard nothing but the
+wind, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke the fire was out, the lamp was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+extinguished, leaving an acrid smell behind. But
+all around, the darkness was filled with milky
+brightness and phosphorescent lights. He thought
+he saw something flutter on the table. Stricken to
+the marrow with cold and terror, but upheld by a
+resolve stronger than any fear, he rose, approached
+the table, and passed his hands over the cloth. He
+saw nothing; even the lights faded, but under his
+fingers he felt a folio wide open; he tried to close
+it, the book resisted, jumped up and hit the imprudent
+librarian three blows on the head.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette fell down unconscious....</p>
+
+<p>Since then things had gone from bad to worse.
+Books left their allotted shelves in greater profusion
+than ever, and sometimes it was impossible
+to replace them; they disappeared. Monsieur Sariette
+discovered fresh losses daily. The Bollandists
+were now an imperfect set, thirty volumes
+of exegesis were missing. He himself had become
+unrecognisable. His face had shrunk to the size of
+one's fist and grown yellow as a lemon, his neck was
+elongated out of all proportion, his shoulders drooped,
+the clothes he wore hung on him as on a peg. He
+ate nothing, and at the <i>Cr&egrave;merie des Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>
+he would sit with dull eyes and bowed head, staring
+fixedly and vacantly at the saucer where, in a muddy
+juice, floated his stewed prunes. He did not
+hear old Guinardon relate how he had at last begun
+to restore the Delacroix paintings at St. Sulpice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, when he heard the
+unhappy curator's alarming reports, used to answer
+drily:</p>
+
+<p>"These books have been mislaid, they are not
+lost; look carefully, Monsieur Sariette, look carefully
+and you will find them."</p>
+
+<p>And he murmured behind the old man's back:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Sariette is in a bad way."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," replied Abb&eacute; Patouille, "that his
+brain is going."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein everything seems strange because
+everything is logical</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE Chapel of the Holy Angels, which
+lies on the right hand as you
+enter the Church of St. Sulpice,
+was hidden behind a scaffolding of
+planks. Abb&eacute; Patouille, Monsieur
+Ga&eacute;tan, Monsieur Maurice, his nephew, and Monsieur
+Sariette, entered in single file through the
+low door cut in the wooden hoarding, and found
+old Guinardon on the top of his ladder standing
+in front of the Heliodorus. The old artist,
+surrounded by all sorts of tools and materials,
+was putting a white paste in the crack which cut
+in two the High Priest Onias. Z&eacute;phyrine, Paul
+Baudry's favourite model, Z&eacute;phyrine, who had
+lent her golden hair and polished shoulders to so
+many Magdalens, Marguerites, sylphs, and mermaids,
+and who, it is said, was beloved of the Emperor
+Napoleon III, was standing at the foot of
+the ladder with tangled locks, cadaverous cheeks,
+and dim eyes, older than old Guinardon, whose life
+she had shared for more than half a century. She
+had brought the painter's lunch in a basket.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>Although the slanting rays fell grey and cold
+through the leaded and iron-barred window, Delacroix's
+colouring shone resplendent, and the roses
+on the cheeks of men and angels dimmed with
+their glorious beauty the rubicund countenance
+of old Guinardon, which stood out in relief against
+one of the temple's columns. These frescoes of the
+Chapel of the Holy Angels, though derided and
+insulted when they first appeared, have now become
+part of the classic tradition, and are united in
+immortality with the masterpieces of Rubens and
+Tintoretto.</p>
+
+<p>Old Guinardon, bearded and long-haired, looked
+like Father Time effacing the works of man's genius.
+Ga&eacute;tan, in alarm, called out to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Carefully, Monsieur Guinardon, carefully. Do
+not scrape too much."</p>
+
+<p>The painter reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fear nothing, Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan. I do not
+paint in that style. My art is a higher one. I work
+after the manner of Cimabue, Giotto, and Beato
+Angelico, not in the style of Delacroix. This
+surface here is too heavily charged with contrast
+and opposition to give a really sacred effect. It is
+true that Chenavard said that Christianity loves
+the picturesque, but Chenavard was a rascal with
+neither faith nor principle&mdash;an infidel.... Look,
+Monsieur d'Esparvieu, I fill up the crevice, I relay
+the scales of paint which are peeling. That is all....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+The damage, due to the sinking of the wall, or
+more probably to a seismic shock, is confined to a
+very small space. This painting of oil and wax
+applied on a very dry foundation is far more solid
+than one might think.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Delacroix engaged on this work. Impassioned
+but anxious, he modelled feverishly,
+scraped out, re-painted unceasingly; his mighty
+hand made childish blunders, but the thing is done
+with the mastery of a genius and the inexperience
+of a schoolboy. It is a marvel how it holds."</p>
+
+<p>The good man was silent, and went on filling in
+the crevice.</p>
+
+<p>"How classic and traditional the composition is,"
+said Ga&eacute;tan. "Time was when one could recognise
+nothing but its amazing novelty; now one can see
+in it a multitude of old Italian formulas."</p>
+
+<p>"I may allow myself the luxury of being just,
+I possess the qualifications," said the old man from
+the top of his lofty ladder. "Delacroix lived in a
+blasphemous and godless age. A painter of the
+decadence, he was not without pride nor grandeur.
+He was greater than his times. But he lacked faith,
+single-heartedness, and purity. To be able to see
+and paint angels he needed that virtue of angels
+and primitives, that supreme virtue which, with
+God's help, I do my best to practise, chastity."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue, Michel; you are as big a
+brute as any of them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus Z&eacute;phyrine, devoured with jealousy because
+that very morning on the stairs she had seen her
+lover kiss the bread-woman's daughter, to wit the
+youthful Octavie, who was as squalid and radiant
+as one of Rembrandt's Brides. She had loved Michel
+madly in the happy days long since past, and love
+had never died out in Z&eacute;phyrine's heart.</p>
+
+<p>Old Guinardon received the flattering insult with
+a smile that he dissembled, and raised his eyes to the
+ceiling, where the archangel Michael, terrible in
+azure cuirass and gilt helmet, was springing heavenwards
+in all the radiance of his glory.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Abb&eacute; Patouille, blinking, and shielding
+his eyes with his hat against the glaring light from
+the window, began to examine the pictures one
+after another: Heliodorus being scourged by the
+angels, St. Michael vanquishing the Demons, and
+the combat of Jacob and the Angel.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is exceedingly fine," he murmured at
+last, "but why has the artist only represented
+wrathful angels on these walls? Look where I
+will in this chapel, I see but heralds of celestial
+anger, ministers of divine vengeance. God wishes
+to be feared; He wishes also to be loved. I would
+fain perceive on these walls messengers of peace and
+of clemency. I should like to see the Seraphim
+who purified the lips of the prophet, St. Raphael
+who gave back his sight to old Tobias, Gabriel who
+announced the Mystery of the Incarnation to Mary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+the Angel who delivered St. Peter from his chains,
+the Cherubim who bore the dead St. Catherine to
+the top of Sinai. Above all, I should like to be able
+to contemplate those heavenly guardians which
+God gives to every man baptized in His name. We
+each have one who follows all our steps, who comforts
+us and upholds us. It would be pleasant
+indeed to admire these enchanting spirits, these
+beautiful faces."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Abb&eacute;! it depends on the point of view,"
+answered Ga&eacute;tan. "Delacroix was no sentimentalist.
+Old Ingres was not very far wrong in
+saying that this great man's work reeks of fire and
+brimstone. Look at the sombre, splendid beauty of
+those angels, look at those androgynes so proud and
+fierce, at those pitiless youths who lift avenging rods
+against Heliodorus, note this mysterious wrestler
+touching the patriarch on the hip...."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," said Abb&eacute; Patouille. "According to
+the Bible he is no angel like the others; if he be
+an angel, he is the Angel of Creation, the Eternal
+Son of God. I am surprised that the Venerable
+Cur&eacute; of St. Sulpice, who entrusted the
+decoration of this chapel to Monsieur Eug&egrave;ne
+Delacroix, did not tell him that the patriarch's
+symbolic struggle with Him who was nameless took
+place in profound darkness, and that the subject is
+quite out of place here, since it prefigures the Incarnation
+of Jesus Christ. The best artists go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+astray when they fail to obtain their ideas of Christian
+iconography from a qualified ecclesiastic.
+The institutions of Christian art form the subject
+of numerous works with which you are doubtless
+acquainted, Monsieur Sariette."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette was gazing vacantly about
+him. It was the third morning after his adventurous
+night in the library. Being, however, thus called
+upon by the venerable ecclesiastic, he pulled himself
+together and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"On this subject we may with advantage consult
+Molanus, <i>De Historia Sacrarum Imaginum et Picturarum</i>,
+in the edition given us by No&euml;l Paquot,
+dated Louvain, 1771; Cardinal Frederico Borromeo,
+<i>De Pictura Sacra</i>, and the Iconography of
+Didron; but this last work must be read with
+caution."</p>
+
+<p>Having thus spoken, Monsieur Sariette relapsed
+into silence. He was pondering on his devastated
+library.</p>
+
+<p>"On the other hand," continued Abb&eacute; Patouille,
+"since an example of the holy anger of the angels
+was necessary in this chapel, the painter is to be
+commended for having depicted for us in imitation
+of Raphael the heavenly messengers who chastised
+Heliodorus. Ordered by Seleucus, King of Syria,
+to carry off the treasures contained in the Temple,
+Heliodorus was stricken by an angel in a cuirass of
+gold mounted on a magnificently caparisoned steed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+Two other angels smote him with rods. He fell
+to earth, as Monsieur Delacroix shows us here,
+and was swallowed up in darkness. It is right
+and salutary that this adventure should be cited
+as an example to the Republican Commissioners
+of Police and to the sacrilegious agents of the
+law. There will always be Heliodoruses, but, let
+it be known, every time they lay their hands on
+the property of the Church, which is the property
+of the poor, they shall be chastised with rods and
+blinded by the angels."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like this painting, or, better still,
+Raphael's sublimer conception of the same subject,
+to be engraved in little pictures fully coloured, and
+distributed as rewards in all the schools."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle," said young Maurice, with a yawn, "I
+think these things are simply ghastly. I prefer
+Matisse and Metzinger."</p>
+
+<p>These words fell unheeded, and old Guinardon
+from his ladder held forth:</p>
+
+<p>"Only the primitives caught a glimpse of Heaven.
+Beauty is only to be found between the thirteenth
+and fifteenth centuries. The antique, the impure
+antique, which regained its pernicious influence
+over the minds of the sixteenth century,
+inspired poets and painters with criminal notions
+and immodest conceptions, with horrid impurities,
+filth. All the artists of the Renaissance were swine,
+including Michael-Angelo."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, perceiving that Ga&eacute;tan was on the point
+of departure, P&egrave;re Guinardon assumed an air of
+bonhomie, and said to him in a confidential tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan, if you're not afraid of climbing
+up my five flights, come and have a look at
+my den. I've got two or three little canvases
+I wouldn't mind parting with, and they might
+interest you. All good, honest, straightforward
+stuff. I'll show you, among other things, a tasty,
+spicy little Baudouin that would make your mouth
+water."</p>
+
+<p>At this speech Ga&eacute;tan made off. As he descended
+the church steps and turned down the Rue Princesse,
+he found himself accompanied by old Sariette, and
+fell to unburdening himself to him, as he would
+have done to any human creature, or indeed to a
+tree, a lamp-post, a dog, or his own shadow, of the
+indignation with which the &aelig;sthetic theories of the
+old painter inspired him.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Guinardon overdoes it with his Christian
+art and his Primitives! Whatever the artist conceives
+of Heaven is borrowed from earth; God,
+the Virgin, the Angels, men and women, saints, the
+light, the clouds. When he was designing figures
+for the chapel windows at Dreux, old Ingres drew
+from life a pure, fine study of a woman, which may
+be seen, among many others, in the Mus&eacute;e Bonnat
+at Bayonne. Old Ingres had written at the bottom
+of the page in case he should forget: 'Made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>moiselle
+C&eacute;cile, admirable legs and thighs'&mdash;and so
+as to make Mademoiselle C&eacute;cile into a saint in
+Paradise, he gave her a robe, a cloak, a veil, inflicting
+thus a shameful decline in her estate, for the tissues
+of Lyons and Genoa are worthless compared with
+the youthful living tissue, rosy with pure blood;
+the most beautiful draperies are despicable compared
+with the lines of a beautiful body. In fact,
+clothing for flesh that is desirable and ripe for
+wedlock is an unmerited shame, and the worst
+of humiliations"; and Ga&eacute;tan, walking carelessly
+in the gutter of the Rue Garanci&egrave;re, continued:
+"Old Guinardon is a pestilential idiot. He blasphemes
+Antiquity, sacred Antiquity, the age when
+the gods were kind. He exalts an epoch when the
+painter and the sculptor had all their lessons to
+learn over again. In point of fact, Christianity has
+run contrary to art in so much as it has not favoured
+the study of the nude. Art is the representation of
+nature, and nature is pre-eminently the human
+body; it is the nude."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon, pardon," purred old Sariette. "There
+is such a thing as spiritual, or, as one might term it,
+inward beauty, which, since the days of Fra Angelico
+down to those of Hippolyte Flandrin, Christian art
+has&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Ga&eacute;tan, never hearing a word of all this, went
+on hurling his impetuous observations at the stones of
+the old street and the snow-laden clouds overhead:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Primitives cannot be judged as a whole,
+for they are utterly unlike each other. This old
+madman confounds them all together. Cimabue
+is a corrupt Byzantine, Giotto gives hints of powerful
+genius, but his modelling is bad, and, like children,
+he gives all his characters the same face.
+The early Italians have grace and joy, because
+they are Italians. The Venetians have an instinct
+for fine colour. But when all is said and done
+these exquisite craftsmen enamel and gild rather
+than paint. There is far too much softness about
+the heart and the colouring of your saintly Angelico
+for me. As for the Flemish school, that's quite
+another pair of shoes. They can use their hands,
+and in glory of workmanship they are on a level
+with the Chinese lacquer-workers. The technique
+of the brothers Van Eyck is a marvel, but
+I cannot discover in their Adoration of the Lamb
+the charm and mystery that some have vaunted.
+Everything in it is treated with a pitiless perfection;
+it is vulgar in feeling and cruelly ugly.
+Memling may touch one perhaps; but he creates
+nothing but sick wretches and cripples; under the
+heavy, rich, and ungraceful robing of his virgins
+and saints one divines some very lamentable anatomy.
+I did not wait for Rogier van der Wyden
+to call himself Roger de la Pasture and turn Frenchman
+in order to prefer him to Memling. This
+Rogier or Roger is less of a ninny; but then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+he is more lugubrious, and the rigidity of his lines
+bears eloquent testimony to his poverty-stricken
+figures. It is a strange perversion to take pleasure in
+these carnivalesque figures when one can have the
+paintings of Leonardo, Titian, Correggio, Velasquez,
+Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, or Prud'hon. Really
+it is a perverted instinct."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Abb&eacute; Patouille and Maurice
+d'Esparvieu were strolling leisurely along in the
+wake of the esthete and the librarian. As a general
+rule the Abb&eacute; Patouille was little inclined to talk
+theology with laymen, or, for that matter, with
+clerics either. Carried away, however, by the
+attractiveness of the subject, he was telling the
+youthful Maurice all about the sacred mission
+of those guardian angels which Monsieur Delacroix
+had so inopportunely excluded from his picture.
+And in order to give more adequate expression to
+his thoughts on such lofty themes, the Abb&eacute; Patouille
+borrowed whole phrases and sentences from
+Bossuet. He had got them up by heart to put in his
+sermons, for he adhered strongly to tradition.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my son," he was saying, "God has appointed
+tutelary spirits to be near us. They come
+to us laden with His gifts. They return laden
+with our prayers. Such is their task. Not an hour,
+not a moment passes but they are at our side,
+ready to help us, ever fervent and unwearying
+guardians, watchmen that never slumber."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, Abb&eacute;," murmured Maurice, who was
+wondering by what cunning artifice he could get
+on the soft side of his mother and persuade her to
+give him some money of which he was urgently in
+need.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein p&egrave;re sariette discovers his missing
+treasures</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgn.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>EXT morning Monsieur Sariette
+entered Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu's
+study without knocking. He raised
+his arms to the heavens, his few
+hairs were standing straight up on
+his head. His eyes were big with terror. In husky
+tones he stammered out the dreadful news. A very
+old manuscript of Flavius Josephus; sixty volumes of
+all sizes; a priceless jewel, namely, a <i>Lucretius</i> adorned
+with the arms of Philippe de Vend&ocirc;me, Grand
+Prior of France, with notes in Voltaire's own hand;
+a manuscript of Richard Simon, and a set of Gassendi's
+correspondence with Gabriel Naud&eacute;, comprising
+two hundred and thirty-eight unpublished
+letters, had disappeared. This time the owner of
+the library was alarmed.</p></div>
+
+<p>He mounted in haste to the abode of the philosophers
+and the globes, and there with his own eyes
+confirmed the magnitude of the disaster.</p>
+
+<p>There were yawning gaps on many a shelf. He
+searched here and there, opened cupboards, dragged
+out brooms, dusters, and fire-extinguishers, rattled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+the shovel in the coke fire, shook out Monsieur
+Sariette's best frock-coat that was hanging in the
+cloak-room, and then stood and gazed disconsolately
+at the empty places left by the Gassendi portfolios.</p>
+
+<p>For the past half-century the whole learned
+world had been loudly clamouring for the publication
+of this correspondence. Monsieur Ren&eacute;
+d'Esparvieu had not responded to the universal
+desire, unwilling either to assume so heavy a task,
+or to resign it to others. Having found much
+boldness of thought in these letters, and many
+passages of more libertine tendency than the piety
+of the twentieth century could endure, he preferred
+that they should remain unpublished; but he felt
+himself responsible for their safe-keeping, not only
+to his country but to the whole civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you have allowed yourself to be
+robbed of such a treasure?" he asked severely of
+Monsieur Sariette.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I have allowed myself to be robbed of
+such a treasure?" repeated the unhappy librarian.
+"Monsieur, if you opened my breast, you would
+find that question engraved upon my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Unmoved by this powerful utterance, Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu continued with pent-up fury:</p>
+
+<p>"And you have discovered no single sign that
+would put you on the track of the thief, Monsieur
+Sariette? You have no suspicion, not the faintest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+idea, of the way these things have come to pass?
+You have seen nothing, heard nothing, noticed
+nothing, learnt nothing? You must grant this is
+unbelievable. Think, Monsieur Sariette, think of
+the possible consequences of this unheard-of theft,
+committed under your eyes. A document of inestimable
+value in the history of the human mind
+disappears. Who has stolen it? Why has it been
+stolen? Who will gain by it? Those who have
+got possession of it doubtless know that they will
+be unable to dispose of it in France. They will go
+and sell it in America or Germany. Germany is
+greedy for such literary monuments. Should the
+correspondence of Gassendi with Gabriel Naud&eacute;
+go over to Berlin, if it is published there by German
+savants, what a disaster, nay, what a scandal!
+Monsieur Sariette, have you not thought of
+that?..."</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the stroke of an accusation all the more
+cruel in that he brought it against himself, Monsieur
+Sariette stood stupefied, and was silent. And
+Monsieur d'Esparvieu continued to overwhelm him
+with bitter reproaches.</p>
+
+<p>"And you make no effort. You devise nothing
+to find these inestimable treasures. Make enquiries,
+bestir yourself, Monsieur Sariette; use your wits.
+It is well worth while."</p>
+
+<p>And Monsieur d'Esparvieu went out, throwing
+an icy glance at his librarian.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette sought the lost books and
+manuscripts in every spot where he had already
+sought them a hundred times, and where they
+could not possibly be. He even looked in the coke-box
+and under the leather seat of his arm-chair.
+When midday struck he mechanically went downstairs.
+At the foot of the stairs he met his old
+pupil Maurice, with whom he exchanged a bow.
+But he only saw men and things as through a mist.</p>
+
+<p>The broken-hearted curator had already reached
+the hall when Maurice called him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Sariette, while I think of it, do have
+the books removed that are choking up my garden-house."</p>
+
+<p>"What books, Maurice?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could not tell you, Monsieur Sariette, but
+there are some in Hebrew, all worm-eaten, with a
+whole heap of old papers. They are in my way.
+You can't turn round in the passage."</p>
+
+<p>"Who took them there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm bothered if I know."</p>
+
+<p>And the young man rushed off to the dining-room,
+the luncheon gong having sounded quite a
+minute ago.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette tore away to the summer-house.
+Maurice had spoken the truth. About a
+hundred volumes were there, on tables, on chairs,
+even on the floor. When he saw them he was
+divided betwixt joy and fear, filled with amazement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+and anxiety. Happy in the finding of his lost
+treasure, dreading to lose it again, and completely
+overwhelmed with astonishment, the man of books
+alternately babbled like an infant and uttered the
+hoarse cries of a maniac. He recognised his Hebrew
+Bibles, his ancient Talmuds, his very old manuscript
+of Flavius Josephus, his portfolios of Gassendi's
+letters to Gabriel Naud&eacute;, and his richest jewel of all,
+to wit, <i>Lucretius</i> adorned with the arms of the
+Grand Prior of France, and with notes in Voltaire's
+own hand. He laughed, he cried, he kissed the
+morocco, the calf, the parchment, and vellum, even
+the wooden boards studded with nails.</p>
+
+<p>As fast as Hippolyte, the manservant, returned
+with an armful to the library, Monsieur Sariette,
+with a trembling hand, restored them piously to
+their places.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">of a somewhat lively interest, whereof the
+moral will, i hope, appeal greatly to my
+readers, since it can be expressed by this
+sorrowful query: "thought, whither dost
+thou lead me?" for it is a universally
+admitted truth that it is unhealthy to
+think and that true wisdom lies in not
+thinking at all</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imga.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>LL the books were now once more
+assembled in the pious keeping of
+Monsieur Sariette. But this happy
+reunion was not destined to last.
+The following night twenty volumes
+left their places, among them the <i>Lucretius</i> of
+Prior de Vend&ocirc;me. Within a week the old Hebrew
+and Greek texts had all returned to the summer-house,
+and every night during the ensuing month
+they left their shelves and secretly went on the
+same path. Others betook themselves no one knew
+whither.</p></div>
+
+<p>On hearing of these mysterious occurrences,
+Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu merely remarked with
+frigidity to his librarian:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My poor Sariette, all this is very queer, very
+queer indeed."</p>
+
+<p>And when Monsieur Sariette tentatively advised
+him to lodge a formal complaint or to inform
+the Commissaire de Police, Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+cried out upon him:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you suggesting, Monsieur Sariette?
+Divulge domestic secrets, make a scandal! You
+cannot mean it. I have enemies, and I am proud of
+it. I think I have deserved them. What I might
+complain about is that I am wounded in the house
+of my friend, attacked with unheard-of violence,
+by fervent loyalists, who, I grant you, are good
+Catholics, but exceedingly bad Christians.... In
+a word, I am watched, spied upon, shadowed, and
+you suggest, Monsieur Sariette, that I should
+make a present of this comic-opera mystery, this
+burlesque adventure, this story in which we both
+cut somewhat pitiable figures, to a set of spiteful
+journalists? Do you wish to cover me with
+ridicule?"</p>
+
+<p>The result of the colloquy was that the two
+gentlemen agreed to change all the locks in the
+library. Estimates were asked for and workmen
+called in. For six weeks the d'Esparvieu household
+rang from morning till night with the sound of
+hammers, the hum of centre-bits, and the grating
+of files. Fires were always going in the abode of
+the philosophers and globes, and the people of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+house were simply sickened by the smell of heated
+oil. The old, smooth, easy-running locks were
+replaced, on the cupboards and doors of the rooms,
+by stubborn and tricky fastenings. There was
+nothing but combinations of locks, letter-padlocks,
+safety-bolts, bars, chains, and electric alarm-bells.</p>
+
+<p>All this display of ironmongery inspired fear.
+The lock-cases glistened, and there was much
+grinding of bolts. To gain access to a room, a
+cupboard, or a drawer, it was necessary to know a
+certain number, of which Monsieur Sariette alone
+was cognisant. His head was filled with bizarre
+words and tremendous numbers, and he got entangled
+among all these cryptic signs, these square,
+cubic, and triangular figures. He himself couldn't
+get the doors and the cupboards undone, yet every
+morning he found them wide open, and the books
+thrown about, ransacked, and hidden away. In the
+gutter of the Rue Servandoni a policeman picked
+up a volume of Salomon Reinach on the identity
+of Barabbas and Jesus Christ. As it bore the book-plate
+of the d'Esparvieu library he returned it to
+the owner.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, not even deigning
+to inform Monsieur Sariette of the fact, made up
+his mind to consult a magistrate, a friend in whom
+he had complete confidence, to wit, a certain Monsieur
+des Aubels, Counsel at the Law Courts, who
+had put through many an important affair. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+a little plump man, very red, very bald, with a
+cranium that shone like a billiard ball. He entered
+the library one morning feigning to come as a book-lover,
+but he soon showed that he knew nothing
+about books. While all the busts of the ancient
+philosophers were reflected in his shining pate, he
+put divers insidious questions to Monsieur Sariette,
+who grew uncomfortable and turned red, for innocence
+is easily flustered. From that moment
+Monsieur des Aubels had a mighty suspicion that
+Monsieur Sariette was the perpetrator of the very
+thefts he denounced with horror; and it immediately
+occurred to him to seek out the accomplices
+of the crime. As regards motives, he did
+not trouble about them; motives are always to
+be found. Monsieur des Aubels told Monsieur
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu that, if he liked, he would have
+the house secretly watched by a detective from the
+Prefecture.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see that you get Mignon," he said. "He
+is an excellent servant, assiduous and prudent."</p>
+
+<p>By six o'clock next morning Mignon was already
+walking up and down outside the d'Esparvieus'
+house, his head sunk between his shoulders, wearing
+love-locks which showed from under the narrow
+brim of his bowler hat, his eye cocked over his
+shoulder. He wore an enormous dull-black moustache,
+his hands and feet were huge; in fact, his
+whole appearance was distinctly memorable. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+paced regularly up and down from the nearest
+of the big rams' head pillars which adorn the H&ocirc;tel
+de la Sordi&egrave;re to the end of the Rue Garanci&egrave;re,
+towards the apse of St. Sulpice Church and the
+dome of the Chapel of the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth it became impossible to enter or
+leave the d'Esparvieus' house without feeling that
+one's every action, that one's very thoughts, were
+being spied upon. Mignon was a prodigious person
+endowed with powers that Nature denies to
+other mortals. He neither ate nor slept. At all
+hours of the day and night, in wind and rain, he
+was to be found outside the house, and no one
+escaped the X-rays of his eye. One felt pierced
+through and through, penetrated to the very marrow,
+worse than naked, bare as a skeleton. It
+was the affair of a moment; the detective did not
+even stop, but continued his everlasting walk. It
+became intolerable. Young Maurice threatened
+to leave the paternal roof if he was to be so radiographed.
+His mother and his sister Berthe complained
+of his piercing look; it offended the chaste
+modesty of their souls. Mademoiselle Caporal, young
+L&eacute;on d'Esparvieu's governess, felt an indescribable
+embarrassment. Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu
+was sick of the whole business. He never crossed
+his own threshold without crushing his hat
+over his eyes to avoid the investigating ray
+and without wishing old Sariette, the <i>fons et origo</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+of all the evil, at the devil. The intimates of the
+household, such as Abb&eacute; Patouille and Uncle
+Ga&eacute;tan, made themselves scarce; visitors gave up
+calling, tradespeople hesitated about leaving their
+goods, the carts belonging to the big shops scarcely
+dared stop. But it was among the domestics that
+the spying roused the most disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The footman, afraid, under the eye of the police,
+to go and join the cobbler's wife over her solitary
+labours in the afternoon, found the house unbearable
+and gave notice. Odile, Madame d'Esparvieu's
+lady's-maid, not daring, as was her custom after her
+mistress had retired, to introduce Octave, the
+handsomest of the neighbouring bookseller's clerks,
+to her little room upstairs, grew melancholy, irritable
+and nervous, pulled her mistress's hair
+while dressing it, spoke insolently, and made advances
+to Monsieur Maurice. The cook, Madame
+Malgoire, a serious matron of some fifty years,
+having no more visits from Auguste, the wine-merchant's
+man in the Rue Servandoni, and being
+incapable of suffering a privation so contrary to her
+temperament, went mad, sent up a raw rabbit to
+table, and announced that the Pope had asked her
+hand in marriage. At last, after a fortnight of
+superhuman assiduity, contrary to all known laws
+of organic life, and to the essential conditions of
+animal economy, Mignon, the detective, having
+observed nothing abnormal, ceased his surveillance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+and withdrew without a word, refusing to accept a
+gratuity. In the library the dance of the books
+became livelier than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all right," said Monsieur des Aubels.
+"Since nothing comes in nor goes out, the evil-doer
+must be in the house."</p>
+
+<p>The magistrate thought it possible to discover
+the criminal without police-warrant or enquiry. On
+a date agreed upon at midnight, he had the floor
+of the library, the treads of the stairs, the vestibule,
+the garden path leading to Monsieur Maurice's
+summer-house, and the entrance hall of the latter,
+all covered with a coating of talc.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning Monsieur des Aubels,
+assisted by a photographer from the Prefecture,
+and accompanied by Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu
+and Monsieur Sariette, came to take the imprints.
+They found nothing in the garden, the wind had
+blown away the coating of talc; nothing in the
+summer-house either. Young Maurice told them
+he thought it was some practical joke and that he
+had brushed away the white dust with the hearth-brush.
+The real truth was, he had effaced the traces
+left by the boots of Odile, the lady's-maid. On the
+stairs and in the library the very light print of a
+bare foot could be discerned, it seemed to have
+sprung into the air and to have touched the ground
+at rare intervals and without any pressure. They
+discovered five of these traces. The clearest was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+to be found in the abode of the busts and spheres,
+on the edge of the table where the books were
+piled. The photographer took several negatives of
+this imprint.</p>
+
+<p>"This is more terrifying than anything else,"
+murmured Monsieur Sariette.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur des Aubels did not hide his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Three days later the anthropometrical department
+of the Prefecture returned the proofs exhibited
+to them, saying that they were not in the
+records.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner Monsieur Ren&eacute; showed the photographs
+to his brother Ga&eacute;tan, who examined them
+with profound attention, and after a long silence
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder they have not got this at the Prefecture;
+it is the foot of a god or of an athlete of
+antiquity. The sole that made this impression is
+of a perfection unknown to our races and our
+climates. It exhibits toes of exquisite grace, and
+a divine heel."</p>
+
+<p>Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu cried out upon his brother for
+a madman.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a poet," sighed Madame d'Esparvieu.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle," said Maurice, "you'll fall in love with
+this foot if you ever come across it."</p>
+
+<p>"Such was the fate of Vivant Denon, who accompanied
+Bonaparte to Egypt," replied Ga&eacute;tan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+"At Thebes, in a tomb violated by the Arabs, Denon
+found the little foot of a mummy of marvellous
+beauty. He contemplated it with extraordinary
+fervour, 'It is the foot of a young woman,' he
+pondered, 'of a princess&mdash;of a charming creature.
+No covering has ever marred its perfect shape.'
+Denon admired, adored, and loved it. You may
+see a drawing of this little foot in Denon's atlas of
+his journey to Egypt, whose leaves one could turn
+over upstairs, without going further afield, if only
+Monsieur Sariette would ever let us see a single
+volume of his library."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, in bed, Maurice, waking in the middle
+of the night, thought he heard the sound of pages
+being turned over in the next room, and the thud
+of bound volumes falling on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>One morning at five o'clock he was coming home
+from the club, after a night of bad luck, and while
+he stood outside the door of the summer-house,
+hunting in his pocket for his keys, his ears distinctly
+heard a voice sighing:</p>
+
+<p>"Knowledge, whither dost thou lead me? Thought,
+whither dost thou lure me?"</p>
+
+<p>But entering the two rooms he saw nothing,
+and told himself that his ears must have deceived
+him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which speaks of love, a subject which always
+gives pleasure, for a tale without love is
+like beef without mustard: an insipid
+dish</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgn.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>OTHING ever astonished Maurice.
+He never sought to know the causes
+of things and dwelt tranquilly in
+the world of appearances. Not denying
+the eternal truth, he nevertheless
+followed vain things as his fancy led him.</p>
+
+<p>Less addicted to sport and violent exercise than
+most young people of his generation, he followed
+unconsciously the old erotic traditions of his race.
+The French were ever the most gallant of men,
+and it were a pity they should lose this advantage.
+Maurice preserved it. He was in love with no
+woman, but, as St. Augustine said, he loved to love.
+After paying the tribute that was rightly due to the
+imperishable beauty and secret arts of Madame
+de la Bertheli&egrave;re, he had enjoyed the impetuous
+caresses of a young singer called Luciole. At
+present he was joylessly experiencing the primitive
+perversity of Odile, his mother's lady's-maid, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+the tearful adoration of the beautiful Madame
+Boittier. And he felt a great void in his
+heart.</p></div>
+
+<p>It chanced that one Wednesday, on entering the
+drawing-room where his mother entertained her
+friends&mdash;who were, generally speaking, unattractive
+and austere ladies, with a sprinkling of old men and
+very young people&mdash;he noticed, in this intimate
+circle, Madame des Aubels, the wife of the magistrate
+at the Law Courts, whom Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+had vainly consulted on the mysterious ransacking
+of his library. She was young, he found her
+pretty, and not without cause. Gilberte had been
+modelled by the Genius of the Race, and no other
+genius had had a part in the work.</p>
+
+<p>Thus all her attributes inspired desire, and
+nothing in her shape or her being aroused any
+other sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>The law of attraction which draws world to
+world moved young Maurice to approach this
+delicious creature, and under its influence he offered
+to escort her to the tea-table. And when
+Gilberte was served with tea, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"We should hit it off quite well together, you
+and I, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in this way, according to modern usage,
+so as to avoid inane compliments and to spare a
+woman the boredom of listening to one of those
+old declarations of love which, containing nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+but what is vague and undefined, require neither
+a truthful nor an exact reply.</p>
+
+<p>And profiting by the fact that he had an opportunity
+of conversing secretly with Madame des
+Aubels for a few minutes, he spoke urgently and
+to the point. Gilberte, so far as one could judge,
+was made rather to awaken desire than to feel it.
+Nevertheless, she well knew that her fate was to
+love, and she followed it willingly and with pleasure.
+Maurice did not particularly displease her. She
+would have preferred him to be an orphan, for
+experience had taught her how disappointing it
+sometimes is to love the son of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you?" he said by way of conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>She pretended not to understand, and with her
+little <i>foie-gras</i> sandwich raised half-way to her
+mouth she looked at Maurice with wondering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Will I <i>what</i>?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You know quite well."</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels lowered her eyes, and sipped
+her tea, for her prudishness was not quite vanquished.
+Meanwhile Maurice, taking her empty cup from
+her hand, murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Saturday, five o'clock, 126 Rue de Rome, on
+the ground-floor, the door on the right, under the
+arch. Knock three times."</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels glanced severely and imperturbably
+at the son of the house, and with a self-possessed
+air rejoined the circle of highly respectable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+women to whom the Senator Monsieur Le Fol was
+explaining how artificial incubators were employed
+at the agricultural colony at St. Julienne.</p>
+
+<p>The following Saturday, Maurice, in his ground-floor
+flat, awaited Madame des Aubels. He waited
+her in vain. No light hand came to knock three
+times on the door under the arch. And Maurice
+gave way to imprecation, inwardly calling the
+absent one a jade and a hussy. His fruitless wait,
+his frustrated desires, rendered him unjust. For
+Madame des Aubels in not coming where she had
+never promised to go hardly deserved these names;
+but we judge human actions by the pleasure or
+pain they cause us.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice did not put in an appearance in his
+mother's drawing-room until a fortnight after the
+conversation at the tea-table. He came late.
+Madame des Aubels had been there for half an
+hour. He bowed coldly to her, took a seat some
+way off, and affected to be listening to the talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Worthily matched," a rich male voice was
+saying; "the two antagonists were well calculated
+to render the struggle a terrible and uncertain one.
+General Bol, with unprecedented tenacity, maintained
+his position as though he were rooted in the
+very soil. General Milpertuis, with an agility truly
+superhuman, kept carrying out movements of the
+most dazzling rapidity around his immovable adversary.
+The battle continued to be waged with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+terrible stubbornness. We were all in an agony of
+suspense...."</p>
+
+<p>It was General d'Esparvieu describing the autumn
+man&#339;uvres to a company of breathlessly interested
+ladies. He was talking well and his audience
+were delighted. Proceeding to draw a comparison
+between the French and German methods, he
+defined their distinguishing characteristics and
+brought out the conspicuous merits of both with
+a lofty impartiality. He did not hesitate to
+affirm that each system had its advantages, and
+at first made it appear to his circle of wondering,
+disappointed, and anxious dames, whose countenances
+were growing increasingly gloomy, that
+France and Germany were practically in a position
+of equality. But little by little, as the strategist
+went on to give a clearer definition of the two
+methods, that of the French began to appear
+flexible, elegant, vigorous, full of grace, cleverness,
+and verve; that of the Germans heavy, clumsy,
+and undecided. And slowly and surely the faces
+of the ladies began to clear and to light up with
+joyous smiles. In order to dissipate any lingering
+shadows of misgiving from the minds of these
+wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the General gave
+them to understand that we were in a position to
+make use of the German method when it suited us,
+but that the Germans could not avail themselves of
+the French method. No sooner had he delivered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+himself of these sentiments than he was button-holed
+by Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec, who was engaged in
+founding a patriotic society known as "Swordsmen
+All," of which the object was to regenerate France
+and ensure her superiority over all her adversaries.
+Even children in the cradle were to be enrolled,
+and Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec offered the honorary
+presidency to General d'Esparvieu.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Maurice was appearing to be interested
+in a conversation that was taking place
+between a very gentle old lady and the Abb&eacute; Lapetite,
+Chaplain to the Dames du Saint Sang. The old
+lady, severely tried of late by illness and the loss
+of friends, wanted to know how it was that people
+were unhappy in this world.</p>
+
+<p>"How," she asked Abb&eacute; Lapetite, "do you
+explain the scourges that afflict mankind? Why
+are there plagues, famines, floods, and earthquakes?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is surely necessary that God should sometimes
+remind us of his existence," replied Abb&eacute; Lapetite,
+with a heavenly smile.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice appeared keenly interested in this conversation.
+Then he seemed fascinated by Madame
+Fillot-Grandin, quite a personable young woman,
+whose simple innocence, however, detracted all
+piquancy from her beauty, all savour from
+her bodily charms. A very sour, shrill-voiced
+old lady, who, affecting the dowdy, woollen weeds
+of poverty, displayed the pride of a great lady in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+world of Christian finance, exclaimed in a squeaky
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear Madame d'Esparvieu, so you
+have had trouble here. The papers speak darkly of
+robbery, of thefts committed in Monsieur d'Esparvieu's
+valuable library, of stolen letters...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Madame d'Esparvieu, "if we are to
+believe all the newspapers say...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so, dear Madame, you have got your treasures
+back. All's well that ends well."</p>
+
+<p>"The library is in perfect order," asserted Madame
+d'Esparvieu. "There is nothing missing."</p>
+
+<p>"The library is on the floor above this, is it
+not?" asked young Madame des Aubels, showing
+an unexpected interest in the books.</p>
+
+<p>Madame d'Esparvieu replied that the library
+occupied the whole of the second floor, and that
+they had put the least valuable books in the attics.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I not go and look at it?"</p>
+
+<p>The mistress of the house declared that nothing
+could be easier. She called to her son:</p>
+
+<p>"Maurice, go and do the honours of the library
+to Madame des Aubels."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice rose, and without uttering a word,
+mounted to the second floor in the wake of Madame
+des Aubels.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared indifferent, but inwardly he rejoiced,
+for he had no doubt that Gilberte had
+feigned her ardent desire to inspect the library<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+simply to see him in secret. And, while affecting
+indifference, he promised himself to renew those
+offers which, this time, would not be refused.</p>
+
+<p>Under the romantic bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu,
+they were met by the silent shadow of a little
+wan, hollow-eyed old man, who wore a settled expression
+of mute terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let us disturb you, Monsieur Sariette,"
+said Maurice. "I am showing Madame des Aubels
+round the library."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice and Madame des Aubels passed on into
+the great room where against the four walls rose
+presses filled with books and surmounted by bronze
+busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity.
+All was in perfect order, an order which seemed
+never to have been disturbed from the beginning
+of things.</p>
+
+<p>Only, a black void was to be seen in the place
+which, only the evening before, had been filled
+by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon.
+Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked
+Monsieur Sariette, pale, faded, and silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Really and truly, you have not been nice,"
+said Maurice, with a look of reproach at Madame
+des Aubels.</p>
+
+<p>She signed to him that the librarian might over-hear.
+But he reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>"Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has
+become a complete idiot." And he repeated:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+"No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited
+you. You did not come. You have made me unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment's silence, while one heard the
+low melancholy whistling of asthma in poor Sariette's
+bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued insistently:</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Why wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong not to do as I ask you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"You meant it seriously?"</p>
+
+<p>"As seriously as can be."</p>
+
+<p>Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant
+feeling, and thinking she had resisted sufficiently,
+Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had refused
+him a fortnight ago.</p>
+
+<p>They slipped into an embrasure of the window,
+behind an enormous celestial globe whereon were
+graven the Signs of the Zodiac and the figures of
+the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion,
+the Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a
+multitude of Bibles, before the works of the Fathers,
+both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of Homer,
+&AElig;schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides,
+Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero,
+Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Epictetus, they exchanged
+vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought
+herself that she still had some calls to pay,
+and that she must make her escape quickly, for love
+had not made her lose all sense of her own importance.
+But she had barely crossed the landing with
+Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and saw
+Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming
+as he went:</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped
+from the shelf by itself. It crossed the room ... there
+it is&mdash;there! It's going downstairs. Stop it!
+It has gone out of the door on the ground
+floor!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette looked out of the landing
+window, murmuring horror-struck:</p>
+
+<p>"It's crossing the garden! It's going into the
+summer-house. Stop it, stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it?" repeated Maurice&mdash;"in God's
+name, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Flavius Josephus," exclaimed Monsieur
+Sariette. "Stop it!"</p>
+
+<p>And he fell down unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>"You see he is quite mad," said Maurice to
+Madame des Aubels, as he lifted up the unfortunate
+librarian.</p>
+
+<p>Gilberte, a little pale, said she also thought she
+had seen something in the direction indicated by
+the unhappy man, something flying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maurice had seen nothing, but he had felt what
+seemed like a gust of wind.</p>
+
+<p>He left Monsieur Sariette in the arms of Hippolyte
+and the housekeeper, who had both hastened
+to the spot on hearing the noise.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman had a wound in his head.</p>
+
+<p>"All the better," said the housekeeper; "this
+wound may save him from having a fit."</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels gave her handkerchief to
+stop the blood, and recommended an arnica compress.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein it is shown that, as an ancient greek
+poet said, "nothing is sweeter than aphrodite
+the golden"</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imga.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>LTHOUGH he had enjoyed Madame
+des Aubels' favours for six whole
+months, Maurice still loved her.
+True they had had to separate during
+the summer. For lack of funds of
+his own he had had to go to Switzerland with his
+mother, and then to stop with the whole family at
+the Ch&acirc;teau d'Esparvieu. She had spent the
+summer with her mother at Niort, and the autumn
+with her husband at a little Normandy seaside
+place, so that they had hardly seen each other four
+or five times. But since the winter, kindly to lovers,
+had brought them back to town again, Maurice had
+been receiving her twice a week in his little flat in
+the Rue de Rome, and received no one else. No
+other woman had inspired him with feelings of
+such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his
+pleasure was that he believed himself loved, and
+indeed he was not unpleasing.</p></div>
+
+<p>He thought that she did not deceive him, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+that he had any reason to think so, but it appeared
+right and fitting that she should be content with
+him alone. What annoyed him was that she
+always kept him waiting, and was unpunctual in
+coming to their meeting-place; she was invariably
+late,&mdash;at times very late.</p>
+
+<p>Now on Saturday, January 30th, since four
+o'clock in the afternoon, Maurice had been awaiting
+Madame des Aubels in the little pink room,
+where a bright fire was burning. He was gaily
+clad in a suit of flowered pyjamas, smoking Turkish
+cigarettes. At first he dreamt of receiving her with
+long kisses, with hitherto unknown caresses. A
+quarter of an hour having passed, he meditated
+serious and affectionate reproaches, then after an
+hour of disappointed waiting he vowed he would
+meet her with cold disdain.</p>
+
+<p>At length she appeared, fresh and fragrant.</p>
+
+<p>"It was scarcely worth while coming," he said
+bitterly, as she laid her muff and her little bag on the
+table and untied her veil before the wardrobe
+mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Never, she told her beloved, had she had such
+trouble to get away. She was full of excuses,
+which he obstinately rejected. But no sooner had
+she the good sense to hold her tongue than he
+ceased his reproaches, and then nothing detracted
+from the longing with which she inspired him.</p>
+
+<p>The curtains were drawn, the room was bathed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+in warm shadows lit by the dancing gleams of the
+fire. The mirrors in the wardrobe and on the
+chimney-piece shone with mysterious lights. Gilberte,
+leaning on her elbow, head on hand, was
+lost in thought. A little jeweller, a trustworthy
+and intelligent man, had shown her a wonderfully
+pretty pearl and sapphire bracelet; it was worth a
+great deal, and was to be had for a mere nothing.
+He had got it from a <i>cocotte</i> down on her luck, who
+was in a hurry to dispose of it. It was a rare chance;
+it would be a huge pity to let it slip.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to see it, darling? I will ask
+the little man to let me have it to show you."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice did not actually decline the proposal.
+But it was clear that he took no interest in the
+wonderful bracelet. "When small jewellers come
+across a great bargain, they keep it to themselves,
+and do not allow their customers to profit by it.
+Moreover, jewellery means nothing just now. Well-bred
+women have given up wearing it. Everyone
+goes in for sport, and jewellery does not go
+with sport."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice spoke thus, contrary to truth, because
+having given his mistress a fur coat, he was in no
+hurry to give her anything more. He was not
+stingy, but he was careful with his money. His
+people did not give him a very large allowance, and
+his debts grew bigger every day. By satisfying the
+wishes of his inamorata too promptly he feared to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+arouse others still more pressing. The bargain
+seemed less wonderful to him than to Gilberte;
+besides, he liked to take the initiative in choosing
+his gifts. Above all, he thought that if he gave
+her too many presents he would be no longer sure
+of being loved for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels felt neither contempt nor
+surprise at this attitude; she was gentle and temperate,
+she knew men, and judged that one must
+take them as one found them, that for the most
+part they do not give very willingly, and that a
+woman should know how to make them give.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a gas lamp was lighted in the street,
+and shone through the gaps in the curtains.</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past six," she said. "We must be on the
+move."</p>
+
+<p>Pricked by the touch of Time's fleeting wing,
+Maurice was conscious of reawakened desires and
+reanimated powers. A white and radiant offering,
+Gilberte, with her head thrown back, her eyes
+half closed, her lips apart, sunk in dreamy languor,
+was breathing slowly and placidly, when suddenly
+she started up with a cry of terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stay still," said Maurice, holding her back in
+his arms.</p>
+
+<p>In his present mood, had the sky fallen it would
+not have troubled him. But in one bound she
+escaped from him. Crouching down, her eyes filled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+with terror, she was pointing with her finger at a
+figure which appeared in a corner of the room,
+between the fire-place and the wardrobe with the
+mirror. Then, unable to bear the sight, and nearly
+fainting, she hid her face in her hands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which far surpasses in audacity the imaginative
+flights of dante and milton</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgm.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>AURICE at length turned his head,
+saw the figure, and perceiving that
+it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile,
+Gilberte was regaining her
+senses. She imagined that what she
+had seen was some mistress whom her lover had
+hidden in the room. Inflamed with anger and
+disgust at the idea of such treachery, boiling with
+indignation, and glaring at her supposed rival,
+she exclaimed:</p></div>
+
+<p>"A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring
+me into a room where you allow your women to
+come, and when I arrive they have not had time
+to dress. And you reproach me with arriving
+late! Your impudence is beyond belief! Come,
+send the creature packing. If you wanted us both
+here together, you might at least have asked me
+whether it suited me...."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver
+that had never been there, whispered in her ear:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely
+see, but it is more like a man."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed
+harder than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"A man! Where does he come from? A thief.
+An assassin! Help! Help! Kill him.... Maurice,
+kill him! Turn on the light. No, don't turn on
+the light...."</p>
+
+<p>She made a mental vow that should she escape
+from this danger she would burn a candle to the
+Blessed Virgin. Her teeth chattered.</p>
+
+<p>The figure made a movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep away!" cried Gilberte. "Keep away!"</p>
+
+<p>She offered the burglar all the money and jewels
+she had on the table if he would consent not to
+stir. Amid her surprise and terror the idea assailed
+her that her husband, dissembling his suspicions,
+had caused her to be followed, had posted witnesses,
+and had had recourse to the Commissaire de Police.
+In a flash she distinctly saw before her the long
+painful future, the glaring scandal, the pretended
+disdain, the cowardly desertion of her friends, the
+just mockery of society, for it is indeed ridiculous
+to be found out. She saw the divorce, the loss of
+her position and of her rank. She saw the dreary
+and narrow existence with her mother, when no
+one would make love to her, for men avoid women
+who fail to give them the security of the married
+state. And all this, why? Why this ruin, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+disaster? For a piece of folly, for a mere nothing.
+Thus in a lightning flash spoke the conscience of
+Gilberte des Aubels.</p>
+
+<p>"Have no fear, Madame," said a very sweet
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Slightly reassured, she found strength to ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am an angel," replied the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am an angel. I am Maurice's guardian
+angel."</p>
+
+<p>"Say it again. I am going mad. I do not
+understand...."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice, without understanding either, was indignant.
+He sprang forward and showed himself;
+with his right hand armed with a slipper he made
+a threatening gesture, and said in a rough voice:</p>
+
+<p>"You are a low ruffian; oblige me by going the
+way you came."</p>
+
+<p>"Maurice d'Esparvieu," continued the sweet
+voice, "He whom you adore as your Creator has
+stationed by the side of each of the faithful a good
+angel, whose mission it is to counsel and protect
+him; it is the invariable opinion of the Fathers,
+it is founded on many passages in the Bible, the
+Church admits it unanimously, without, however,
+pronouncing anathema upon those who hold a
+contrary opinion. You see before you one of these
+angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+watch over your innocence and to guard your
+chastity."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be," said Maurice; "but you are
+certainly no gentleman. A gentleman would not
+permit himself to enter a room at such a moment.
+To be plain, what the deuce are you doing
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have assumed this appearance, Maurice,
+because, having henceforth to move among mankind,
+I have to make myself like them. The celestial
+spirits possess the power of assuming a form which
+renders them apparent to the eye and to the touch.
+This shape is real, because it is apparent, and all the
+realities in the world are but appearances."</p>
+
+<p>Gilberte, pacified at length, was arranging her
+hair on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>The Angel pursued:</p>
+
+<p>"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their
+fancy, one sex or the other, or both at once. But
+they cannot disguise themselves at any moment,
+according to their caprice or fantasy. Their metamorphoses
+are subject to constant laws, which
+you would not understand. Thus I have neither
+desire nor power to transform myself under
+your eyes, for your amusement or my own, into a
+lion, a tiger, a fly, or into a sycamore-shaving like
+the young Egyptian whose story was found in a
+tomb. I cannot change myself into an ass as did
+Lucius with the pomade of the youthful Photis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+For in my wisdom I had fixed beforehand the
+hour of my apparition to mankind, nothing could
+hasten or delay it."</p>
+
+<p>Impatient for enlightenment, Maurice asked for
+the second time:</p>
+
+<p>"Still, what are you up to here?"</p>
+
+<p>Joining her voice to his, Madame des Aubels
+asked: "Yes, indeed, what are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>The Angel replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Man, lend your ear. Woman, hear my voice.
+I am about to reveal to you a secret on which hangs
+the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him
+whom you hold to be the Creator of all things
+visible and invisible, I am preparing the Revolt of
+the Angels."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not jest," said Maurice, who had faith
+and did not allow holy things to be played with.</p>
+
+<p>But the Angel answered reproachfully: "What
+makes you think, Maurice, that I am frivolous and
+given to vain words?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders.
+"You are not going to revolt against&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the ceiling&mdash;not daring to finish.</p>
+
+<p>But the Angel continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not know that the sons of God have
+already revolted and that a great battle took place
+in the heavens?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was a long time ago," said Maurice,
+putting on his socks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the Angel replied:</p>
+
+<p>"It was before the creation of the world. But
+nothing has changed since then in the heavens.
+The nature of the Angels is no different now from
+what it was originally. What they did then they
+could do again now."</p>
+
+<p>"No! It is not possible. It is contrary to
+faith. If you were an angel, a good angel as you
+make out you are, it would never occur to you to
+disobey your Creator."</p>
+
+<p>"You are in error, Maurice, and the authority of
+the Fathers condemns you. Origen lays it down in
+his homilies that good angels are fallible, that they
+sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. Possibly
+you may be tempted to reject the authority of
+this Father, despite his knowledge of the Scriptures,
+because he is excluded from the Canon of the Saints.
+If this be so, I would remind you of the second
+chapter of Revelation, in which the Angels of
+Ephesus and Pergamos are rebuked for that they
+kept not ward over their church. You will doubtless
+contend that the angels to whom the Apostle
+here refers are, properly speaking, the Bishops of the
+two cities in question, and that he calls them angels
+on account of their ministry. It may be so, and I
+cede the point. But with what arguments, Maurice,
+would you counter the opinion of all those Doctors
+and Pontiffs whose unanimous teaching it is that
+angels may fall from good into evil? Such is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+statement made by Saint Jerome in his Epistle to
+Damasus...."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go
+away, I beg you."</p>
+
+<p>But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Saint Augustine, in his <i>True Religion</i>, Chapter
+XIII; Saint Gregory, in his <i>Morals</i>, Chapter XXIV;
+Isidore&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a
+hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"In his treatise on <i>The Greatest Good</i>, Book I,
+Chapter XII; Bede on Job&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on <i>Faith</i>, Book
+II, Chapter III. Those, I think, are sufficiently
+weighty authorities, and there is nothing for it,
+Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led
+you astray is that you have not duly considered
+my nature, which is free, active, and mobile, like
+that of all the angels, and that you have merely
+observed the grace and felicity with which you
+deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer possessed no
+less, yet he rebelled."</p>
+
+<p>"But what on earth are you rebelling for?"
+asked Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah
+has already asked, before you: '<i>Quomodo cecidisti
+de c&#339;lo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?</i>' Hearken,
+Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+win dominion over Heaven, the most beautiful of
+the Seraphim revolted through pride. As for me,
+it is science that has inspired me with the generous
+desire for freedom. Finding myself near you,
+Maurice, in a house containing one of the vastest
+libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading
+and a love of study. While, fordone with the
+toils of a sensual life, you lay sunk in heavy slumber,
+I surrounded myself with books, I studied, I pondered
+over their pages, sometimes in one of the
+rooms of the library, under the busts of the great
+men of antiquity, sometimes at the far end of the
+garden, in the room in the summer-house next to
+your own."</p>
+
+<p>On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded
+with laughter and beat the pillow with
+his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged
+papa's library and drove poor old Sariette off his
+head. You know, he has become completely
+idiotic."</p>
+
+<p>"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating
+for myself a sovereign intelligence, I paid
+no heed to that inferior being, and when he thought
+to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb
+my work I punished him for his importunity.</p>
+
+<p>"One particular winter's night in the abode of
+the philosophers and globes I let fall a volume of
+great weight on his head, which he tried to tear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+from my invisible hand. Then more recently,
+raising, with a vigorous arm composed of a column
+of condensed air, a precious manuscript of Flavius
+Josephus, I gave the imbecile such a fright, that
+he rushed out screaming on to the landing and
+(to borrow a striking expression from Dante
+Alighieri) fell even as a dead body falls. He was
+well rewarded, for you gave him, Madame, to
+staunch the blood from his wound, your little
+scented handkerchief. It was the day, you may
+remember, when behind a celestial globe you exchanged
+a kiss on the mouth with Maurice."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, with a
+frown, "I cannot allow you...."</p>
+
+<p>But she stopped short, deeming it was an inopportune
+moment to appear over-exacting on a
+matter of decorum.</p>
+
+<p>"I had made up my mind," continued the Angel
+impassively, "to examine the foundations of belief.
+I first attacked the monuments of Judaism, and I
+read all the Hebrew texts."</p>
+
+<p>"You know Hebrew, then?" exclaimed Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hebrew is my native tongue: in Paradise for
+a long time we have spoken nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you are a Jew. I might have deduced it
+from your want of tact."</p>
+
+<p>The Angel, not deigning to hear, continued in
+his melodious voice: "I have delved deep into
+Oriental antiquities and also into those of Greece<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+and Rome. I have devoured the works of theologians,
+philosophers, physicists, geologists, and
+naturalists. I have learnt. I have thought. I
+have lost my faith."</p>
+
+<p>"What? You no longer believe in God?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe in Him, since my existence depends
+on His, and if He should fail to exist, I myself
+should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him,
+even as the Satyrs and the M&aelig;nads believed in
+Dionysus and for the same reason. I believe in
+the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I
+deny that He created the world; at the most He
+organised but an inferior part of it, and all that He
+touched bears the mark of His rough and unforeseeing
+touch. I do not think He is either eternal or
+infinite, for it is absurd to conceive of a being who
+is not bounded by space or time. I think Him
+limited, even very limited. I no longer believe
+Him to be the only God. For a long time He did
+not believe it Himself; in the beginning He was
+a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of
+His worshippers made Him a monotheist. His
+ideas have little connection; He is less powerful
+than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly,
+He is not so much a god as a vain and ignorant
+demiurge. Those who, like myself, know His true
+nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ialdabaoth."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have already told you. It is the demiurge
+whom, in your blindness, you adore as the one and
+only God."</p>
+
+<p>"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk
+rubbish like that to Abb&eacute; Patouille."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not in the least sanguine, my dear Maurice,
+of piercing the dense night of your intellect. I
+merely tell you that I am going to engage Ialdabaoth
+in conflict with some hopes of victory."</p>
+
+<p>"Mark my words, you won't succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for
+a moment in doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Abdiel for the angels and saints, Arcade for
+mankind."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you
+going to the bad. But confess that you are jesting
+with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving
+Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the
+greatest follies. But you will never make me believe
+that you, who have seen God face to face,
+ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty
+books. No, you will never get me to believe that!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face
+with God, yet he refused to serve Him. As to the
+kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth that
+enables us sometimes to discern what things are
+not, without ever enabling us to discover what they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+are. And this poor little truth has sufficed to prove
+to me that He in whom I blindly believed is not
+believable, and that men and angels have been
+deceived by the lies of Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no Ialdabaoth. There is God. Come,
+Arcade, do the right thing. Renounce these follies,
+these impieties, dis-incarnate yourself, become once
+more a pure Spirit, and resume your office of guardian
+angel. Return to duty. I forgive you, but
+do not let us see you again."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to please you, Maurice. I feel a
+certain affection for you, for my heart is soft. But
+fate henceforth calls me elsewhere towards beings
+capable of thought and action."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">recounts in what manner the angel, attired in
+the cast-off garments of a suicide, leaves
+the youthful maurice without a heavenly
+guardian</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgr.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>EASSURE 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."</p>
+
+<p>She examined the stranger with an eye which,
+piercing the gloom, was anxiously surveying a
+vague but by no means negligible indication, and
+asked:</p></div>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, is it quite certain that you are an
+angel?"</p>
+
+<p>The apparition prayed her to have no doubt
+about it, and gave some precise information as to
+his origin.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+Powers; the third, the Principalities, the Archangels,
+and the Angels properly so called. I belong
+to the ninth choir of the third hierarchy."</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels, who had her reasons for
+doubting this, expressed at least one:</p>
+
+<p>"You have no wings."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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 fore-feet in the case
+of quadrupeds and into arms in the case of the
+Linn&aelig;an 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+Teratology. In Paradise we have Cherubim and
+Ker&ucirc;bs 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet on the whole," said Madame des Aubels,
+"you have not the look of a pure Spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"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
+subtile 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>But Madame des Aubels was not listening. She
+had something on her mind, and to put an end to
+her suspense, she asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came with Maurice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that's a nice thing!" said she, shaking
+her head. But the Angel continued with heavenly
+serenity:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Having thus spoken he sat down in a chair on
+Madame des Aubels' black stockings.</p>
+
+<p>A clock struck outside.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Verdeli&egrave;res
+to-night. Go away immediately, Monsieur Arcade.
+I must get ready to go. I have not a second to
+lose."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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
+laughing-stock of people of taste. They merely
+frightened old women and children and met with
+no success."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true he cannot go out as he is," said Madame
+des Aubels with justice.</p>
+
+<p>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 at once in quest of other clothes.
+He proposed to go and get some from the concierge.
+She was violently opposed to this. It would, she
+said, be madly imprudent to drag the concierge into
+such an affair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want them to know that ..." she
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the Angel and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Young d'Esparvieu went out to seek a clothes-shop.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 lamp-light
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens," cried Gilberte all at once, "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+shall never be able to fasten my dress; it hooks
+down the back."</p>
+
+<p>When Maurice entered the room he found the
+Angel on his knees tying the shoes of the woman
+taken in <i>flagrante delicto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Taking her muff and her bag off the table she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have not forgotten anything? No. Good-night,
+Monsieur Arcade. Good-night, Maurice. I
+shall not forget to-day." And she vanished like a
+dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Maurice, throwing the Angel a
+bundle of clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, having seen some dismal rags
+lying among clarionettes and clyster-pipes in the
+window of a second-hand 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I must not look back. Adieu, Maurice."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice timidly slipped five louis into his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu, Arcade."</p>
+
+<p>But when the Angel had passed through the door,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+and all that was to be seen of him in the door-way
+was his uplifted heel, Maurice called him
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade! I never thought of it! I have no
+guardian angel now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true, Maurice, you have one no longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what will become of me? One must
+have a guardian angel. Tell me,&mdash;are there not
+grave drawbacks,&mdash;is there no danger in not having
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+Maurice; when you see Madame des Aubels, please
+remember me to her."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade disappeared, and Maurice in the depths
+of an arm-chair sat for a long time with his head in
+his hands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein it is set forth how the angel mirar,
+when bearing grace and consolation to
+those dwelling in the neighbourhood of
+the champs &eacute;lys&eacute;es in paris, beheld a music-hall
+singer named bouchotte and fell in
+love with her</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HROUGH streets filled with brown
+fog, pierced with white and yellow
+lights, where horses exhaled their
+smoking breath and motors radiated
+their rapid search-lights, 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, con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>spirators,
+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.</p></div>
+
+<p>Angels, when driven by hunger, eat as do the
+animals of this earth, and their food, transformed
+by digestive heat, becomes one with their celestial
+substance. Seeing three angels under the oaks of
+Mamre, Abraham offered them cakes, kneaded by
+Sarah, an whole calf, butter and milk, and they ate.
+Lot, on receiving two angels in his house, ordered
+unleavened bread to be baked, and they did eat.
+Arcade was given a tough beef-steak by a seedy
+waiter, and he did eat. Nevertheless, his dreams
+were of the sweet leisure, of the repose, of the
+delightful studies he had quitted, of the heavy task
+he had undertaken, of the toil, the weariness, the
+perils which he would have to endure, and his soul
+was sad and his heart troubled.</p>
+
+<p>As he was finishing his modest repast, a young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+man of poor appearance and thinly clad entered the
+room, and rapidly surveying the tables approached
+the angel and greeted him by the name of Abdiel,
+because he himself was a celestial spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you would answer my call, Mirar,"
+replied Arcade, addressing his angelic brother in his
+turn by the name he formerly bore in heaven. But
+Mirar was remembered no more in heaven since he,
+an Archangel, had left the service of God. He was
+called Th&eacute;ophile Belais on earth, and to earn his
+bread gave music lessons to small children in the
+day-time and at night played the violin in dancing
+saloons.</p>
+
+<p>"It is you, dear Abdiel?" replied Th&eacute;ophile.
+"So here we are reunited in this sad world. I am
+pleased to see you again. All the same I pity you,
+for we lead a hard life here."</p>
+
+<p>But Arcade answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Friend, your exile draws to an end. I have
+great plans. I will confide them to you and associate
+you with them."</p>
+
+<p>And Maurice's guardian angel, having ordered
+two coffees, revealed his ideas and his projects to
+his companion: he told how, during his visit on
+earth, he had abandoned himself to researches little
+practised by celestial spirits and had studied theologies,
+cosmogonies, the system of the Universe,
+theories of matter, modern essays on the transformation
+and loss of energy. Having, he explained,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+studied Nature, he had found her in perpetual
+conflict with the teachings of the Master he served.
+This Master, greedy of praise, whom he had for a
+long time adored, appeared to him now as an ignorant,
+stupid, and cruel tyrant. He had denied
+Him, blasphemed Him, and was burning to combat
+Him. His plan was to recommence the revolt of
+the angels. He wished for war, and hoped for
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he added, "it is necessary above all to
+know our strength and that of our adversary."
+And he asked if the enemies of Ialdabaoth were
+numerous and powerful on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Th&eacute;ophile looked wonderingly at his brother.
+He appeared not to understand the questions
+addressed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear compatriot," he said, "I came at your
+invitation because it was the invitation of an old
+comrade. But I do not know what you expect of
+me, and I fear I shall be unable to help you in
+anything. I take no hand in politics, neither do I
+stand forth as a reformer. I am not like you, a
+spirit in revolt, a freethinker, a revolutionary. I
+remain faithful, in the depths of my soul, to the
+Celestial Creator. I still adore the Master I no
+longer serve, and I lament the days when shrouding
+myself with my wings I formed with the multitude
+of the children of light a wheel of flame around
+His throne of glory. Love, profane love has alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+separated me from God. I quitted heaven to follow
+a daughter of men. She was beautiful and sang in
+music-halls."</p>
+
+<p>They rose. Arcade accompanied Th&eacute;ophile, who
+was living at the other end of the town, at the
+corner of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue
+de Steinkerque. While walking through the deserted
+streets he who loved the singer told his brother of
+his love and his sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>His fall, which dated from two years back, had
+been sudden. Belonging to the eighth choir of the
+third hierarchy he was a bearer of grace to the
+faithful who are still to be found in large numbers
+in France, especially among the higher ranks of the
+officers of the army and navy.</p>
+
+<p>"One summer night," he said, "as I was descending
+from Heaven, to distribute consolations, the
+grace of perseverance and of good deaths to divers
+pious persons in the neighbourhood of the &Eacute;toile,
+my eyes, although well accustomed to immortal
+light, were dazzled by the fiery flowers with which
+the Champs &Eacute;lys&eacute;es were sown. Great candelabra,
+under the trees, marking the entrances to caf&eacute;s and
+restaurants, gave the foliage the precious glitter
+of an emerald. Long garlands of luminous pearl
+surrounded the open-air enclosures where a crowd of
+men and women sat closely packed listening to the
+sounds of a lively orchestra, whose strains reached
+my ears confusedly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The night was warm, my wings were beginning
+to grow tired. I descended into one of the concerts
+and sat down, invisible, among the audience. At
+this moment, a woman appeared on the stage, clad
+in a short spangled frock. Owing to the reflection
+of the footlights and the paint on her face all that
+was visible of the latter was the expression and the
+smile. Her body was supple and voluptuous.</p>
+
+<p>"She sang and danced.... Arcade, I have always
+loved dancing and music, but this creature's thrilling
+voice and insidious movements created in
+me an uneasiness I had never known before. My
+colour came and went. My eyelids drooped, my
+tongue clove to my mouth. I could not leave the
+spot."</p>
+
+<p>And Th&eacute;ophile related, groaning, how, possessed
+by desire for this woman, he did not return to
+Heaven again, but, taking the shape of a man,
+lived an earthly life, for it is written: "In those
+days the sons of God saw that the daughters of men
+were beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>A fallen angel, having lost his innocence along
+with the vision of God, Th&eacute;ophile at heart still
+retained his simplicity of soul. Clad in rags,
+filched from the stall of a Jewish hawker, he went
+to seek the woman he loved. She was called Bouchotte
+and lodged in a small house in Montmartre.
+He flung himself at her feet and told her she was
+adorable, that she sang delightfully, that he loved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+her madly, that, for her, he would renounce his
+family and his country, that he was a musician and
+had nothing to eat. Touched by such youthful
+ingenuousness, candour, poverty, and love, she fed,
+clothed, and loved him.</p>
+
+<p>However, after long and painful struggles, he
+procured employment as a music-teacher, and
+made some money, which he brought to his mistress,
+keeping nothing for himself. From that time forward
+she loved him no longer. She despised him for
+earning so little and did not conceal her indifference,
+weariness, and disgust. She overwhelmed him with
+reproaches, irony, and abuse, in spite of which she
+kept him, for she had had experience of worse
+partners and was used to domestic quarrels. For
+the rest, she led a busy, serious, and rather hard life
+as artist and woman. Th&eacute;ophile loved her as he
+had loved her the first night, and he suffered.</p>
+
+<p>"She overworks herself," he told his celestial
+brother, "that is what makes her so hard to please,
+but I am certain she loves me. I hope soon to give
+her more comfort."</p>
+
+<p>And he spoke at length of an operetta at which he
+was working and which he hoped to have brought
+out at a Paris theatre. A young poet had given him
+the libretto. It was the story of Aline, queen of
+Golconda, after an eighteenth-century tale.</p>
+
+<p>"I am strewing it profusely with melodies," said
+Th&eacute;ophile; "my music comes from my heart. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+heart is an inexhaustible source of melody. Unfortunately
+nowadays people like recondite arrangements,
+difficult scoring. They accuse me of being
+too fluid, too limpid, of not imparting enough colour
+to my style, not aiming at stronger effects in harmony
+and more vigorous contrasts. Harmony,
+harmony!... No doubt it has given its merits, but
+it does not appeal to the heart. It is melody which
+carries us away and ravishes us and brings smiles and
+tears to our eyes." At these words he smiled and
+wept to himself. Then he continued with emotion:</p>
+
+<p>"I am a fountain of melody. But the orchestration!
+there's the rub! In Paradise, you know,
+Arcade, in the matter of instruments, we only
+possess the harp, the psaltery, and the hydraulic
+organ."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade was only listening to him with half an ear.
+He was meditating plans which filled his soul and
+swelled his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know any angels in revolt?" he asked
+his companion. "As for me, I know only one,
+Prince Istar, with whom I have exchanged a few
+letters and who offered to share his attic with me
+while I was finding a lodging in this town, where I
+believe rents are very high."</p>
+
+<p>Of angels in revolt Th&eacute;ophile knew none. When
+he met a fallen spirit who had formerly been one
+of his comrades he shook him by the hand, for he
+was a faithful friend. Sometimes he saw Prince<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+Istar. But he avoided all those bad angels who
+shocked him by the violence of their opinions and
+whose conversations plagued him to death.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't approve of me?" asked the
+impulsive Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"Friend, I neither approve of you nor blame
+you. I understand nothing of the ideas which
+trouble you. Neither do I think it good for an
+artist to concern himself with politics. One has
+quite sufficient to occupy oneself with one's art."</p>
+
+<p>He loved his profession, and had hopes of "arriving"
+one day, but theatrical ways disgusted
+him. The only chance he saw of having his piece
+played was to take one or two&mdash;perhaps three&mdash;collaborators,
+who, without having done any work,
+would sign their names and share the profits. Soon
+Bouchotte would fail to find engagements. When
+she offered her services in some small hall the
+manager began by asking her how many shares she
+was taking in the business. Such customs, thought
+Th&eacute;ophile, were deplorable.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we hear the beautiful archangel zita
+unfold her lofty designs and are shown
+the wings of mirar, all moth-eaten, in a
+cupboard</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HUS talking, the two archangels
+had reached the Boulevard Rochechouart.
+As his eye lighted on a
+tavern, whence, through the mist,
+the light fell golden on the pavement,
+Th&eacute;ophile suddenly bethought himself of
+the Archangel Ithuriel who, in the guise of a poor
+but beautiful woman, was living in wretched lodgings
+on La Butte and came every evening to read
+the papers at this tavern. The musician often
+met her there. Her name was Zita. Th&eacute;ophile
+had never been curious enough to enquire into the
+opinions entertained by this archangel, but it was
+generally supposed that she was a Russian nihilist,
+and he took her to be, like Arcade, an atheist and a
+revolutionary. He had heard remarkable tales
+about her. People said she was an hermaphrodite,
+and that as the active and passive principles were
+united within her in a condition of stable equilib<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>rium,
+she was an example of a perfect being,
+finding in herself complete and continuous satisfaction,
+contented yet unfortunate in that she
+knew not desire.</p></div>
+
+<p>"But," added Th&eacute;ophile, "I have my doubts
+about it. I believe she's a woman and subject
+to love, like everything else that has life and breath
+in the Universe. Besides, someone caught her one
+day kissing her hand to a strapping peasant fellow."</p>
+
+<p>He offered to introduce his companion to her.</p>
+
+<p>The two angels found her alone, reading. As
+they drew near she lifted her great eyes in whose
+deeps of molten gold little sparks of light were forever
+a-dance. Her brows were contracted into that
+austere fold which we see on the forehead of the
+Pythian Apollo; her nose was perfect and descended
+without a curve; her lips were compressed and
+imparted a disdainful and supercilious air to her
+whole countenance. Her tawny hair, with its
+gleaming lights, was carelessly adorned with the
+tattered remnants of a huge bird of prey, her garments
+lay about her in dark and shapeless folds.
+She was leaning her chin on a small ill-tended
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade, who had but recently heard references
+made to this powerful archangel, showed her marked
+esteem, and placed entire confidence in her. He
+immediately proceeded to tell of the progress his
+mind had made towards knowledge and liberty, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+his lucubrations in the d'Esparvieu library, of his
+philosophical reading, his studies of nature, his
+works on exegesis, his anger and his contempt when
+he recognised the deception of the demiurge, his
+voluntary exile among mankind, and, finally, of his
+project to stir up rebellion in Heaven. Ready to
+dare all against an odious master, whom he pursued
+with inextinguishable hatred, he expressed his
+profound happiness at finding in Ithuriel a mind
+capable of counselling and helping him in his great
+undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not a very old hand at revolutions,"
+said Zita, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, she doubted neither his sincerity
+nor the firmness of his declared resolve, and she
+congratulated him on his intellectual audacity.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what is most lacking in our people,"
+she said, "they do not think."</p>
+
+<p>And she added almost immediately: "But on
+what can intelligence sharpen its wits, in a country
+where the climate is soft and existence made easy?
+Even here, where necessity calls for intellectual
+activity, nothing is rarer than a person who thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," replied Maurice's guardian angel,
+"man has created science. The important
+thing is to introduce it into Heaven. When the
+angels possess some notions of physics, chemistry,
+astronomy, and physiology; when the study of
+matter shows them worlds in an atom, and an atom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+in the myriads of planets; when they see themselves
+lost between these two infinities; when they
+weigh and measure the stars, analyse their composition,
+and calculate their orbits, they will recognise
+that these monsters work in obedience to
+forces which no intelligence can define, or that
+each star has its particular divinity, or indigenous
+god; and they will realise that the gods of Aldebaran,
+Betelgeuse, and Sirius are greater than Ialdabaoth.
+When at length they come to scrutinise with care
+the little world in which their lot is cast, and,
+piercing the crust of the earth, note the gradual
+evolution of its flora and fauna and the rude origin
+of man, who, under the shelter of rocks and in
+cave dwellings, had no God but himself; when
+they discover that, united by the bonds of universal
+kinship to plants, beasts, and men, they have successively
+indued all forms of organic life, from the
+simplest and the most primitive, until they became
+at length the most beautiful of the children of
+light, they will perceive that Ialdabaoth, the obscure
+demon of an insignificant world lost in space, is
+imposing on their credulity when he pretends
+that they issued from nothingness at his bidding;
+they will perceive that he lies in calling himself
+the Infinite, the Eternal, the Almighty, and that,
+so far from having created worlds, he knows neither
+their number nor their laws. They will perceive
+that he is like unto one of them; they will despise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+him, and, shaking off his tyranny, will fling him
+into the Gehenna where he has hurled those more
+worthy than himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?" murmured Zita, puffing
+out the smoke of her cigarette.... "Nevertheless,
+this knowledge by virtue of which you reckon to
+enfranchise Heaven, has not destroyed religious
+sentiment on earth. In countries where they
+have set up and taught this science of physics, of
+chemistry, astronomy, and geology, which you
+think capable of delivering the world, Christianity
+has retained almost all its sway. If the positive
+sciences have had such a feeble influence on the
+beliefs of mankind, it is not likely they will exercise
+a greater one on the opinions of the angels, and
+nothing is of such dubious efficacy as scientific
+propaganda."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed Arcade, "you deny that
+Science has given the Church its death-blow? Is
+it possible? The Church, at any rate, judges
+otherwise. Science, which you believe has no
+power over her, is redoubtable to her, since she
+proscribes it. From Galileo's dialogues to Monsieur
+Aulard's little manuals she has condemned all its
+discoveries. And not without reason.</p>
+
+<p>"In former days, when she gathered within her
+fold all that was great in human thought, the
+Church held sway over the bodies as well as over
+the souls of men, and imposed unity of obedience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+by fire and sword. To-day her power is but a
+shadow and the elect among the great minds have
+withdrawn from her. That is the state to which
+Science has reduced her."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly," replied the beautiful archangel, "but
+how slowly, with what vicissitudes, at the price of
+what efforts, of what sacrifices!"</p>
+
+<p>Zita did not absolutely condemn scientific propaganda,
+but she anticipated no prompt or certain
+results from it. For her it was not so much a
+question of enlightening the angels; the important
+thing was to enfranchise them. In her opinion
+one only exerted a strong influence on individuals,
+whoever they might be, by rousing their passions,
+and appealing to their interests.</p>
+
+<p>"Persuade the angels that they will cover themselves
+with glory by overthrowing the tyrant,
+and that they will be happier once they are free;
+that is the most practical policy to attempt, and,
+for my own part, I am devoting all my energies
+to its fulfilment. It is certainly no light task,
+because the Kingdom of Heaven is a military
+autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.
+Nevertheless, I do not despair of starting an intellectual
+movement. I do not wish to boast,
+but no one is more closely acquainted than I with
+the different classes of angelic society."</p>
+
+<p>Throwing away her cigarette, Zita pondered
+for a moment, then, amid the click of ivory balls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+on the billiard table, the clinking of glasses, the
+curt voices of the players announcing their points,
+the monotonous answers of the waiters to their
+customers, the Archangel enumerated the entire
+population of the spirits of light.</p>
+
+<p>"We must not count on the Dominations, the
+Virtues, nor the Powers, which compose the celestial
+lower middle class. I have no need to tell you,
+for you know it as well as I, how selfish, base, and
+cowardly the middle classes are. As to the great
+dignitaries, the Ministers, the Generals, Thrones,
+Cherubim, and Seraphim, you know what they are;
+they will take no action. Let us, however, once
+prove ourselves the stronger, and we shall have
+them with us. For if autocrats do not readily
+acquiesce in their own downfall, once overthrown,
+all their forces recoil upon themselves. It will be
+well to work the Army. Entirely loyal as the Army
+is, it will allow itself to be influenced by a clever
+anarchist propaganda. But our greatest and most
+constant efforts ought to be brought to bear upon
+the angels of your own category, Arcade; the guardian
+angels, who dwell upon earth in such great
+numbers. They fill the lowest ranks of the hierarchy,
+are for the most part discontented with
+their lot, and more or less imbued with the ideas
+of the present century."</p>
+
+<p>She had already conferred with the guardian
+angels of Montmartre, Clignancourt, and Filles-du-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>Calvaire.
+She had devised the plan of a vast
+association of Spirits on Earth with the view of
+conquering Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"To accomplish this task," she said, "I have
+established myself in France. But not because I
+had the folly to believe myself freer in a republic
+than in a monarchy. Quite the contrary, for there
+is no country where the liberty of the individual
+is less respected than in France. But the people
+are indifferent to everything connected with religion;
+nowhere else, therefore, should I enjoy
+such tranquillity."</p>
+
+<p>She invited Arcade to unite his efforts to hers,
+and when they separated at the door of the <i>brasserie</i>
+the steel shutter was already making its groaning
+descent.</p>
+
+<p>"Above all," said Zita, "you must meet the
+gardener. I will take you to his rustic home one day."</p>
+
+<p>Th&eacute;ophile, who had slumbered during all this
+talk, begged his friend to come home with him and
+smoke a cigarette. He lived quite near in the small
+street opposite, leading off the Boulevard. Arcade
+would see Bouchotte, she would please him.</p>
+
+<p>They climbed up five flights of stairs. Bouchotte
+had not yet returned. A tin of sardines lay open
+on the piano. Red stockings coiled about the
+arm-chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a little place, but it's comfortable," said
+Th&eacute;ophile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And gazing out of the window which looked
+out on the russet-coloured night, with its myriad
+lights, he added, "One can see the <i>Sacr&eacute; C&#339;ur</i>."
+His hand on Arcade's shoulder, he repeated several
+times, "I am glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>Then, dragging his former companion in glory
+into the kitchen passage, he put down his candlestick,
+drew a key from his pocket, opened a cupboard,
+and, raising a linen covering, disclosed two large
+white wings.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "I have preserved them.
+From time to time, when I am alone, I go and look
+at them; it does me good."</p>
+
+<p>And he dabbed his reddened eyes. He stood
+awhile, overcome by silent emotion. Then, holding
+the candle near the long pinions which were moulting
+their down in places, he murmured, "They are
+eaten away."</p>
+
+<p>"You must put some pepper on them," said
+Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"I have done so," replied the angelic musician,
+sighing. "I have put pepper, camphor, and powder
+on them. But nothing does any good."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which reveals the cherub toiling for the
+welfare of humanity and concludes in an
+entirely novel manner with the miracle
+of the flute</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE first night of his incarnation
+Arcade slept at the angel Istar's,
+in a garret in that narrow, gloomy
+Rue Mazarine which wallows along
+beneath the shadow of the old Institute
+of France. Istar, who had been expecting
+him, had pushed against the wall the shattered
+retorts, cracked pots, broken bottles, and odds and
+ends of iron stoves, which made up the furniture of
+his room, and spread his clothes on the floor to lie
+on, leaving his guest his folding-bed with its straw
+mattress.</p></div>
+
+<p>The celestial spirits differ from one another in
+appearance according to the hierarchy and the choir
+to which they belong, and according to their own
+particular nature. They are all beautiful; but in
+different fashion, and they do not all offer to the
+eye the soft contours and dimpling smiles of childhood
+with its rosy lights and pearly tints. Nor do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+they all adorn themselves with eternal youth,
+that indefinable beauty that Greek art in its decline
+has imparted to its most lovingly handled marbles,
+and whereof Christian painters have so often
+timidly essayed to give us veiled and softened
+imitations. In some of them the chin glows with
+tufts of hair, and the limbs are furnished with such
+vigorous muscles that it seems as if serpents were
+writhing beneath the skin. Some have no wings,
+others possess two, four, or six; others again are
+formed entirely of conjoined pinions. Many, and
+these not the least illustrious, take the form of
+superb monsters, such as the Centaurs of fable;
+nay, one may even see some who are living chariots,
+and wheels of fire. A member of the highest
+celestial hierarchy, Istar belonged to the choir of
+Cherubim or Ker&ucirc;bs who see above them the
+Seraphim alone. In common with all the angelic
+spirits of his rank he had formerly borne in Heaven
+the bodily shape of a winged bull surmounted by
+the head of a horned and bearded man, and carrying
+between his loins the attributes of generous fecundity.
+He was vaster and more vigorous than
+any animal on earth, and when he stood erect with
+outspread wings he covered with his shadow sixty
+archangels.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Istar in his native home. There he
+radiated strength and sweetness. His heart was
+full of courage and his soul benevolent. More<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>over,
+in those days he loved his lord. He believed
+him to be good and yielded him faithful service.
+But even while guarding the portals of his Master,
+he used to ponder unceasingly on the punishment of
+the rebellious angels and the curse of Eve. His
+mind worked slowly but profoundly. When, after
+a long course of centuries, he persuaded himself
+that Ialdabaoth in creating the world had created
+evil and death, he ceased to adore and to serve
+him. His love changed to hatred, his veneration to
+contempt. He shouted his execrations in his face,
+and fled to earth.</p>
+
+<p>Embodied in human form and reduced to the
+stature of the sons of Adam, he still retained some
+characteristics of his former nature. His big protruding
+eyes, his beaked nose, his thick lips framed
+in a black beard which descended in curls on to
+his chest recalled those Cherubs of the tabernacle
+of Iahveh, of which the bulls of Nineveh afford
+us a pretty accurate representation. He bore
+the name of Istar on earth as well as in Heaven,
+and although exempt from vanity and free from all
+social prejudice, he was immensely desirous of
+showing himself sincere and truthful in all things.
+He therefore proclaimed the illustrious rank in
+which his birth had placed him in the celestial
+hierarchy and translated into French his title of
+Cherub by the equivalent one of Prince, calling
+himself Prince Istar. Seeking shelter among man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>kind
+he had developed an ardent love for them.
+While awaiting the coming of the hour when he
+should deliver Heaven from bondage, he dreamed of
+the salvation of regenerate humanity and was eager
+to consummate the destruction of this wicked world,
+in order to raise upon its ashes, to the sound of the
+lyre, a city radiant with happiness and love. A
+chemist in the pay of a dealer in nitrates, he lived
+very frugally. He wrote for newspapers with advanced
+views on liberty, spoke at public meetings,
+and had got himself sentenced several times to
+several months' imprisonment for anti-militarism.</p>
+
+<p>Istar greeted his brother Arcade cordially, approved
+of his rupture with the party of crime, and
+informed him of the descent of fifty of the children
+of light who, at the present moment, formed a
+colony near Val de Grace, imbued with a really
+excellent spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"It is simply raining angels in Paris," he said,
+laughing. "Every day some dignitary of the sacred
+palace falls on one's head, and soon the Sultan of
+the Cherubs will have no one to make into Vizirs or
+guards but the little unbreeched vagabonds of his
+pigeon coops."</p>
+
+<p>Soothed by the good news, Arcade fell asleep,
+full of happiness and hope.</p>
+
+<p>He awoke in the early dawn and saw Prince Istar
+bending over his furnaces, his retorts, and his test tubes.
+Prince Istar was working for the good of humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every morning when Arcade woke he saw Prince
+Istar fulfilling his work of tenderness and love.
+Sometimes the Ker&ucirc;b, huddled up with his head in
+his hands, would softly murmur a few chemical
+formul&aelig;; at others, drawing himself up to his full
+height, like a dark naked column, with his head,
+his arms, nay, his entire bust clean out of the sky-light
+window, he would deposit his melting-pot
+on the roof, fearing the perquisition with which
+he was constantly menaced. Moved by an immense
+pity for the miseries of the world wherein he dwelt
+in exile, conscious perhaps of the rumours to which
+his name gave rise, inebriated with his own virtue,
+he played the part of apostle to the Human Race,
+and neglecting the task he had undertaken in
+coming to earth, he forgot all about the emancipation
+of the angels. Arcade, who, on the contrary,
+dreamed of nothing else but of conquering Heaven
+and returning thither in triumph, reproached the
+Cherub with forgetting his native land.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar, with a great frank, uncouth laugh,
+acknowledged that he had no preference for angels
+over men.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am doing my best," he replied to his celestial
+brother, "if I am doing my best to stir up France
+and Europe, it is because the day is dawning which
+will behold the triumph of the social revolution.
+It is a pleasure to cast one's seed on ground so
+well prepared. The French having passed from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+feudalism to monarchy, and from monarchy to a
+financial oligarchy, will easily pass from a financial
+oligarchy to anarchy."</p>
+
+<p>"How erroneous it is," retorted Arcade, "to
+believe in great and sudden changes in the social
+order in Europe! The old order is still young in
+strength and power. The means of defence at her
+disposal are formidable. On the other hand, the
+proletariat's plan of defensive organisation is of
+the vaguest description and brings merely weakness
+and confusion to the struggle. In our celestial
+country all goes quite otherwise. Beneath an
+apparently unchangeable exterior all is rotten
+within. A mere push would suffice to overturn
+an edifice which has not been touched for millions
+of centuries. Out-worn administration, out-worn
+army, out-worn finance, the whole thing is more
+worm-eaten than either the Russian or Persian
+autocracy."</p>
+
+<p>And the kindly Arcade adjured the Cherub to
+fly first to the aid of his brethren who, though
+dwelling amid the soft clouds with the sound of
+citterns and their cups of paradisal wine around
+them, were in more wretched plight than mankind
+bowed over the grudging earth. For the latter
+have a conception of justice, while the angels
+rejoice in iniquity. He exhorted him to deliver the
+Prince of Light and his stricken companions and
+to re-establish them in their ancient honours.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar allowed himself to be convinced.</p>
+
+<p>He promised to put the sweet persuasiveness of
+his words and the excellent formul&aelig; of his explosives
+at the service of the celestial revolution. He gave
+his promise.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And when the morrow came he continued his
+anti-militarist propaganda at Issy-les-Moulineaux.
+Like the Titan Prometheus, Istar loved mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade, suffering from all the desires to which
+the sons of Adam are subjected, found himself
+lacking in resources to satisfy them. Istar gave
+him a start in a printing house in the Rue de Vaugirard
+where he knew the foreman. Arcade, thanks
+to his celestial intelligence, soon knew how to
+set up type and became, in a short time, a good
+compositor.</p>
+
+<p>After standing all day in the whirring workroom,
+holding the composing-stick in his left hand,
+and swiftly drawing the little leaden signs from the
+case in the order required by the copy fixed in the
+<i>visorium</i>, he would go and wash his hands at the
+pump and dine at the corner bar, a newspaper
+propped up before him on the marble table. Being
+now no longer invisible, he could not make his way
+into the d'Esparvieu library, and was thus debarred
+from allaying his ardent thirst for knowledge at
+that inexhaustible source. He went, of an evening,
+to read at the library of Ste. Genevi&egrave;ve on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+famous hill of learning, but there were only ordinary
+books to be had there; greasy things, covered
+with ridiculous annotations, and lacking many
+pages.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of women troubled and unsettled him.
+He would remember Madame des Aubels and her
+charm, and, although he was handsome, he was not
+loved, because of his poverty and his workaday
+clothes. He saw much of Zita, and took a certain
+pleasure in going for walks with her on Sundays
+along the dusty roads which edge the grass-grown
+trenches of the fortifications. They wandered, the
+pair of them, by wayside inns, market-gardens,
+and green retreats, propounding and discussing
+the vastest plans that ever stirred the world,
+and, occasionally, as they passed along by some
+travelling circus, the steam organ of the merry-go-round
+would furnish an accompaniment to
+their words as they breathed fire and fury against
+Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Zita used often to say:</p>
+
+<p>"Istar means well, but he's a simple fellow.
+He believes in the goodness of men and things. He
+undertakes the destruction of the old world and
+imagines that anarchy of itself will create order and
+harmony. You, Arcade, you believe in Science;
+you deem that men and angels are capable of understanding,
+whereas, in point of fact, they are only
+creatures of sentiment. You may be quite sure that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+nothing is to be obtained from them by appealing
+to their intelligence; one must rouse their interests
+and their passions."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade, Istar, Zita, and three or four other
+angelic conspirators occasionally foregathered in
+Th&eacute;ophile Belais' little flat, where Bouchotte gave
+them tea. Though she did not know that they were
+rebellious angels, she hated them instinctively, and
+feared them, for she had had a Christian education,
+albeit she had sadly failed to keep it up.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar alone pleased her; she thought there
+was something kind-hearted and an air of natural
+distinction about him. He stove in the sofa,
+broke down the arm-chairs, and tore corners off
+sheets of music to make notes, which he thrust into
+pockets invariably crammed with pamphlets and
+bottles. The musician used to gaze sorrowfully at
+the manuscript of his operetta, <i>Aline, Queen of
+Golconda</i>, with its corners all torn off. The prince
+also had a habit of giving Th&eacute;ophile Belais all sorts
+of things to take care of&mdash;mechanical contrivances,
+chemicals, bits of old iron, powders, and liquids
+which gave off noisome smells. Th&eacute;ophile Belais
+put them cautiously away in the cupboard where he
+kept his wings, and the responsibility weighed
+heavily upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade was much pained at the disdain of those
+of his fellows who had remained faithful. When
+they met him as they went on their sacred errands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+they regarded him as they passed by with looks of
+cruel hatred or of pity that was crueller still.</p>
+
+<p>He used to visit the rebel angels whom Prince
+Istar pointed out to him, and usually met with a
+good reception, but as soon as he began to speak of
+conquering Heaven, they did not conceal the embarrassment
+and displeasure he caused them. Arcade
+perceived that they had no desire to be disturbed
+in their tastes, their affairs, and their habits. The
+falsity of their judgment, the narrowness of their
+minds, shocked him; and the rivalry, the jealousy
+they displayed towards one another deprived him
+of all hope of uniting them in a common cause.
+Perceiving how exile debases the character and
+warps the intellect, he felt his courage fail him.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when he had confessed his weariness
+of spirit to Zita, the beautiful archangel said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go and see Nectaire; Nectaire has remedies
+of his own for sadness and fatigue."</p>
+
+<p>She led him into the woods of Montmorency and
+stopped at the threshold of a small white house,
+adjoining a kitchen garden, laid waste by winter,
+where far back in the shadows the light shone on
+forcing-frames and cracked glass melon shades.</p>
+
+<p>Nectaire opened the door to his visitors, and, after
+quieting the growls of a big mastiff which protected
+the garden, led them into a low room warmed by
+an earthenware stove.</p>
+
+<p>Against the whitewashed wall, on a deal board,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+among the onions and seeds, lay a flute ready to be
+put to the lips. A round walnut table bore a stone
+tobacco-jar, a pipe, a bottle of wine and some glasses.
+The gardener offered each of his guests a cane-seated
+chair, and himself sat down on a stool by the table.</p>
+
+<p>He was a sturdy old man; thick grey hair stood
+up on his head, he had a furrowed brow, a snub-nose,
+a red face, and a forked beard.</p>
+
+<p>The big mastiff stretched himself at his master's
+feet, rested his short black muzzle on his paws, and
+closed his eyes. The gardener poured out some wine
+for his guests, and when they had drunk and talked
+a little, Zita said to Nectaire:</p>
+
+<p>"Please play your flute to us, you will give pleasure
+to my friend whom I have brought to see you."</p>
+
+<p>The old man immediately consented. He put the
+boxwood pipe to his lips,&mdash;so clumsy was it that it
+looked as if the gardener had fashioned it himself,&mdash;and
+preluded with a few strange runs. Then he
+developed rich melodies in which the thrills sparkled
+like diamonds and pearls on a velvet ground. Touched
+by cunning fingers, animated with creative breath,
+the rustic pipe sang like a silver flute. There were no
+over-shrill notes and the tone was always even and
+pure. One seemed to be listening to the nightingale
+and the Muses singing together, the soul of Nature
+and the soul of Man. And the old man ordered and
+developed his thoughts in a musical language full of
+grace and daring. He told of love, of fear, of vain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+quarrels, of all-conquering laughter, of the calm
+light of the intellect, of the arrows of the mind
+piercing with their golden shafts the monsters of
+Ignorance and Hate. He told also of Joy and
+Sorrow bending their twin heads over the earth and
+of Desire which brings worlds into being.</p>
+
+<p>The whole night listened to the flute of Nectaire.
+Already the evening star was rising above the paling
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>There they sat; Zita with hands clasped about her
+knees, Arcade, his head leaning on his hand, his lips
+apart. Motionless they listened. A lark, which had
+awakened hard by in a sandy field, lured by these
+novel sounds, rose swiftly in the air, hovered a few
+seconds, then dropped at one swoop into the musician's
+orchard. The neighbouring sparrows, forsaking
+the crannies of the mouldering walls, came
+and sat in a row on the window-ledge whence notes
+came welling forth that gave them more delight than
+oats or grains of barley. A jay, coming for the first
+time out of his wood, folded his sapphire wings on a
+leafless cherry tree. Beside the drain-head, a large
+black rat, glistening with the greasy water of the
+sewers, sitting on his hind legs, raised his short arms
+and slender fingers in amazement. A field-mouse,
+that dwelt in the orchard, was seated near him.
+Down from the tiles came the old tom-cat, who
+retained the grey fur, the ringed tail, the powerful
+loins, the courage, and the pride of his ancestors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+He pushed against the half-open door with his nose
+and approaching the flute-player with silent tread,
+sat gravely down, pricking his ears that had been
+torn in many a nocturnal combat; the grocer's
+white cat followed him, sniffing the vibrant air and
+then, arching her back and closing her blue eyes,
+listened in ravishment. Mice, swarming in crowds
+from under the boards, surrounded them, and
+fearing neither tooth nor claw, sat motionless, their
+pink hands folded voluptuously on their bosoms.
+Spiders that had strayed far from their webs, with
+waving legs, gathered in a charmed circle on the
+ceiling. A small grey lizard, that had glided on to the
+doorstep, stayed there, fascinated, and, in the loft,
+the bat might have been seen hanging by her nails,
+head down, now half-awakened from her winter
+sleep, swaying to the rhythm of the marvellous flute.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we see young maurice bewailing the
+loss of his guardian angel, even in his
+mistress's arms, and wherein we hear the
+abb&eacute; patouille reject as vain and illusory
+all notions of a new rebellion of the
+angels</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imga.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp; FORTNIGHT had elapsed since
+the angel's apparition in the flat.
+For the first time Gilberte arrived
+before Maurice at the rendezvous.
+Maurice was gloomy, Gilberte sulky.
+So far as they were concerned Nature had resumed
+her drab monotony. They eyed each other languidly,
+and kept glancing towards the angle between
+the wardrobe with the mirror and the window,
+where recently the pale shade of Arcade had taken
+shape, and where now the blue cretonne of the
+hangings was the only thing visible. Without
+giving him a name (it was unnecessary) Madame des
+Aubels asked:</p></div>
+
+<p>"You have not seen him since?"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, sadly, Maurice turned his head from right
+to left, and from left to right.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You look as if you missed him," continued
+Madame des Aubels. "But come, confess that he
+gave you a terrible fright, and that you were shocked
+at his unconventionally."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly he was unconventional," said Maurice
+without any resentment.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Maurice, is it nothing to you now to
+be with me alone?... You need an angel to inspire
+you. That is sad, for a young man like you!"</p>
+
+<p>Maurice appeared not to hear, and asked gravely:</p>
+
+<p>"Gilberte, do you feel that your guardian angel
+is watching over you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I, not at all. I have never thought of him, and
+yet I am not without religion. In the first place,
+people who have none are like animals. And then
+one cannot go straight without religion. It is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly, that's just it," said Maurice, his eyes
+on the violet stripes of his flowerless pyjamas;
+"when one has one's guardian angel one does not
+even think about him, and when one has lost him
+one feels very lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"So you miss this...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the fact is...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes, you miss him. Well, my dear, the
+loss of such a guardian angel as that is no great
+matter. No, no! he is not worth much, that Arcade
+of yours. On that famous day, while you were out
+getting him some clothes, he was ever so long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+fastening my dress, and I certainly felt his hand....
+Well, at any rate, don't trust him."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice dreamily lit a cigarette. They spoke of
+the six days' bicycle race at the winter velodrome,
+and of the aviation show at the motor exhibition at
+Brussels, without experiencing the slightest amusement.
+Then they tried love-making as a sort of
+convenient pastime, and succeeded in becoming
+moderately absorbed in it; but at the very moment
+when she might have been expected to play a part
+more in accordance with a mutual sentiment, she
+exclaimed with a sudden start:</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens! Maurice, how stupid of you to
+tell me that my guardian angel can see me. You cannot
+imagine how uncomfortable the idea makes me."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice, somewhat taken aback, recalled, a little
+roughly, his mistress's wandering thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She declared that her principles forbade her to
+think of playing a round game with angels.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was longing to see Arcade again and
+had no other thought. He reproached himself
+for suffering him to depart without discovering
+where he was going, and he cudgelled his brains
+night and day thinking how to find him again.</p>
+
+<p>On the bare chance, he put a notice in the personal
+column of one of the big papers, running thus:</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade. Come back to your Maurice."</p>
+
+<p>Day after day went by, and Arcade did not
+return.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One morning, at seven o'clock, Maurice went to
+St. Sulpice to hear Abb&eacute; Patouille say Mass, then,
+as the priest was leaving the sacristy, he went up to
+him and asked to be heard for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>They descended the steps of the church together
+and in the bright morning light walked round the
+fountain of the <i>Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>. In spite of his
+troubled conscience and the difficulty of presenting
+so extraordinary a case with any degree of credibility,
+Maurice related how the angel Arcade had appeared
+to him and had announced his unhappy resolve to
+separate from him and to stir up a new revolt of
+the spirits of glory. And young d'Esparvieu asked
+the worthy ecclesiastic how to find his celestial
+guardian again, since he could not bear his absence,
+and how to lead his angel back to the Christian
+faith. Abb&eacute; Patouille replied in a tone of affectionate
+sorrow that his dear child had been dreaming,
+that he took a morbid hallucination for reality,
+and that it was not permissible to believe that good
+angels may revolt.</p>
+
+<p>"People have a notion," he added, "that they
+can lead a life of dissipation and disorder with
+impunity. They are wrong. The abuse of pleasure
+corrupts the intelligence and impairs the understanding.
+The devil takes possession of the sinner's
+senses, penetrating even to his soul. He has deceived
+you, Maurice, by a clumsy artifice."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice objected that he was not in any way a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+victim of hallucinations, that he had not been
+dreaming, that he had seen his guardian angel with
+his eyes and heard him with his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;," he insisted, "a lady who
+happened to be with me at the time,&mdash;I need not
+mention her name,&mdash;also saw and heard him. And,
+moreover, she felt the angel's fingers straying ...
+well, anyhow, she felt them.... Believe me, Monsieur
+l'Abb&eacute;, nothing could be more real, more
+positively certain than this apparition. The angel
+was fair, young, very handsome. His clear skin
+seemed, in the shadow, as if bathed in milky light.
+He spoke in a pure, sweet voice."</p>
+
+<p>"That, alone, my child," the Abb&eacute; interrupted
+quickly, "proves you were dreaming. According to
+all the demonologies, bad angels have a hoarse voice,
+which grates like a rusty lock, and even if they did
+contrive to give a certain look of beauty to their
+faces, they cannot succeed in imitating the pure
+voice of the good spirits. This fact, attested by
+numerous witnesses, is established beyond all
+doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;, I saw him. I saw him
+sit down, stark naked, in an arm-chair on a pair
+of black stockings. What else do you want me to
+tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; Patouille appeared in no way disturbed
+by this announcement.</p>
+
+<p>"I say once more, my son," he replied, "that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+these unhappy illusions, these dreams of a deeply
+troubled soul, are to be ascribed to the deplorable
+state of your conscience. I believe, moreover, that
+I can detect the particular circumstance that has
+caused your unstable mind thus to come to grief.
+During the winter in company with Monsieur
+Sariette and your Uncle Ga&eacute;tan, you came, in an
+evil frame of mind, to see the Chapel of the Holy
+Angels in this church, then undergoing repair. As
+I observed on that occasion, it is impossible to keep
+artists too closely to the rules of Christian art;
+they cannot be too strongly enjoined to respect
+Holy Writ and its authorized interpreters. Monsieur
+Eug&egrave;ne Delacroix did not suffer his fiery
+genius to be controlled by tradition. He brooked
+no guidance and, here, in this chapel he has painted
+pictures which in common parlance we call lurid,
+compositions of a violent, terrible nature which,
+far from inspiring the soul with peace, quietude,
+and calm, plunge it into a state of agitation. In
+them the angels are depicted with wrathful countenances,
+their features are sombre and uncouth.
+One might take them to be Lucifer and his companions
+meditating their revolt. Well, my son, it
+was these pictures, acting upon a mind already
+weakened and undermined by every kind of dissipation,
+that have filled it with the trouble to which it
+is at present a prey."</p>
+
+<p>But Maurice would have none of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;," he cried, "it is
+not Eug&egrave;ne Delacroix's pictures that have been
+troubling me. I didn't so much as look at them. I
+am completely indifferent to that kind of art."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, my son, believe me: there is no
+truth, no reality, in any of the story you have just
+related to me. Your guardian angel has certainly
+not appeared to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Abb&eacute;," replied Maurice, who had the
+most absolute confidence in the evidence of the
+senses, "I saw him tying up a woman's shoe-laces
+and putting on the trousers of a suicide."</p>
+
+<p>And stamping his feet on the asphalt, Maurice
+called as witnesses to the truth of his words the sky,
+the earth, all nature, the towers of St. Sulpice,
+the walls of the great seminary, the Fountain of the
+<i>Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>, the public lavatory, the cabmen's
+shelter, the taxis and motor 'buses' shelter, the
+trees, the passers-by, the dogs, the sparrows, the
+flower-seller and her flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; made haste to end the interview.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is error, falsehood, and illusion, my
+child," said he. "You are a Christian: think as a
+Christian,&mdash;a Christian does not allow himself to
+be seduced by empty shadows. Faith protects him
+against the seduction of the marvellous, he leaves
+credulity to freethinkers. There are credulous
+people for you&mdash;freethinkers! There is no humbug
+they will not swallow. But the Christian carries a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+weapon which dissipates diabolical illusions,&mdash;the
+sign of the Cross. Reassure yourself, Maurice,&mdash;you
+have not lost your guardian angel. He still
+watches over you. It lies with you not to make
+this task too difficult nor too painful for him. Good-bye,
+Maurice. The weather is going to change, for
+I feel a burning in my big toe."</p>
+
+<p>And Abb&eacute; Patouille went off with his breviary
+under his arm, hobbling along with a dignity that
+seemed to foretell a mitre.</p>
+
+<p>That very day, Arcade and Zita were leaning
+over the parapet of La Butte, gazing down on the
+mist and smoke that lay floating over the vast city.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible," said Arcade, "for the mind
+to conceive all the pain and suffering that lie pent
+within a great city? It is my belief that if a man
+succeeded in realising it, the weight of it would
+crush him to the earth."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," answered Zita, "every living being
+in that place of torment is enamoured of life. It is
+a great enigma!</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy, ill-fated, while they live, the idea
+of ceasing to be is, nevertheless, a horror to them.
+They look not for solace in annihilation, it does not
+even bring them the promise of rest. In their
+madness they even look upon nothingness with
+terror: they have peopled it with phantoms. Look
+you at these pediments, these towers and domes
+and spires that pierce the mist and rear on high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+their glittering crosses. Men bow in adoration
+before the demiurge who has given them a life that
+is worse than death, and a death that is worse than
+life."</p>
+
+<p>Zita was for a long time lost in thought. At
+length she broke silence, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"There is something, Arcade, that I must confess
+to you. It was no desire for a purer justice
+or wiser laws that hurried Ithuriel earthward.
+Ambition, a taste for intrigue, the love of wealth
+and honour, all these things made Heaven, with its
+calm, unbearable to me, and I longed to mingle
+with the restless race of men. I came, and by an
+art unknown to nearly all the angels, I learned how
+to fashion myself a body which, since I could change
+it as the fancy seized me, to whatsoever age and sex
+I would, has permitted me to experience the most
+diverse and amazing of human destinies. A hundred
+times I took a position of renown among the leaders
+of the day, the lords of wealth and princes of nations.
+I will not reveal to you, Arcade, the famous
+names I bore; know only that I was pre-eminent
+in learning, in the fine arts, in power, wealth, and
+beauty, among all the nations of the world. At
+last, it was but a few years since, as I was journeying
+in France, under the outward semblance of
+a distinguished foreigner, I chanced to be roaming
+at evening through the forest of Montmorency,
+when I heard a flute unfolding all the sorrows of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+Heaven. The purity and sadness of its notes rent
+my very soul. Never before had I hearkened to
+aught so lovely. My eyes were wet with tears, my
+bosom full of sobs, as I drew near and beheld, on
+the skirts of a glade, an old man like to a faun,
+blowing on a rustic pipe. It was Nectaire. I cast
+myself at his feet, imprinted kisses on his hands
+and on his lips divine, and fled away....</p>
+
+<p>"From that day forth, conscious of the littleness
+of human achievements, weary of the tumult and
+the vanity of earthly things, ashamed of my vast
+and profitless endeavours, and deciding to seek out
+a loftier aim for my ambition, I looked upwards
+towards my skiey home and vowed I would return
+to it as a Deliverer. I rid myself of titles, name,
+wealth, friends, the horde of sycophants and flatterers
+and, as Zita the obscure, set to work in
+indigence and solitude, to bring freedom into
+Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said Arcade, "I too have heard the
+flute of Nectaire. But who is this old gardener
+who can thus woo from a rude wooden pipe notes
+that are so moving and so beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will soon know," answered Zita.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein mira the seeress, z&eacute;phyrine, and the
+fatal am&eacute;d&eacute;e are successively brought
+upon the scene, and wherein the notion of
+euripides that those whom zeus wishes to
+crush he first makes mad, is illustrated by
+the terrible example of monsieur sariette</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 74px;">
+<img src="images/imgd.jpg" width="74" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>ISAPPOINTED at his failure to enlighten
+an ecclesiastic renowned for
+his clarity of mind, and frustrated
+in the hope of finding his angel
+again on the high road of orthodoxy,
+Maurice took it into his head to resort to
+occultism and resolved to go and consult a seer.
+He would have undoubtedly applied to Madame de
+Th&egrave;bes, but he had already questioned her on the
+occasion of his early love troubles, and her replies
+showed such wisdom that he no longer believed her
+to be a soothsayer. He therefore had recourse to a
+fashionable medium, Madame Mira. He had heard
+many examples quoted of the extraordinary insight
+of this seeress, but it was necessary to present
+Madame Mira with some object which the absent
+one had either touched or worn and to which her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+translucent gaze had to be attracted. Maurice,
+trying to remember what the angel had touched
+since his ill-fated incarnation, recollected that in
+his celestial nudity he had sat down in an arm-chair
+on Madame des Aubels' black stockings and
+that he had afterwards helped that lady to dress.</p></div>
+
+<p>Maurice asked Gilberte for one of the talismans
+required by the clairvoyante. But Gilberte could
+not give him a single one, unless, as she said, she
+herself were to play the part of the talisman. For
+the angel had, in her case, displayed the greatest
+indiscretion, and such agility that it was impossible
+always to forestall his enterprise. On hearing this
+confession, which nevertheless told him nothing
+new, Maurice lost his temper with the angel, calling
+him by the names of the lowest animals and
+swearing he would give him a good kick when
+he got him within reach of his foot. But his fury
+soon turned against Madame des Aubels; he accused
+her of having provoked the insolence she
+now denounced, and in his wrath he referred to
+her by all the zoological symbols of immodesty
+and perversity. His love for Arcade was rekindled
+in his heart, and burned with a more ardent flame
+than ever, and the deserted youth, with outstretched
+arms and bended knees, invoked his angel with sobs
+and lamentations.</p>
+
+<p>During his sleepless nights it occurred to him
+that perhaps the books the angel had turned over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+before his incarnation might serve as a talisman.
+One morning, therefore, Maurice went up to the
+library and greeted Monsieur Sariette, who was
+cataloguing under the romantic gaze of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu. Monsieur Sariette smiled, but his
+face was deathly pale. Now that an invisible hand
+no longer upset the books placed under his charge,
+now that tranquillity and order once more reigned
+in the library, Monsieur Sariette was happy, but
+his strength diminished day by day. There was little
+left of him but a frail and contented shadow.</p>
+
+<p>
+"One dies, in full content, of sorrow past."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice, "you remember
+that time when your books were disarranged
+every night, how armfuls disappeared, how they
+were dragged about, turned over, ruined, and sent
+rolling helter-skelter as far as the gutter in the Rue
+Palatine. Those were great days! Point out to me,
+Monsieur Sariette, the books which suffered most."</p>
+
+<p>This proposition threw Monsieur Sariette into a
+melancholy stupor, and Maurice had to repeat his
+request three times before he could make the aged
+librarian understand. At length he pointed to a
+very ancient Talmud from Jerusalem as having been
+frequently touched by those unseen hands. An
+apocryphal Gospel of the third century, consisting
+of twenty papyrus sheets, had also quitted its place
+time after time. Gassendi's Correspondence too
+seemed to have been well thumbed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But," added Monsieur Sariette, "the book to
+which the mysterious visitant devoted the most particular
+attention was undoubtedly a little copy of
+<i>Lucretius</i> adorned with the arms of Philippe de
+Vend&ocirc;me, Grand Prieur de France, with autograph
+annotations by Voltaire, who, as is well known, frequently
+visited the Temple in his younger days. The
+fearsome reader who caused me such terrible anxiety
+never grew weary of this <i>Lucretius</i> and made it his
+bedside book, as it were. His taste was sound, for
+it's a gem of a thing. Alas! the monster made a
+blot of ink on page 137 which perhaps the chemists
+with all the science at their disposal will be powerless
+to erase."</p>
+
+<p>And Monsieur Sariette heaved a profound sigh.
+He repented having said all this when young d'Esparvieu
+asked him for the loan of the precious
+<i>Lucretius</i>. Vainly did the jealous custodian affirm
+that the book was being repaired at the binder's and
+was not available. Maurice made it clear that he
+wasn't to be taken in like that. He strode resolutely
+into the abode of the philosophers and the globes
+and seating himself in an arm-chair said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am waiting."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette suggested his having another
+edition. There were some that, textually, were
+more correct, and were, therefore, preferable from
+the student's point of view. He offered him Barbou's
+edition, or Coustelier's, or, better still, a French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+translation. He could have the Baron des Coutures'
+version&mdash;which was perhaps a little old-fashioned&mdash;or
+La Grange's, or those in the Nisard
+and Panckouke series; or, again, there were two versions
+of striking elegance, one in verse and the other
+in prose, both from the pen of Monsieur de Pongerville
+of the French Academy.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need a translation," said Maurice
+proudly. "Give me the Prior de Vend&ocirc;me's copy."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette went slowly up to the cupboard
+in which the jewel in question was contained.
+The keys were rattling in his trembling
+hand. He raised them to the lock and withdrew
+them again immediately and suggested that Maurice
+should have the common <i>Lucretius</i> published by
+Garnier.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very handy," said he with an engaging
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>But the silence with which this proposal was
+received made it clear that resistance was useless.
+He slowly drew forth the volume from its place,
+and having taken the precaution to see that there
+wasn't a speck of dust on the table-cloth, he laid it
+tremblingly thereon before the great-grandson of
+Alexandre d'Esparvieu.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice began to turn the leaves, and when he
+got to page 137 he saw the stain which had been
+made with violet ink. It was about the size of a
+pea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ay, that's it," said old Sariette, who had his eye
+on the <i>Lucretius</i> the whole time; "that's the trace
+those invisible monsters left behind them."</p>
+
+<p>"What, there were several of them, Monsieur
+Sariette?" exclaimed Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell. But I don't know whether I have
+a right to have this blot removed since, like the
+blot Paul Louis Courier made on the Florentine
+manuscript, it constitutes a literary document, so
+to speak."</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely were the words out of the old fellow's
+mouth when the front door bell rang and there was
+a confused noise of voices and footsteps in the next
+room. Sariette ran forward at the sound and
+collided with P&egrave;re Guinardon's mistress, old Z&eacute;phyrine,
+who, with her tousled hair sticking up like a
+nest of vipers, her face aflame, her bosom heaving,
+her abdominal part like an eiderdown quilt puffed
+out by a terrific gale, was choking with grief and
+rage. And amid sobs and sighs and groans and all
+the innumerable sounds which, on earth, make
+up the mighty uproar to which the emotions of
+living beings and the tumult of nature give rise, she
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone, the monster! He's gone off with her.
+He's cleared out the whole shanty and left me to
+shift for myself with eighteenpence in my purse."</p>
+
+<p>And she proceeded to give a long and incoherent
+account of how Michel Guinardon had abandoned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+her and gone to live with Octavie, the bread-woman's
+daughter, and she let loose a torrent of abuse against
+the traitor.</p>
+
+<p>"A man whom I've kept going with my own
+money for fifty years and more. For I've had plenty
+of the needful and known plenty of the upper ten
+and all. I dragged him out of the gutter and now
+this is what I get for it. He's a bright beauty, that
+friend of yours. The lazy scoundrel. Why, he had
+to be dressed like a child, the drunken contemptible
+brute. You don't know him yet, Monsieur Sariette.
+He's a forger. He turns out Giottos, Giottos, I
+tell you, and Fra Angelicos and Grecos, as hard as
+he can and sells them to art-dealers&mdash;yes, and Fragonards
+too, and Baudouins. He's a debauchee, and
+doesn't believe in God! That's the worst of the
+lot, Monsieur Sariette, for without the fear of
+God...."</p>
+
+<p>Long did Z&eacute;phyrine continue to pour forth
+vituperations. When at last her breath failed her,
+Monsieur Sariette availed himself of the opportunity
+to exhort her to be calm and bring herself to look
+on the bright side of things. Guinardon would
+come back. A man doesn't forget anyone he's lived
+and got on well with for fifty years&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>These two observations only goaded her to a fresh
+outburst, and Z&eacute;phyrine swore she would never
+forget the slight that had been put on her; she
+swore she would never have the monster back with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+her any more. And if he came to ask her to forgive
+him on his knees, she would let him grovel
+at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you understand, Monsieur Sariette, that
+I despise and hate him, that he makes me sick?"</p>
+
+<p>Sixty times she voiced these lofty sentiments;
+sixty times she vowed she would never have Guinardon
+back with her again, that she couldn't bear
+the sight of him, even in a picture.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette made no attempt to oppose a
+resolve which, after protestations such as these, he
+regarded as unshakable. He did not blame Z&eacute;phyrine
+in the least. He even supported her. Unfolding
+to the deserted one a purer future, he told her of
+the frailty of human sentiment, exhorted her to
+display a spirit of renunciation and enjoined her to
+show a pious resignation to the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing, in truth, that your friend is so little
+worthy of affection ..."</p>
+
+<p>He was not suffered to continue. Z&eacute;phyrine flew
+at him, and shaking him furiously by the collar
+of his frock-coat, she yelled, half choking with
+rage: "So little worthy of affection! Michel!
+Ah! my boy, you find another more kind, more
+gay, more witty, you find another like him, always
+young, yes, always. Not worthy of affection!
+Anyone can see you don't know anything about
+love, you old duffer."</p>
+
+<p>Taking advantage of the fact that P&egrave;re Sariette<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+was thus deeply engaged, young d'Esparvieu slipped
+the little <i>Lucretius</i> into his pocket, and strolled
+deliberately past the crouching librarian, bidding
+him adieu with a little wave of the hand.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with his talisman, he hastened to the
+Place des Ternes, to interview Madame Mira. She
+received him in a red drawing-room where neither
+owl nor frog nor any of the paraphernalia of ancient
+magic were to be found. Madame Mira, in a prune-coloured
+dress, her hair powdered, though already
+past her prime, was of very good appearance. She
+spoke with a certain elegance and prided herself
+on discovering hidden things by the help alone of
+Science, Philosophy, and Religion. She felt the
+morocco binding, feigning to close her eyes, and
+looking meanwhile through the narrow slit between
+her lids at the Latin title and the coat of arms which
+conveyed nothing to her.</p>
+
+<p>Accustomed to receive as tokens such things as
+rings, handkerchiefs, letters, and locks of hair, she
+could not conceive to what sort of individual this
+singular book could belong. By habitual and
+mechanical cunning she disguised her real surprise
+under a feigned surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange!" she murmured, "strange! I do not
+see quite clearly ... I perceive a woman...."</p>
+
+<p>As she let fall this magic word, she glanced
+furtively to see what sort of an effect it had and
+beheld on her questioner's face an unexpected look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+of disappointment. Perceiving that she was off the
+track, she immediately changed her oracle:</p>
+
+<p>"But she fades away immediately. It is strange,
+strange! I have a confused impression of some
+vague form, a being that I cannot define," and
+having assured herself by a hurried glance that,
+this time, her words were going down, she expatiated
+on the vagueness of the person and on the mist that
+enveloped him.</p>
+
+<p>However, the vision grew clearer to Madame
+Mira, who was following a clue step by step.</p>
+
+<p>"A wide street ... a square with a statue ... a
+deserted street,&mdash;stairs. He is there in a bluish room&mdash;he
+is a young man, with pale and careworn
+face. There are things he seems to regret, and
+which he would not do again did they still remain
+undone."</p>
+
+<p>But the effort at divination had been too great.
+Fatigue prevented the clairvoyante from continuing
+her transcendental researches. She spent her
+remaining strength in impressively recommending
+him who consulted her to remain in intimate union
+with God if he wished to regain what he had lost
+and succeed in his attempts.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Maurice placed a louis on the mantelpiece
+and went away moved and troubled, persuaded
+that Madame Mira possessed supernatural faculties,
+but unfortunately insufficient ones.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the stairs he remembered he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+had left the little <i>Lucretius</i> on the table of the
+pythoness, and, thinking that the old maniac
+Sariette would never get over its loss, went up to
+recover possession of it.</p>
+
+<p>On re-entering the paternal abode his gaze lighted
+upon a shadowy and grief-stricken figure. It was
+old Sariette, who in tones as plaintive as the wail of
+the November wind began to beg for his <i>Lucretius</i>.
+Maurice pulled it carelessly out of his great-coat
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't flurry yourself, Monsieur Sariette," said
+he. "There the thing is."</p>
+
+<p>Clasping the jewel to his bosom the old librarian
+bore it away and laid it gently down on the blue
+table-cloth, thinking all the while where he might
+safely hide his precious treasure, and turning over
+all sorts of schemes in his mind as became a zealous
+curator. But who among us shall boast of his
+wisdom? The foresight of man is short, and his
+prudence is for ever being baffled. The blows of
+fate are ineluctable; no man shall evade his doom.
+There is no counsel, no caution that avails against
+destiny. Hapless as we are, the same blind force
+which regulates the courses of atom and of star
+fashions universal order from our vicissitudes. Our
+ill-fortune is necessary to the harmony of the
+Universe. It was the day for the binder, a day which
+the revolving seasons brought round twice a year,
+beneath the sign of the Ram and the sign of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+Scales. That day, ever since morning, Monsieur
+Sariette had been making things ready for the
+binder. He had laid out on the table as many of
+the newly purchased paper-bound volumes as were
+deemed worthy of a permanent binding or of being
+put in boards, and also those books whose binding
+was in need of repair, and of all these he had drawn
+up a detailed and accurate list. Punctually at
+five o'clock, old Am&eacute;d&eacute;e, the man from L&eacute;ger-Massieu's,
+the binder in the Rue de l'Abbaye,
+presented himself at the d'Esparvieu library and,
+after a double check had been carried out by Monsieur
+Sariette, thrust the books he was to take
+back to his master into a piece of cloth which he
+fastened into knots at the four corners and hoisted
+on to his shoulder. He then saluted the librarian
+with the following words, "Good night, all!" and
+went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went off on this occasion as usual.
+But Am&eacute;d&eacute;e, seeing the <i>Lucretius</i> on the table,
+innocently put it into the bag with the others,
+and took it away without Monsieur Sariette's perceiving
+it. The librarian quitted the home of
+the Philosophers and Globes in entire forgetfulness
+of the book whose absence had been causing him
+such horrible anxiety all day long. Some people
+may take a stern view of the matter and call this a
+lapse, a defection of his better nature. But would
+it not be more accurate to say that fate had decided<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+that things should come to pass in this manner,
+and that what is called chance, and is in fact but
+the regular order of nature, had accomplished this
+imperceptible deed which was to have such awful
+consequences in the sight of man? Monsieur Sariette
+went off to his dinner at the <i>Quatre &Eacute;v&ecirc;ques</i>,
+and read his paper <i>La Croix</i>. He was tranquil and
+serene. It was only the next morning when he
+entered the abode of the Philosophers and Globes
+that he remembered the <i>Lucretius</i>. Failing to see
+it on the table he looked for it everywhere, but
+without success. It never entered his head that
+Am&eacute;d&eacute;e might have taken it away by mistake.
+What he did think was that the invisible visitant had
+returned, and he was mightily disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy curator, hearing a noise on the
+landing, opened the door and found it was little
+L&eacute;on, who, with a gold-braided <i>k&eacute;pi</i> stuck on his
+head, was shouting "Vive la France" and hurling
+dusters and feather-brooms and Hippolyte's floor
+polish at imaginary foes. The child preferred this
+landing for playing soldiers to any other part of
+the house, and sometimes he would stray into the
+library. Monsieur Sariette was seized with the
+sudden suspicion that it was he who had taken the
+<i>Lucretius</i> to use as a missile and he ordered him, in
+threatening tones, to give it back. The child denied
+that he had taken it, and Monsieur Sariette had
+recourse to cajolery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"L&eacute;on, if you bring me back the little red book,
+I will give you some chocolates."</p>
+
+<p>The child grew thoughtful; and in the evening,
+as Monsieur Sariette was going downstairs, he met
+L&eacute;on, who said:</p>
+
+<p>"There's the book!"</p>
+
+<p>And, holding out a much-torn picture-book
+called <i>The Story of Gribouille</i>, demanded his chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the post brought Maurice the
+prospectus of an enquiry agency managed by an
+ex-employee at the Prefecture of Police; it promised
+celerity and discretion. He found at the address
+indicated a moustached gentleman morose and careworn,
+who demanded a deposit and promised to
+find the individual.</p>
+
+<p>The ex-police official soon wrote to inform him
+that very onerous investigations had been commenced
+and asked for fresh funds. Maurice gave
+him no more and resolved to carry on the search
+himself. Imagining, not without some likelihood,
+that the angel would associate with the wretched,
+seeing that he had no money, and with the exiled
+of all nations&mdash;like himself, revolutionaries&mdash;he
+visited the lodging-houses at St. Ouen, at la Chapelle,
+Montmartre, and the Barri&egrave;re d'Italie. He sought
+him in the doss-houses, public-houses where they
+give you plates of tripe, and others where you
+can get a sausage for three sous; he searched for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+him in the cellars at the Market and at P&egrave;re
+Momie's.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice visited the restaurants where nihilists
+and anarchists take their meals. There he came
+across men dressed as women, gloomy and wild-looking
+youths, and blue-eyed octogenarians who
+laughed like little children. He observed, asked
+questions, was taken for a spy, had a knife thrust
+into him by a very beautiful woman, and the very
+next day continued his search in beer-houses,
+lodging-houses, houses of ill-fame, gambling-hells
+down by the fortifications, at the receivers of stolen
+goods, and among the "apaches."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing him thus pale, harassed, and silent, his
+mother grew worried.</p>
+
+<p>"We must find him a wife," she said. "It is a
+pity that Mademoiselle de la Verdeli&egrave;re has not a
+bigger fortune."</p>
+
+<p>Abb&eacute; Patouille did not hide his anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"This child," he said, "is passing through a
+moral crisis."</p>
+
+<p>"I am more inclined to think," replied Monsieur
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, "that he is under the influence
+of some bad woman. We must find him an occupation
+which will absorb him and flatter his vanity.
+I might get him appointed Secretary to the Committee
+for the Preservation of Country Churches,
+or Consulting Counsel to the Syndicate of Catholic
+Plumbers."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we learn that sophar, no less eager
+for gold than mammon, looked upon his
+heavenly home less favourably than upon
+france, a country blessed with a savings
+bank and loan departments, and wherein
+we see, yet once again, that whoso is
+possessed of this world's goods fears the
+evil effects of any change</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgm.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>EANWHILE Arcade led a life of
+obscure toil. He worked at a printer's
+in the Rue St. Beno&icirc;t, and lived in
+an attic in the Rue Mouffetard.
+His comrades having gone on strike,
+he left the workroom and devoted his day to his
+propaganda. So successful was he that he won over
+to the side of revolt fifty thousand of those guardian
+angels who, as Zita had surmised, were discontented
+with their condition and imbued with the spirit of
+the times. But lacking money, he lacked liberty,
+and could not employ his time as he wished in
+instructing the sons of Heaven. So, too, Prince
+Istar, hampered by want of funds, manufactured
+fewer bombs than were needed, and these less fine.
+Of course he prepared a good many small pocket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+machines. He had filled Th&eacute;ophile's rooms with
+them, and not a day passed but he forgot some and
+left them lying about on the seats in various caf&eacute;s.
+But a nice bomb, easily handled and capable of
+destroying many big mansions, cost him from twenty
+to twenty-five thousand francs; and Prince Istar
+only possessed two of this kind. Equally bent on
+procuring funds, Arcade and Istar both went to
+make a request for money from a celebrated financier
+named Max Everdingen, who, as everyone
+knows, is the managing director of the biggest
+banking concern in France and indeed in the whole
+world. What is not so well known is that Max
+Everdingen was not born of woman, but is a fallen
+angel. Nevertheless, such is the truth. In Heaven
+he was named Sophar, and guarded the treasures
+of Ialdabaoth, a great collector of gold and precious
+stones. In the exercise of this function Sophar contracted
+a love of riches which could not be satisfied
+in a state of society in which banks and stock
+exchanges are alike unknown. His heart flamed
+with an ardent love for the god of the Hebrews to
+whom he remained faithful during a long course of
+centuries. But at the commencement of the twentieth
+century of the Christian era, casting his
+eyes down from the height of the firmament upon
+France, he saw that this country, under the name
+of a Republic, was constituted as a plutocracy and
+that, under the appearance of a democratic govern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>ment,
+high finance exercised sovereign sway, untrammelled
+and unchecked.</p></div>
+
+<p>Henceforth life in the Empyrean became intolerable
+to him. He longed for France as for the
+promised land, and one day, bearing with him all
+the precious stones he could carry, he descended
+to earth and established himself in Paris. This
+angel of cupidity did good business there. Since
+his materialisation his face had lost its celestial
+aspect; it reproduced the Semitic type in all its
+purity, and one could admire the lines and the
+puckers which wrinkle the faces of bankers and
+which are to be seen in the money-changers of
+Quintin Matsys.</p>
+
+<p>His beginnings were humble and his success
+amazing. He married an ugly woman and they saw
+themselves reflected in their children as in a mirror.
+Baron Max Everdingen's large mansion, which
+rears itself on the heights of the Trocad&eacute;ro, is
+crammed with the spoils of Christian Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron received Arcade and Prince Istar in
+his study,&mdash;one of the most modest rooms in his
+mansion. The ceiling is decorated with a fresco of
+Tiepolo, taken from a Venetian palace. The bureau
+of the Regent, Philip of Orleans, is in this room, which
+is full of cabinets, show-cases, pictures, and statues.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade allowed his gaze to wander over the
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>"How comes it, my brother Sophar," said he,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+"that you, in spite of your Jewish heart, obey so
+ill the commandment of the Lord your God who
+said: 'Thou shalt have no graven images'? for
+here I see an Apollo of Houdon's and a Hebe of
+Lemoine's, and several busts by Caffieri. And, like
+Solomon in his old age, O son of God, you set up
+in your dwelling-place the idols of strange nations:
+for such are this Venus of Boucher, this Jupiter of
+Rubens, and those nymphs that are indebted to
+Fragonard's brush for the gooseberry jam which
+smears their gleaming limbs. And here in this
+single show-case, Sophar, you keep the sceptre of
+St. Louis, six hundred pearls of Marie Antoinette's
+broken necklace, the imperial mantle of Charles V,
+the tiara wrought by Ghiberti for Pope Martin V,
+the Colonna, Bonaparte's sword&mdash;and I know not
+what besides."</p>
+
+<p>"Mere trifles," said Max Everdingen.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Baron," said Prince Istar, "you even
+possess the ring which Charlemagne placed on a
+fairy's finger and which was thought to be lost. But
+let us discuss the business on which we have
+come. My friend and I have come to ask you for
+money."</p>
+
+<p>"I can well believe it," replied Max Everdingen.
+"Everyone wants money, but for different reasons.
+What do you want money for?"</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar replied simply:</p>
+
+<p>"To stir up a revolution in France."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In France!" repeated the Baron, "in France?
+Well, I shall give you no money for that, you may
+be quite sure."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade did not disguise the fact that he had
+expected greater liberality and more generous help
+from a celestial brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Our project," he said, "is a vast one. It embraces
+both Heaven and Earth. It is settled in
+every detail. We shall first bring about a social
+revolution in France, in Europe, on the whole planet;
+then we shall carry war into the heavens, where
+we shall establish a peaceful democracy. And
+to reduce the citadels of Heaven, to overturn the
+mountain of God, to storm celestial Jerusalem,
+a vast army is needful, enormous resources, formidable
+machines, and electrophores of a strength
+yet unknown. It is our intention to commence
+with France."</p>
+
+<p>"You are madmen!" exclaimed Baron Everdingen;
+"madmen and fools! Listen to me. There is not
+one single reform to carry out in France. All is
+perfect, finally settled, unchangeable. You hear?&mdash;unchangeable."
+And to add force to his statement,
+Baron Everdingen banged his fist three times on
+the Regent's bureau.</p>
+
+<p>"Our points of view differ," said Arcade sweetly.
+"<i>I</i> think, as does Prince Istar, that everything
+should be changed in this country. But what boots
+it to dispute the matter? Moreover, it is too late.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+We have come to speak to you, O my brother
+Sophar, in the name of five hundred thousand
+celestial spirits, all resolved to commence the
+universal revolution to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Baron Everdingen exclaimed that they were crazy,
+that he would not give a <i>sou</i>, that it was both
+criminal and mad to attack the most admirable
+thing in the world, the thing which renders earth
+more beautiful than heaven&mdash;Finance. He was a
+poet and a prophet. His heart thrilled with holy
+enthusiasm; he drew attention to the French Savings
+Bank, the virtuous Savings Bank, that chaste
+and pure Savings Bank like unto the Virgin of
+the Canticle who, issuing from the depths of the
+country in rustic petticoat, bears to the robust
+and splendid Bank&mdash;her bridegroom, who awaits
+her&mdash;the treasures of her love; and drew a picture
+of the Bank, enriched with the gifts of its spouse,
+pouring on all the nations of the world torrents of
+gold, which, of themselves, by a thousand invisible
+channels return in still greater abundance to the
+blessed land from which they sprung.</p>
+
+<p>"By Deposit and Loan," he went on, "France
+has become the New Jerusalem, shedding her glory
+over all the nations of Europe, and the Kings of the
+Earth come to kiss her rosy feet. And that is what
+you would fain destroy? You are both impious
+and sacrilegious."</p>
+
+<p>Thus spoke the angel of finance. An invisible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+harp accompanied his voice, and his eyes darted
+lightning.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Arcade, leaning carelessly against the
+Regent's bureau, spread out under the Banker's eyes
+various ground-plans, underground-plans, and sky-plans
+of Paris with red crosses indicating the points
+where bombs should be simultaneously placed in
+cellars and catacombs, thrown on public ways, and
+flung by a flotilla of aeroplanes. All the financial
+establishments, and notably the Everdingen Bank
+and its branches, were marked with red crosses.</p>
+
+<p>The financier shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! you are but wretches and vagabonds,
+shadowed by all the police of the world. You are
+penniless. How can you manufacture all the
+machines?"</p>
+
+<p>By way of reply, Prince Istar drew from his pocket
+a small copper cylinder, which he gracefully presented
+to Baron Everdingen.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said he, "this ordinary-looking box.
+It is only necessary to let it fall on the ground
+immediately to reduce this mansion with its inmates
+to a mass of smoking ashes, and to set a
+fire going which would devour all the Trocad&eacute;ro
+quarter. I have ten thousand like that, and I make
+three dozen a day."</p>
+
+<p>The financier asked the Cherub to replace the
+machine in his pocket, and continued in a conciliatory
+tone:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me, my friends. Go and start a
+revolution at once in Heaven, and leave things alone
+in this country. I will sign a cheque for you. You
+can procure all the material you need to attack
+celestial Jerusalem."</p>
+
+<p>And Baron Everdingen was already working up
+in his imagination a magnificent deal in electrophores
+and war-material.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein is begun the gardener's story, in the
+course of which we shall see the destiny
+of the world unfolded in a discourse as
+broad and magnificent in its views as
+bossuet's discourse on the history of the
+universe is narrow and dismal</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE gardener bade Arcade and Zita
+sit down in an arbour walled with
+wild bryony, at the far end of the
+orchard.</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade," said the beautiful Archangel,
+"Nectaire will perhaps reveal to you to-day
+the things you are burning to know. Ask him to
+speak."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade did so and old Nectaire, laying down his
+pipe, began as follows:&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>"I knew him. He was the most beautiful of all
+the Seraphim. He shone with intelligence and
+daring. His great heart was big with all the virtues
+born of pride: frankness, courage, constancy in trial,
+indomitable hope. Long, long ago, ere Time was,
+in the boreal sky where gleam the seven magnetic
+stars, he dwelt in a palace of diamond and gold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+where the air was ever tremulous with the beating
+of wings and with songs of triumph. Iahveh, on
+his mountain, was jealous of Lucifer. You both
+know it: angels like unto men feel love and hatred
+quicken within them. Capable, at times, of generous
+resolves, they too often follow their own interests
+and yield to fear. Then, as now, they showed themselves,
+for the most part, incapable of lofty thoughts,
+and in the fear of the Lord lay their sole virtue.
+Lucifer, who held vile things in proud disdain,
+despised this rabble of commonplace spirits for ever
+wallowing in a life of feasts and pleasure. But to
+those who were possessed of a daring spirit, a restless
+soul, to those fired with a wild love of liberty, he
+proffered friendship, which was returned with
+adoration. These latter deserted in a mass the
+mountain of God and yielded to the Seraph the
+homage which That Other would fain have kept for
+himself alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I ranked among the Dominations, and my name,
+Alaciel, was not unknown to fame. To satisfy my
+mind&mdash;that was ever tormented with an insatiable
+thirst for knowledge and understanding&mdash;I observed
+the nature of things, I studied the properties of
+minerals, air, and water. I sought out the laws which
+govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much
+pondering I perceived that the Universe had not
+been formed as its pretended Creator would have
+us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+itself and not by the caprice of Iahveh; that the
+world is itself its own creator and the spirit its own
+God. Henceforth I despised Iahveh for his imposture,
+and I hated him because he showed himself
+to be opposed to all that I found desirable and good:
+liberty, curiosity, doubt. These feelings drew me
+towards the Seraph. I admired him, I loved him.
+I dwelt in his light. When at length it appeared
+that a choice had to be made between him and That
+Other I ranged myself on the side of Lucifer and
+knew no other aim than to serve him, no other desire
+than to share his lot.</p>
+
+<p>"War having become inevitable, he prepared for
+it with indefatigable vigilance and all the resourcefulness
+of a far-seeing mind. Making the Thrones
+and Dominations into Chalybes and Cyclopes, he
+drew forth iron from the mountains bordering his
+domain; iron, which he valued more than gold,
+and forged weapons in the caverns of Heaven.
+Then in the desert plain of the North he assembled
+myriads of Spirits, armed them, taught them, and
+drilled them. Although prepared in secret, the
+enterprise was too vast for his adversary not to be
+soon aware of it. It might in truth be said that
+he had always foreseen and dreaded it, for he had
+made a citadel of his abode and a warlike host of
+his angels, and he gave himself the name of the God
+of Hosts. He made ready his thunderbolts. More
+than half of the children of Heaven remained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+faithful to him; thronging round him he beheld
+obedient souls and patient hearts. The Archangel
+Michael, who knew not fear, took command of
+these docile troops. Lucifer, as soon as he saw that
+his army could gain no more in numbers or in
+warlike skill, moved it swiftly against the foe, and
+promising his angels riches and glory marched at
+their head towards the mountain upon whose
+summit stands the Throne of the Universe. For
+three days our host swept onward over the ethereal
+plains. Above our heads streamed the black standards
+of revolt. And now, behold, the Mountain
+of God shone rosy in the orient sky and our
+chief scanned with his eyes the glittering ramparts.
+Beneath the sapphire walls the foe was drawn up in
+battle array, and, while we marched clad in our iron
+and bronze, they shone resplendent in gold and
+precious stones.</p>
+
+<p>"Their gonfalons of red and blue floated in the
+breeze, and lightning flashed from the points of
+their lances. In a little while the armies were only
+sundered one from the other by a narrow strip of
+level and deserted ground, and at this sight even
+the bravest shuddered as they thought that there
+in bloody conflict their fate would soon be sealed.</p>
+
+<p>"Angels, as you know, never die. But when
+bronze and iron, diamond point or flaming sword
+tear their ethereal substance, the pain they feel is
+more acute than men may suffer, for their flesh is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+more exquisitely delicate; and should some essential
+organ be destroyed, they fall inert and, slowly decomposing,
+are resolved into clouds and during long
+&aelig;ons float insensible in the cold ether. And when
+at length they resume spirit and form they fail to
+recover full memory of their past life. Therefore
+it is but natural that angels shrink from suffering,
+and the bravest among them is troubled at the
+thought of being reft of light and sweet remembrance.
+Were it otherwise the angelic race would
+know neither the delight of battle nor the glory of
+sacrifice. Those who, before the beginning of
+Time, fought in the Empyrean for or against the
+God of Armies, would have taken part without
+honour in mock battles, and it would not now become
+me to say to you, my children, with rightful pride:</p>
+
+<p>"'Lo, I was there!'</p>
+
+<p>"Lucifer gave the signal for the onset and led
+the assault. We fell upon the enemy, thinking to
+destroy him then and there and carry the sacred
+citadel at the first onslaught. The soldiers of the
+jealous God, less fiery, but no whit less firm than
+ours, remained immovable. The Archangel Michael
+commanded them with the calmness and resolution
+of a mighty spirit. Thrice we strove to break
+through their lines, thrice they opposed to our ironclad
+breast the flaming points of their lances, swift
+to pierce the stoutest cuirass. In millions the
+glorious bodies fell. At length our right wing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+pierced the enemy's left and we beheld the Principalities,
+the Powers, the Virtues, the Dominations,
+and the Thrones turn and flee in full career; while
+the Angels of the Third Choir, flying distractedly
+above them, covered them with a snow of feathers
+mingled with a rain of blood. We sped in pursuit
+of them amid the d&eacute;bris of chariots and broken
+weapons, and we spurred their nimble flight. Suddenly
+a storm of cries amazed us. It grew louder
+and nearer. With desperate shrieks and triumphal
+clamour the right wing of the enemy, the giant
+archangels of the Most High, had flung themselves
+upon our left flank and broken it. Thus
+we were forced to abandon the pursuit of the fugitives
+and hasten to the rescue of our own shattered
+troops. Our prince flew to rally them, and
+re-established the conflict. But the left wing of
+the enemy, whose ruin he had not quite consummated,
+no longer pressed by lance or arrow, regained
+courage, returned, and faced us yet again.
+Night fell upon the dubious field. While under the
+shelter of darkness, in the still, silent air stirred ever
+and anon by the moans of the wounded, his forces
+were resting from their toils, Lucifer began to make
+ready for the next day's battle. Before dawn the
+trumpets sounded the reveille. Our warriors surprised
+the enemy at the hour of prayer, put them
+to rout, and long and fierce was the carnage that
+ensued. When all had either fallen or fled, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+Archangel Michael, none with him save a few
+companions with four wings of flame, still resisted
+the onslaughts of a countless host. They fell back
+ceaselessly opposing their breasts to us, and Michael
+still displayed an impassible countenance. The sun
+had run a third of its course when we commenced
+to scale the Mountain of God. An arduous ascent
+it was: sweat ran from our brows, a dazzling light
+blinded us. Weighed down with steel, our feathery
+wings could not sustain us, but hope gave us wings
+that bore us up. The beautiful Seraph, pointing
+with glittering hand, mounting ever higher and
+higher, showed us the way. All day long we slowly
+clomb the lofty heights which at evening were
+robed in azure, rose, and violet. The starry host
+appearing in the sky seemed as the reflection of our
+own arms. Infinite silence reigned above us. We
+went on, intoxicated with hope; all at once from
+the darkened sky lightning darted forth, the thunder
+muttered, and from the cloudy mountain-top
+fell fire from Heaven. Our helmets, our breast-plates
+were running with flames, and our bucklers
+broke under bolts sped by invisible hands. Lucifer,
+in the storm of fire, retained his haughty mien.
+In vain the lightning smote him; mightier than
+ever he stood erect, and still defied the foe. At
+length, the thunder, making the mountain totter,
+flung us down pell-mell, huge fragments of sapphire
+and ruby crashing down with us as we fell,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+and we rolled inert, swooning, for a period whose
+duration none could measure.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I awoke in a darkness filled with lamentations.
+And when my eyes had grown accustomed to the
+dense shadows I saw round me my companions in
+arms, scattered in thousands on the sulphurous
+ground, lit by fitful gleams of livid light. My
+eyes perceived but fields of lava, smoking craters,
+and poisonous swamps.</p>
+
+<p>"Mountains of ice and shadowy seas shut in the
+horizon. A brazen sky hung heavy on our brows.
+And the horror of the place was such that we wept
+as we sat, crouched elbow on knee, our cheeks
+resting on our clenched hands.</p>
+
+<p>"But soon, raising my eyes, I beheld the Seraph
+standing before me like a tower. Over his pristine
+splendour sorrow had cast its mantle of sombre
+majesty.</p>
+
+<p>"'Comrades,' said he, 'we must be happy and
+rejoice, for behold we are delivered from celestial
+servitude. Here we are free, and it were better to
+be free in Hell than serve in Heaven. We are not
+conquered, since the will to conquer is still ours.
+We have caused the Throne of the jealous God to
+totter; by our hands it shall fall. Arise, therefore,
+and be of good heart.'</p>
+
+<p>"Thereupon, at his command, we piled mountain
+upon mountain and on the topmost peak we reared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+engines which flung molten rocks against the divine
+habitations. The celestial host was taken unaware
+and from the abodes of glory there issued groans
+and cries of terror. And even then we thought to
+re-enter in triumph on our high estate, but the
+Mountain of God was wreathed with lightnings,
+and thunderbolts, falling on our fortress, crushed
+it to dust. After this fresh disaster, the Seraph
+remained awhile in meditation, his head buried in
+his hands. At length he raised his darkened visage.
+Now he was Satan, greater than Lucifer. Steadfast
+and loyal the angels thronged about him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Friends,' he said, 'if victory is denied us now,
+it is because we are neither worthy nor capable of
+victory. Let us determine wherein we have failed.
+Nature shall not be ruled, the sceptre of the Universe
+shall not be grasped, Godhead shall not be won, save
+by knowledge alone. We must conquer the thunder;
+to that task we must apply ourselves unwearyingly.
+It is not blind courage (no one this day has shown
+more courage than have you) which will win us the
+courts of Heaven; but rather study and reflection.
+In these silent realms where we are fallen, let us
+meditate, seeking the hidden causes of things; let
+us observe the course of Nature; let us pursue her
+with compelling ardour and all-conquering desire;
+let us strive to penetrate her infinite grandeur, her
+infinite minuteness. Let us seek to know when she
+is barren and when she brings forth fruit; how she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+makes cold and heat, joy and sorrow, life and death;
+how she assembles and disperses her elements, how
+she produces both the light air we breathe and the
+rocks of diamond and sapphire whence we have
+been precipitated, the divine fire wherewith we
+have been scarred and the soaring thought which
+stirs our minds. Torn with dire wounds, scorched
+by flame and by ice, let us render thanks to Fate
+which has sedulously opened our eyes, and let us
+rejoice at our lot. It is through pain that, suffering
+a first experience of Nature, we have been roused
+to know her and to subdue her. When she obeys us
+we shall be as gods. But even though she hide her
+mysteries for ever from us, deny us arms and keep
+the secret of the thunder, we still must needs congratulate
+ourselves on having known pain, for pain
+has revealed to us new feelings, more precious
+and more sweet than those experienced in eternal
+bliss, and inspired us with love and pity unknown
+to Heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>"These words of the Seraph changed our hearts
+and opened up fresh hope to us. Our hearts
+were filled with a great longing for knowledge and
+love.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile the Earth was coming into being.
+Its immense and nebulous orb took on hourly more
+shape and more certainty of outline. The waters
+which fed the seaweed, the madrepores and shellfish
+and bore the light flotilla of the nautilus upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+their bosom, no longer covered it in its entirety;
+they began to sink into beds, and already continents
+appeared, where, on the warm slime, amphibious
+monsters crawled. Then the mountains were overspread
+with forests, and divers races of animals
+commenced to feed on the grass, the moss, the
+berries on the trees, and on the acorns. Then there
+took possession of cavernous shelters under the rocks,
+a being who was cunning to wound with a sharpened
+stone the savage beasts, and by his ruses to overcome
+the ancient denizens of forest, plain, and mountain.</p>
+
+<p>"Man entered painfully on his kingdom. He was
+defenceless and naked. His scanty hair afforded him
+but little protection from the cold. His hands
+ended in nails too frail to do battle with the claws
+of wild beasts, but the position of his thumb, in
+opposition to the rest of his fingers, allowed him
+easily to grasp the most diverse objects and endowed
+him with skill in default of strength. Without
+differing essentially from the rest of the animals,
+he was more capable than any others of observing
+and comparing. As he drew from his throat various
+sounds, it occurred to him to designate by a particular
+inflexion of the voice whatever impinged
+upon his mind, and by this sequence of different
+sounds he was enabled to fix and communicate his
+ideas. His miserable lot and his painstaking spirit
+aroused the sympathy of the vanquished angels,
+who discerned in him an audacity equalling their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+own, and the germ of the pride that was at once
+their glory and their bane. They came in large
+numbers to be near him, to dwell on this young
+earth whither their wings wafted them in effortless
+flight. And they took pleasure in sharpening his
+talents and fostering his genius. They taught him
+to clothe himself in the skins of wild beasts, to roll
+stones before the mouths of caves to keep out
+the tigers and bears. They taught him how to make
+the flame burst forth by twirling a stick among
+the dried leaves and to foster the sacred fire upon
+the hearth. Inspired by the ingenious spirits he
+dared to cross the rivers in the hollowed trunks of
+cleft trees, he invented the wheel, the grinding-mill,
+and the plough; the share tore up the earth and the
+wound brought forth fruit, and the grain offered to
+him who ground it divine nourishment. He moulded
+vessels in clay, and out of the flint he fashioned
+various tools.</p>
+
+<p>"In fine, taking up our abode among mankind,
+we consoled them and taught them. We were not
+always visible to them, but of an evening, at the
+turn of the road, we would appear to them under
+forms often strange and weird, at times dignified
+and charming, and we adopted at will the appearance
+of a monster of the woods and waters, of a venerable
+old man, of a beautiful child, or of a woman with
+broad hips. Sometimes we would mock them in
+our songs or test their intelligence by some cunning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+prank. There were certain of us of a rather turbulent
+humour who loved to tease their women and
+children, but though lowly folk, they were our
+brothers, and we were never loath to come to their
+aid. Through our care their intelligence developed
+sufficiently to attain to mistaken ideas, and to
+acquire erroneous notions of the relations of cause
+and effect. As they supposed that some magic bond
+existed between the reality and its counterfeit
+presentment, they covered the walls of their caves
+with figures of animals and carved in ivory images
+of the reindeer and the mammoth in order to
+secure as prey the creatures they represented.
+Centuries passed by with infinite slowness while
+their genius was coming to birth. We sent them
+happy thoughts in dreams, inspired them to tame
+the horse, to castrate the bull, to teach the dog to
+guard the sheep. They created the family and the
+tribe. It came to pass one day that one of their
+wandering tribes was assailed by ferocious hunters.
+Forthwith the young men of the tribe formed an
+enclosed ring with their chariots, and in it they
+shut their women, children, old people, cattle, and
+treasures, and from the platform of their chariots
+they hurled murderous stones at their assailants.
+Thus was formed the first city. Born in misery and
+condemned to do murder by the law of Iahveh, man
+put his whole heart into doing battle, and to war he
+was indebted for his noblest virtues. He hallowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+with his blood that sacred love of country which
+should (if man fulfils his destiny to the very end)
+enfold the whole earth in peace. One of us, D&aelig;dalus,
+brought him the axe, the plumb-line, and the
+sail. Thus we rendered the existence of mortals less
+hard and difficult. By the shores of the lakes they
+built dwellings of osier, where they might enjoy a
+meditative quiet unknown to the other inhabitants
+of the earth, and when they had learned to appease
+their hunger without too painful efforts we breathed
+into their hearts the love of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"They raised up pyramids, obelisks, towers,
+colossal statues which smiled stiff and uncouth, and
+genetic symbols. Having learnt to know us or
+trying at least to divine what manner of beings we
+were, they felt both friendship and fear for us.
+The wisest among them watched us with sacred awe
+and pondered our teaching. In their gratitude the
+people of Greece and of Asia consecrated to us
+stones, trees, shadowy woods; offered us victims,
+and sang us hymns; in fact we became gods in their
+sight, and they called us Horus, Isis, Astarte, Zeus,
+Cybele, Demeter, and Triptolemus. Satan was
+worshipped under the names of Evan, Dionysus,
+Iacchus, and Len&aelig;us. He showed in his various
+manifestations all the strength and beauty which
+it is given to mortals to conceive. His eyes had the
+sweetness of the wood-violet, his lips were brilliant
+with the ruby-red of the pomegranate, a down finer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+than the velvet of the peach covered his cheeks and
+his chin: his fair hair, wound like a diadem and
+knotted loosely on the crown of his head, was encircled
+with ivy. He charmed the wild beasts, and
+penetrating into the deep forests drew to him all
+wild spirits, every thing that climbed in trees and
+peered through the branches with wild and timid gaze.
+On all these creatures fierce and fearful, that lived
+on bitter berries and beneath whose hairy breasts a
+wild heart beat, half-human creatures of the woods&mdash;on
+all he bestowed loving-kindness and grace, and
+they followed him drunk with joy and beauty. He
+planted the vine and showed mortals how to crush
+the grapes underfoot to make the wine flow. Magnificent
+and benign, he fared across the world, a
+long procession following in his train. To bear
+him company I took the form of a satyr; from my
+brow sprang two budding horns. My nose was flat
+and my ears were pointed. Glands, like those of the
+goat, hung on my neck, a goat's tail moved with my
+moving loins, and my hairy legs ended in a black
+cloven hoof which beat the ground in cadence.</p>
+
+<p>"Dionysus fared on his triumphal march over
+the world. In his company I passed through Lydia,
+the Phrygian fields, the scorching plains of Persia,
+Media bristling with hoar-frost, Arabia Felix, and
+rich Asia where flourishing cities were laved by the
+waves of the sea. He proceeded on a car drawn by
+lions and lynxes, to the sound of flutes, cymbals, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+drums, invented for his mysteries. Bacchantes,
+Thyades, and M&aelig;nads, girt with the dappled fawn-skin,
+waved the thyrsus encircled with ivy. He bore
+in his train the Satyrs, whose joyous troop I led,
+Sileni, Pans, and Centaurs. Under his feet flowers
+and fruit sprang to life, and striking the rocks with
+his wand he made limpid streams gush forth. In
+the month of the Vintage he visited Greece, and
+the villagers ran forth to meet him, stained with the
+green and ruddy juices of the plants, they wore
+masks of wood, or bark, or leaves; in their hands
+they bore earthen cups, and danced wanton dances.
+Their womenfolk, imitating the companions of the
+God, their heads wreathed with green smilax,
+fastened round their supple loins skins of fawn or
+goat. The virgins twined about their throats
+garlands of fig leaves, they kneaded cakes of flour,
+and bore the Phallus in the mystic basket. And the
+vine-dressers, all daubed with lees of wine, standing
+up in their wains and bandying mockery or abuse
+with the passers-by, invented Tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Truly, it was not in dreaming beside a fountain,
+but by dint of strenuous toil that Dionysus taught
+them to grow plants and to make them bring forth
+succulent fruits. And while he pondered the art
+of transforming the rough woodlanders into a race
+that should love music and submit to just laws,
+more than once over his brow, burning with the fire
+of enthusiasm, did melancholy and gloomy fever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+pass. But his profound knowledge and his friendship
+for mankind enabled him to triumph over
+every obstacle. O days divine! Beautiful dawn of
+life! We led the Bacchanals on the leafy summits
+of the mountains and on the yellow shores of the
+seas. The Naiads and the Oreads mingled with us
+at our play. Aphrodite at our coming rose from
+the foam of the sea to smile upon us."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">the gardener's story, continued</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imgw.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HEN men had learned to cultivate
+the earth, to herd cattle, to enclose
+their holy places within walls,
+and to recognise the gods by their
+beauty, I withdrew to that smiling
+land girdled with dark woods and watered by the
+Stymphalos, the Olbios, the Erymanthus, and the
+proud Crathis, swollen with the icy waters of the
+Styx, and there, in a green valley at the foot of a
+hill planted with arbutus, olive, and pine, beneath
+a cluster of white poplars and plane trees, by the
+side of a stream flowing with soft murmur amid
+tufted mastic trees, I sang to the shepherds and the
+nymphs of the birth of the world, the origin of fire,
+of the tenuous air, of water and of earth. I told
+them how primeval men had lived wretched and
+naked in the woods, before the ingenious spirits had
+taught them the arts; of God, too, I sang to them,
+and why they gave Dionysus Semele to mother,
+because his desire to befriend mankind was born
+amid the thunder.</p></div>
+
+<p>"It was not without effort that this people, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+pleasing than all the others in the eyes of the gods,
+these happy Greeks, achieved good government and
+a knowledge of the arts. Their first temple was a
+hut composed of laurel branches; their first image
+of the gods, a tree; their first altar, a rough stone
+stained with the blood of Iphigenia. But in a short
+time they brought wisdom and beauty to a point
+that no nation had attained before them, that no
+nation has since approached. Whence comes it,
+Arcade, this solitary marvel on the earth? Wherefore
+did the sacred soil of Ionia and of Attica bring
+forth this incomparable flower? Because nor priesthood,
+nor dogma, nor revelation ever found a
+place there, because the Greeks never knew the
+jealous God.</p>
+
+<p>"It was his own grace, his own genius that the
+Greek enthroned and deified as his God, and when
+he raised his eyes to the heavens it was his own
+image that he saw reflected there. He conceived
+everything in due measure; and to his temples he
+gave perfect proportion. All therein was grace,
+harmony, symmetry, and wisdom; all were worthy
+of the immortals who dwelt within them and who
+under names of happy choice, in realised shapes,
+figured forth the genius of man. The columns
+which bore the marble architrave, the frieze and
+the cornice were touched with something human,
+which made them venerable; and sometimes one
+might see, as at Athens and at Delphi, beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+young girls strong-limbed and radiant upstaying the
+entablature of treasure house and sanctuary. O days
+of splendour, harmony, and wisdom!</p>
+
+<p>"Dionysus resolved to repair to Italy, whither he
+was summoned under the name of Bacchus by a
+people eager to celebrate his mysteries. I took
+passage in his ship decked with tendrils of the vine,
+and landed under the eyes of the two brothers of
+Helen at the mouth of the yellow Tiber. Already
+under the teaching of the god, the inhabitants of
+Latium had learned to wed the vine to the young
+stripling elm. It was my pleasure to dwell at the
+foot of the Sabine hills in a valley crowned with
+trees and watered with pure springs. I gathered
+the verbena and the mallow in the meadows. The
+pale olive-trees twisting their perforated trunks on
+the slope of the hill gave me of their unctuous fruit.
+There I taught a race of men with square heads,
+who had not, like the Greeks, a fertile mind, but
+whose hearts were true, whose souls were patient,
+and who reverenced the gods. My neighbour, a
+rustic soldier, who for fifteen years had bowed
+under the burden of his haversack, had followed
+the Roman eagle over land and sea, and had seen
+the enemies of the sovereign people flee before him.
+Now he drove his furrow with his two red oxen,
+starred with white between their spreading horns,
+while beneath the cabin's thatch his spouse, chaste
+and sedate of mien, pounded garlic in a bronze<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+mortar and cooked the beans upon the sacred hearth,
+And I, his friend, seated near by under an oak, used
+to lighten his labours with the sound of my flute, and
+smile on his little children, when the sun, already
+low in the sky, was lengthening the shadows, and
+they returned from the wood all laden with branches.
+At the garden gate where the pears and pumpkins
+ripened, and where the lily and the evergreen
+acanthus bloomed, a figure of Priapus carved out
+of the trunk of a fig tree menaced thieves with his
+formidable emblem, and the reeds swaying with the
+wind over his head scared away the plundering birds.
+At new moon the pious husbandman made offering
+of a handful of salt and barley to his household
+gods crowned with myrtle and with rosemary.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw his children grow up, and his children's
+children, who kept in their hearts their early piety
+and did not forget to offer sacrifice to Bacchus, to
+Diana, and to Venus, nor omit to pour fresh wines
+and scatter flowers into the fountains. But slowly
+they fell away from their old habits of patient toil
+and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard them complain when the torrent,
+swollen with many rains, compelled them to construct
+a dyke to protect the paternal fields, and the
+rough Sabine wine grew unpleasing to their delicate
+palate. They went to drink the wines of Greece at
+the neighbouring tavern; and the hours slipped
+unheeded by, while within the arbour shade they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+watched the dance of the flute player, practised at
+swaying her supple limbs to the sound of the castanets.</p>
+
+<p>"Lulled by murmuring leaves and whispering
+streams, the tillers of the soil took sweet repose, but
+between the poplars we saw along borders of the
+sacred way vast tombs, statues, and altars arise, and
+the rolling of the chariot wheels grew more frequent
+over the worn stones. A cherry sapling brought
+home by a veteran told us of the far-distant conquests
+of a Consul, and odes sung to the lyre
+related the victories of Rome, mistress of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"All the countries where the great Dionysus had
+journeyed, changing wild beasts into men, and
+making the fruit and grain bloom and ripen beneath
+the passing of his M&aelig;nads, now breathed the Pax
+Romana. The nursling of the she-wolf, soldier and
+labourer, friend of conquered nations, laid out roads
+from the margin of the misty sea to the rocky slopes
+of the Caucasus; in every town rose the temple of
+Augustus and of Rome, and such was the universal
+faith in Latin justice that in the gorges of Thessaly
+or on the wooded borders of the Rhine, the slave,
+ready to succumb under his iniquitous burden,
+called aloud on the name of C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+<p>"But why must it be that on this ill-starred globe
+of land and water, all should perish and die and the
+fairest things be ever the most fleeting? O adorable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+daughters of Greece! O Science! O Wisdom! O
+Beauty! kindly divinities, you were wrapt in heavy
+slumber ere you submitted to the outrages of the
+barbarians, who already in the marshy wastes of the
+North and on the lonely steppes, ready to assail you,
+bestrode bare-backed their little shaggy horses.</p>
+
+<p>"While, dear Arcade, the patient legionary
+camped by the borders of the Phasis and the Tanais,
+the women and the priests of Asia and of monstrous
+Africa invaded the Eternal City and troubled the
+sons of Remus with their magic spells. Until now,
+Iahveh, the persecutor of the laborious demons,
+was unknown to the world that he pretended to
+have created, save to certain miserable Syrian tribes,
+ferocious like himself, and perpetually dragged from
+servitude to servitude. Profiting by the Roman
+peace which assured free travel and traffic everywhere,
+and favoured the exchange of ideas and
+merchandise, this old God insolently made ready to
+conquer the Universe. He was not the only one,
+for the matter of that, to attempt such an undertaking.
+At the same time a crowd of gods, demiurges,
+and demons, such as Mithra, Thammuz, the good
+Isis, and Eubulus, meditated taking possession of
+the peace-enfolded world. Of all the spirits, Iahveh
+appeared the least prepared for victory. His
+ignorance, his cruelty, his ostentation, his Asiatic
+luxury, his disdain of laws, his affectation of rendering
+himself invisible, all these things were calculated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+to offend those Greeks and Latins who had absorbed
+the teaching of Dionysus and the Muses. He himself
+felt he was incapable of winning the allegiance of
+free men and of cultivated minds, and he employed
+cunning. To seduce their souls he invented a fable
+which, although not so ingenious as the myths
+wherewith we have surrounded the spirits of our
+disciples of old, could, nevertheless, influence those
+feebler intellects which are to be found everywhere
+in great masses. He declared that men having
+committed a crime against him, an hereditary
+crime, should pay the penalty for it in their present
+life and in the life to come (for mortals vainly
+imagine that their existence is prolonged in hell);
+and the astute Iahveh gave out that he had sent his
+own son to earth to redeem with his blood the debt
+of mankind. It is not credible that a penalty should
+redress a fault, and it is still less credible that the
+innocent should pay for the guilty. The sufferings
+of the innocent atone for nothing, and do but add
+one evil to another. Nevertheless, unhappy creatures
+were found to adore Iahveh and his son, the expiator,
+and to announce their mysteries as good
+tidings. We should not be surprised at this folly.
+Have we not seen many times indeed human beings
+who, poor and naked, prostrate themselves before
+all the phantoms of fear, and rather than follow the
+teaching of well-disposed demons, obey the commandments
+of cruel demiurges? Iahveh, by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+cunning, took souls as in a net. But he did not
+gain therefrom, for his glorification, all that he
+expected. It was not he, but his son, who received
+the homage of mankind, and who gave his name to
+the new cult. He himself remained almost unknown
+upon earth."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">the gardener's story, continued</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE new superstition spread at first
+over Syria and Africa; it won
+over the seaports where the filthy
+rabble swarm, and, penetrating into
+Italy, infected at first the courtesans
+and the slaves, and then made rapid progress
+among the middle classes of the towns. But
+for a long while the country-side remained undisturbed.
+As in the past, the villagers consecrated
+a pine tree to Diana, and sprinkled it every year
+with the blood of a young boar; they propitiated
+their Lares with the sacrifice of a sow, and offered
+to Bacchus&mdash;benefactor of mankind&mdash;a kid of
+dazzling whiteness, or if they were too poor for this,
+at least they had a little wine and a little flour from
+the vineyard and from the fields for their household
+gods. We had taught them that it sufficed to
+approach the altar with clean hands, and that the
+gods rejoiced over a modest offering.</p></div>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, the reign of Iahveh proclaimed
+its advent in a hundred places by its extravagances.
+The Christians burnt books, overthrew temples, set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+fire to the towns, and carried on their ravages as far
+as the deserts. There, thousands of unhappy beings,
+turning their fury against themselves, lacerated
+their sides with points of steel. And from the whole
+earth the sighs of voluntary victims rose up to God
+like songs of praise.</p>
+
+<p>"My shadowy retreat could not escape for long
+from the fury of their madness.</p>
+
+<p>"On the summit of the hill which overlooked the
+olive woods, brightened daily with the sounds of my
+flute, had stood since the earliest days of the Pax
+Romana, a small marble temple, round as the huts
+of our forefathers. It had no walls, but on a base
+of seven steps, sixteen columns rose in a circle with
+the acanthus on the capitals, bearing a cupola of
+white tiles. This cupola sheltered a statue of Love
+fashioning his bow, the work of an Athenian sculptor.
+The child seemed to breathe, joy was welling from
+his lips, all his limbs were harmonious and polished.
+I honoured this image of the most powerful of
+all the gods, and I taught the villagers to bear
+to him as an offering a cup crowned with verbena
+and filled with wine two summers old.</p>
+
+<p>"One day, when seated as my custom was at
+the feet of the god, pondering precepts and songs,
+an unknown man, wild-looking, with unkempt
+hair, approached the temple, sprang at one bound
+up the marble steps, and with savage glee exclaimed:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Die, poisoner of souls, and joy and beauty
+perish with you.' He spoke thus, and drawing an
+axe from his girdle raised it against the god. I
+stayed his arm, I threw him down, and trampled
+him under my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"'Demon,' he cried desperately, 'suffer me to
+overturn this idol, and you may slay me afterwards.'</p>
+
+<p>"I heeded not his atrocious plea, but leaned with
+all my might on his chest, which cracked under my
+knee, and, squeezing his throat with my two hands,
+I strangled the impious one.</p>
+
+<p>"While he lay there, with purple face and lolling
+tongue, at the feet of the smiling god, I went to
+purify myself at the sacred stream. Then leaving
+this land, now the prey of the Christian, I passed
+through Gaul and gained the banks of the Sa&ocirc;ne,
+whither Dionysus had, in days gone by, carried the
+vine. The god of the Christians had not yet been
+proclaimed to this happy people. They worshipped
+for its beauty a leafy beech-tree, whose honoured
+branches swept the ground, and they hung fillets
+of wool thereon. They also worshipped a sacred
+stream and set up images of clay in a dripping grotto.
+They made offering of little cheeses and a bowl of
+milk to the Nymphs of the woods and mountains.</p>
+
+<p>"But soon an apostle of sorrow was sent to them
+by the new God. He was drier than a smoked fish.
+Although attenuated with fasting and watching,
+he taught with unabated ardour all manner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+gloomy mysteries. He loved suffering, and thought
+it good; his anger fell upon all that was beautiful,
+comely, and joyous. The sacred tree fell beneath
+his hatchet. He hated the Nymphs, because they
+were beautiful, and he flung imprecations at them
+when their shining limbs gleamed among the leaves
+at evening, and he held my melodious flute in
+aversion. The poor wretch thought that there
+were certain forms of words wherewith to put to
+flight the deathless spirits that dwell in the cool
+groves, and in the depths of the woods and on the
+tops of the mountains. He thought to conquer us
+with a few drops of water over which he had pronounced
+certain words and made certain gestures.
+The Nymphs, to avenge themselves, appeared to
+him at nightfall and inflamed him with desire which
+the foolish knave thought animal; then they fled,
+their laughter scattered like grain over the fields,
+while their victim lay tossing with burning limbs on
+his couch of leaves. Thus do the divine nymphs
+laugh at exorcisers, and mock the wicked and their
+sordid chastity.</p>
+
+<p>"The apostle did not do as much harm as he
+wished, because his teaching was given to the simple
+souls living in obedience to Nature, and because the
+mediocrity of most of mankind is such that they gain
+but little from the principles inculcated in them.
+The little wood in which I dwelt belonged to a Gaul
+of senatorial family, who retained some traces of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+Latin elegance. He loved his young freed-woman
+and shared with her his bed of broidered purple.
+His slaves cultivated his garden and his vineyard;
+he was a poet and sang, in imitation of Ausonius,
+Venus whipping her son with roses. Although a
+Christian, he offered me milk, fruit, and vegetables
+as if I were the genius of the place. In return I
+charmed his idle moments with the music of my
+flute, and I gave him happy dreams. In fact, these
+peaceful Gauls knew very little of Iahveh and his
+son.</p>
+
+<p>"But now behold fires looming on the horizon,
+and ashes driven by the wind fall within our forest
+glades. Peasants come driving a long file of waggons
+along the roads or urging their flocks before them.
+Cries of terror rise from the villages, 'The Burgundians
+are upon us!'</p>
+
+<p>"Now one horseman is seen, lance in hand,
+clad in shining bronze, his long red hair falling in
+two plaits on his shoulders. Then come two, then
+twenty, then thousands, wild and blood-stained;
+old men and children they put to the sword, ay,
+even aged grandams whose grey hairs cleave to the
+soles of the slaughterer's boots, mingled with the
+brains of babes new-born. My young Gaul and
+his young freed-woman stain with their blood the
+couch broidered with narcissi. The barbarians
+burn the basilicas to roast their oxen whole, shatter
+the amphor&aelig;, and drain the wine in the mud of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+flooded cellars. Their women accompany them,
+huddled, half naked, in their war chariots. When
+the Senate, the dwellers in the cities, and the
+leaders of the churches had perished in the flames,
+the Burgundians, soddened with wine, lay down to
+slumber beneath the arcades of the Forum. Two
+weeks later one of them might have been seen
+smiling in his shaggy beard at the little child whom,
+on the threshold of their dwelling, his fair-haired
+spouse gathers in her arms; while another, kindling
+the fire of his forge, hammers out his iron with
+measured stroke; another sings beneath the oak tree
+to his assembled comrades of the gods and heroes
+of his race; and yet others spread out for sale stones
+fallen from Heaven, aurochs' horns, and amulets.
+And the former inhabitants of the country, regaining
+courage little by little, crept from the woods where
+they had fled for refuge, and returned to rebuild
+their burnt-down cabins, plough their fields, and
+prune their vines.</p>
+
+<p>"Once more life resumed its normal course; but
+those times were the most wretched that mankind
+had yet experienced. The barbarians swarmed over
+the whole Empire. Their ways were uncouth, and
+as they nurtured feelings of vengeance and greed,
+they firmly believed in the ransom of sin.</p>
+
+<p>"The fable of Iahveh and his son pleased them,
+and they believed it all the more easily in that it
+was taught them by the Romans whom they knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+to be wiser than themselves, and to whose arts and
+mode of life they yielded secret admiration. Alas!
+the heritage of Greece and Rome had fallen into
+the hands of fools. All knowledge was lost. In
+those days it was held to be a great merit to sing
+among the choir, and those who remembered a few
+sentences from the Bible passed for prodigious
+geniuses. There were still poets as there were birds,
+but their verse went lame in every foot. The
+ancient demons, the good genii of mankind, shorn
+of their honours, driven forth, pursued, hunted
+down, remained hidden in the woods. There, if they
+still showed themselves to men, they adopted, to hold
+them in awe, a terrible face, a red, green, or black
+skin, baleful eyes, an enormous mouth fringed with
+boars' teeth, horns, a tail, and sometimes a human
+face on their bellies. The nymphs remained fair,
+and the barbarians, ignorant of the winsome names
+they bore in other days, called them fairies, and,
+imputing to them a capricious character and puerile
+tastes, both feared and loved them.</p>
+
+<p>"We had suffered a grievous fall, and our ranks
+were sadly thinned; nevertheless we did not lose
+courage and, maintaining a laughing aspect and a
+benevolent spirit, we were in those direful days the
+real friends of mankind. Perceiving that the barbarians
+grew daily less sombre and less ferocious, we
+lent ourselves to the task of conversing with them
+under all sorts of disguises. We incited them, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+a thousand precautions, and by prudent circumlocutions,
+not to acknowledge the old Iahveh as an
+infallible master, not blindly to obey his orders, and
+not to fear his menaces. When need was, we had
+recourse to magic. We exhorted them unceasingly
+to study nature and to strive to discover the traces
+of ancient wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>"These warriors from the North&mdash;rude though
+they were&mdash;were acquainted with some mechanical
+arts. They thought they saw combats in the
+heavens; the sound of the harp drew tears from
+their eyes; and perchance they had souls capable
+of greater things than the degenerate Gauls and
+Romans whose lands they had invaded. They
+knew not how to hew stone or to polish marble;
+but they caused porphyry and columns to be brought
+from Rome and from Ravenna; their chief men
+took for their seal a gem engraved by a Greek in the
+days when Beauty reigned supreme. They raised
+walls with bricks, cunningly arranged like ears of
+corn, and succeeded in building quite pleasing-looking
+churches with cornices upheld by consoles depicting
+grim faces, and heavy capitals whereon were
+represented monsters devouring one another.</p>
+
+<p>"We taught them letters and sciences. A mouthpiece
+of their god, one Gerbert, took lessons in
+physics, arithmetic, and music with us, and it was
+said that he had sold us his soul. Centuries passed,
+and man's ways remained violent. It was a world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+given up to fire and blood. The successors of the
+studious Gerbert, not content with the possession
+of souls (the profits one gains thereby are lighter
+than air), wished to possess bodies also. They
+pretended that their universal and prescriptive
+monarchy was held from a fisherman on the lake of
+Tiberias. One of them thought for a moment to
+prevail over the loutish Germanus, successor to
+Augustus. But finally the spiritual had to come to
+terms with the temporal, and the nations were torn
+between two opposing masters.</p>
+
+<p>"Nations took shape amid horrible tumult. On
+every side were wars, famines, and internecine
+conflicts. Since they attributed the innumerable
+ills that fell upon them to their God, they called
+him the Most Good, not by way of irony, but because
+to them the best was he who smote the hardest. In
+those days of violence, to give myself leisure for
+study I adopted a <i>r&ocirc;le</i> which may surprise you, but
+which was exceedingly wise.</p>
+
+<p>"Between the Sa&ocirc;ne and the mountains of
+Charolais, where the cattle pasture, there lies a
+wooded hill sloping gently down to fields watered
+by a clear stream. There stood a monastery
+celebrated throughout the Christian world. I hid
+my cloven feet under a robe and became a monk in
+this Abbey, where I lived peacefully, sheltered from
+the men at arms who to friend or foe alike showed
+themselves equally exacting. Man, who had re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>lapsed
+into childhood, had all his lessons to learn
+over again. Brother Luke, whose cell was next to
+mine, studied the habits of animals and taught us
+that the weasel conceives her young within her ear.
+I culled simples in the fields wherewith to soothe the
+sick, who until then were made by way of treatment
+to touch the relics of saints. In the Abbey were
+several demons similar to myself whom I recognised
+by their cloven feet and by their kindly speech. We
+joined forces in our endeavours to polish the rough
+mind of the monks.</p>
+
+<p>"While the little children played at hop-scotch
+under the Abbey walls our friends the monks devoted
+themselves to another game equally unprofitable,
+at which, nevertheless, I joined them,
+for one must kill time,&mdash;that, when one comes to
+think of it, is the sole business of life. Our game
+was a game of words which pleased our coarse yet
+subtle minds, set school fulminating against school,
+and put all Christendom in an uproar. We formed
+ourselves into two opposing camps. One camp
+maintained that before there were apples there was
+the Apple; that before there were popinjays there
+was the Popinjay; that before there were lewd and
+greedy monks there was the Monk, Lewdness and
+Greed; that before there were feet and before
+there were posteriors in this world the kick in the
+posterior must have had existence for all eternity in
+the bosom of God. The other camp replied that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+on the contrary, apples gave man the idea of the
+apple; popinjays the idea of the popinjay; monks
+the idea of the monk, greed and lewdness, and that
+the kick in the posterior existed only after having
+been duly given and received. The players grew
+heated and came to fisticuffs. I was an adherent of
+the second party, which satisfied my reason better,
+and which was, in fact, condemned by the Council
+of Soissons.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile, not content with fighting among
+themselves, vassal against suzerain, suzerain against
+vassal, the great lords took it into their heads to go
+and fight in the East. They said, as well as I can
+remember, that they were going to deliver the tomb
+of the son of God.</p>
+
+<p>"They said so, but their adventurous and covetous
+spirit excited them to go forth and seek lands,
+women, slaves, gold, myrrh, and incense. These
+expeditions, need it be said, proved disastrous;
+but our thick-headed compatriots brought back with
+them the knowledge of certain crafts and oriental
+arts and a taste for luxury. Henceforth we had less
+difficulty in making them work and in putting them
+in the way of inventions. We built wonderfully
+beautiful churches, with daringly pierced arches,
+lancet-shaped windows, high towers, thousands of
+pointed spires, which, rising in the sky towards
+Iahveh, bore at one and the same time the prayers
+of the humble and the threats of the proud, for it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+was all as much our doing as the work of men's hands;
+and it was a strange sight to see men and demons
+working together at a cathedral, each one sawing,
+polishing, collecting stones, graving, on capital and
+on cornice, nettles, thorns, thistles, wild parsley, and
+wild strawberry,&mdash;carving faces of virgins and saints
+and weird figures of serpents, fishes with asses'
+heads, apes scratching their buttocks; each one, in
+fact, putting his own particular talent,&mdash;mocking,
+sublime, grotesque, modest, or audacious,&mdash;into the
+work and making of it all a harmonious cacophony,
+a rapturous anthem of joy and sorrow, a Babel of
+victory. At our instigation the carvers, the gold-smiths,
+the enamellers, accomplished marvels and all
+the sumptuary arts flourished at once; there were silks
+at Lyons, tapestries at Arras, linen at Rheims, cloth
+at Rouen. The good merchants rode on their palfreys
+to the fairs, bearing pieces of velvet and brocade,
+embroideries, orfrays, jewels, vessels of silver, and
+illuminated books. Strollers and players set up their
+trestles in the churches and in the public squares,
+and represented, according to their lights, simple
+chronicles of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Women
+decked themselves in splendid raiment and lisped
+of love.</p>
+
+<p>"In the spring when the sky was blue, nobles and
+peasants were possessed with the desire to make
+merry in the flower-strewn meadows. The fiddler
+tuned his instrument, and ladies, knights and demoi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>selles,
+townsfolk, villagers and maidens, holding
+hands, began the dance. But suddenly War,
+Pestilence, and Famine entered the circle, and Death,
+tearing the violin from the fiddler's hands, led the
+dance. Fire devoured village and monastery. The
+men-at-arms hanged the peasants on the sign-posts
+at the cross-roads when they were unable to pay
+ransom, and bound pregnant women to tree-trunks,
+where at night the wolves came and devoured the
+fruit within the womb. The poor people lost their
+senses. Sometimes, peace being re-established, and
+good times come again, they were seized with mad,
+unreasoning terror, abandoned their homes, and
+rushed hither and thither in troops, half naked,
+tearing themselves with iron hooks, and singing. I
+do not accuse Iahveh and his son of all this evil.
+Many ill things occurred without him and even in
+spite of him. But where I recognise the instigation
+of the All Good (as they called him) was in the
+custom instituted by his pastors, and established
+throughout Christendom, of burning, to the sound
+of bells and the singing of psalms, both men and
+women who, taught by the demons, professed,
+concerning this God, opinions of their own."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">the gardener's story, concluded</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 72px;">
+<img src="images/imgi.jpg" width="72" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>T seemed as if science and thought
+had perished for all eternity, and
+that the earth would never again
+know peace, joy, and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"But one day, under the walls of
+Rome, some workmen, excavating the earth on the
+borders of an ancient road, found a marble sarcophagus
+which bore carved on its sides simulacra of
+Love and the triumphs of Bacchus.</p>
+
+<p>"The lid being raised, a maiden appeared whose
+face shone with dazzling freshness. Her long hair
+spread over her white shoulders, she was smiling in
+her sleep. A band of citizens, thrilled with enthusiasm,
+raised the funeral couch and bore it to
+the Capitol. The people came in crowds to contemplate
+the ineffable beauty of the Roman maiden
+and stood around in silence, watching for the awakening
+of the divine soul held within this form of
+adorable beauty.</p></div>
+
+<p>"And it came to pass that the City was so greatly
+stirred by this spectacle that the Pope, fearing, not
+without reason, the birth of a pagan cult from this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+radiant body, caused it to be removed at night and
+secretly buried. The precaution was vain, the
+labour fruitless. After so many centuries of barbarism,
+the beauty of the antique world had appeared
+for a moment before the eyes of men; it
+was long enough for its image, graven on their
+hearts, to inspire them with an ardent desire to
+love and to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Henceforth, the star of the God of the Christians
+paled and sloped to its decline. Bold navigators
+discovered worlds inhabited by numerous races
+who knew not old Iahveh, and it was suspected that
+he was no less ignorant of them, since he had given
+them no news of himself or of his son the expiator.
+A Polish Canon demonstrated the true motions of
+the earth, and it was seen that, far from having
+created the world, the old demiurge of Israel had
+not even an inkling of its structure. The writings
+of philosophers, orators, jurisconsults, and ancient
+poets were dragged from the dust of the cloisters
+and passing from hand to hand inspired men's
+minds with the love of wisdom. The Vicar of the
+jealous God, the Pope himself, no longer believed
+in Him whom he represented on earth. He loved
+the arts and had no other care than to collect
+ancient statues and to rear sumptuous buildings
+wherein were displayed the orders of Vitruvius re-established
+by Bramante. We began to breathe
+anew. Already the old gods, recalled from their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+long exile, were returning to dwell upon earth.
+There they found once more their temples and their
+altars. Leo, placing at their feet the ring, the three
+crowns, and the keys, offered them in secret the
+incense of sacrifices. Already Polyhymnia, leaning
+on her elbow, had begun to resume the golden
+thread of her meditations; already, in the gardens,
+the comely Graces and the Nymphs and Satyrs
+were weaving their mazy dances, and at length the
+earth had joy once more within its grasp. But, O
+calamity, unlucky fate,&mdash;most tragic circumstance!
+A German monk, all swollen with beer and theology,
+rose up against this renaissance of paganism, hurled
+menaces against it, shattered it, and prevailed single
+handed against the Princes of the Church. Inciting
+the nations, he called upon them to undertake a reform
+which saved that which was about to be destroyed.
+Vainly did the cleverest among us try to
+turn him from his work. A subtle demon, on earth
+called Beelzebub, marked him out for attack, now embarrassing
+him with learned controversial argument,
+now tormenting him with cruel mockery. The stubborn
+monk hurled his ink-pot at his head and went
+on with his dismal reformation. What ultimately
+happened? The sturdy mariner repaired, calked,
+and refloated the damaged ship of the Church.
+Jesus Christ owes it to this shaveling that his shipwreck
+was delayed for perhaps more than ten
+centuries. Henceforth things went from bad to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+worse. In the wake of this loutish monk, this beer-swiller
+and brawler, came that tall, dry doctor from
+Geneva, who, filled with the spirit of the ancient
+Iahveh, strove to bring the world back again to the
+abominable days of Joshua and the Judges of Israel.
+A maniac was he, filled with cold fury, a heretic and
+a burner of heretics, the most ferocious enemy of
+the Graces.</p>
+
+<p>"These mad apostles and their mad disciples
+made even demons like myself, even the horned
+devils, look back longingly on the time when the
+Son with his Virgin Mother reigned over the nations
+dazzled with splendours: cathedrals with
+their stone tracery delicate as lace, flaming roses of
+stained glass, frescoes painted in vivid colours
+telling countless wondrous tales, rich orfrays, glittering
+enamel of shrines and reliquaries, gold of
+crosses and of monstrances, waxen tapers gleaming
+like starry galaxies amid the gloom of vaulted arches,
+organs with their deep-toned harmonies. All this
+doubtless was not the Parthenon, nor yet the Panathen&aelig;a,
+but it gladdened eyes and hearts; it was,
+at all events, beauty. And these cursed reformers
+would not suffer anything either pleasing or lovable.
+You should have seen them climbing in black swarms
+over doorways, plinths, spires, and bell-towers,
+striking with senseless hammers those images in
+stone which the demons had carved working hand
+in hand with the master designers, those genial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+saints and dear, holy women, and the touching
+idols of Virgin Mothers pressing their suckling to
+their heart. For, to be just, a little agreeable
+paganism had slipped into the cult of the jealous
+God. These monsters of heretics were for extirpating
+idolatry. We did our best, my companions
+and I, to hamper their horrible work, and I, for one,
+had the pleasure of flinging down some dozens from
+the top of the porches and galleries on to the Cathedral
+Square, where their detestable brains got
+knocked out. The worst of it was that the Catholic
+Church also reformed herself and grew more mischievous
+than ever. In the pleasant land of France,
+the seminarists and the monks were inflamed
+with unheard-of fury against the ingenious demons
+and the men of learning. My prior was one of
+the most violent opponents of sound knowledge.
+For some time past my studious lucubrations had
+caused him anxiety, and perhaps he had caught
+sight of my cloven foot. The scoundrel searched
+my cell and found paper, ink, some Greek books
+newly printed, and some Pan-pipes hanging on the
+wall. By these signs he knew me for an evil spirit
+and had me thrown into a dungeon where I should
+have eaten the bread of suffering and drunk the
+waters of bitterness, had I not promptly made my
+escape by the window and sought refuge in the
+wooded groves among the Nymphs and the Fauns.</p>
+
+<p>"Far and wide the lighted pyres cast the odour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+of charred flesh. Everywhere there were tortures,
+executions, broken bones, and tongues cut out.
+Never before had the spirit of Iahveh breathed
+forth such atrocious fury. However, it was not
+altogether in vain that men had raised the lid of
+the ancient sarcophagus and gazed upon the Roman
+Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>"During this time of great terror when Papists
+and Reformers rivalled one another in violence and
+cruelty, amidst all these scenes of torture, the mind
+of man was regaining strength and courage. It
+dared to look up to the heavens, and there it saw,
+not the old Jew drunk with vengeance, but Venus
+Urania, tranquil and resplendent. Then a new
+order of things was born, then the great centuries
+came into being. Without publicly denying the
+god of their ancestors, men of intellect submitted
+to his mortal enemies, Science and Reason, and Abb&eacute;
+Gassendi relegated him gently to the far-distant
+abyss of first causes. The kindly demons who teach
+and console unhappy mortals, inspired the great
+minds of those days with discourses of all kinds, with
+comedies and tales told in the most polished fashion.
+Women invented conversation, the art of intimate
+letter-writing, and politeness. Manners took on a
+sweetness and a nobility unknown to preceding
+ages. One of the finest minds of that age of reason,
+the amiable Bernier, wrote one day to St. Evremond:
+'It is a great sin to deprive oneself of a pleasure.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+And this pronouncement alone should suffice to
+show the progress of intelligence in Europe. Not
+that there had not always been Epicureans but,
+unlike Bernier, Chapelle, and Moli&egrave;re, they had not
+the consciousness of their talent.</p>
+
+<p>"Then even the very devotees understood Nature.
+And Racine, fierce bigot that he was, knew as well
+as such an atheistical physician as Guy Patin, how to
+attribute to divers states of the organs the passions
+which agitate mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"Even in my abbey, whither I had returned after
+the turmoil, and which sheltered only the ignorant
+and the shallow thinker, a young monk, less of a
+dunce than the rest, confided to me that the Holy
+Spirit expresses itself in bad Greek to humiliate the
+learned.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, theology and controversy were
+still raging in this society of thinkers. Not far from
+Paris in a shady valley there were to be seen solitary
+beings known as 'les Messieurs,' who called themselves
+disciples of St. Augustine, and argued with
+honest conviction that the God of the Scriptures
+strikes those who fear Him, spares those who confront
+Him, holds works of no account, and damns&mdash;should
+He so wish it&mdash;His most faithful servant;
+for His justice is not our justice, and His ways are
+incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening I met one of these gentlemen in
+his garden, where he was pacing thoughtfully among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+the cabbage-plots and lettuce-beds. I bowed my
+horned head before him and murmured these friendly
+words: 'May old Jehovah protect you, sir. You
+know him well. Oh, how well you know him, and
+how perfectly you have understood his character.'
+The holy man thought he discerned in me a messenger
+from Hell, concluded he was eternally damned,
+and died suddenly of fright.</p>
+
+<p>"The following century was the century of philosophy.
+The spirit of research was developed, reverence
+was lost; the pride of the flesh was diminished
+and the mind acquired fresh energy. Manners took
+on an elegance until then unknown. On the other
+hand, the monks of my order grew more and more
+ignorant and dirty, and the monastery no longer offered
+me any advantage now that good manners
+reigned in the town. I could bear it no longer.
+Flinging my habit to the nettles, I put a powdered wig
+on my horned brow, hid my goat's legs under white
+stockings, and cane in hand, my pockets stuffed with
+gazettes, I frequented the fashionable world, visited
+the modish promenades, and showed myself assiduously
+in the <i>caf&eacute;s</i> where men of letters were to
+be found. I was made welcome in <i>salons</i> where, as
+a happy novelty, there were arm-chairs that fitted
+the form, and where both men and women engaged
+in rational conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"The very metaphysicians spoke intelligibly. I
+acquired great weight in the town as an authority<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+on matters of exegesis, and, without boasting, I
+was largely responsible for the Testament of the
+cur&eacute; Meslier and <i>The Bible Explained</i>, brought out
+by the chaplains to the King of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>"At this time a comic and cruel misadventure
+befel the ancient Iahveh. An American Quaker,
+by means of a kite, stole his thunderbolts.</p>
+
+<p>"I was living in Paris, and was at the supper
+where they talked of strangling the last of the
+priests with the entrails of the last of the kings.
+France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution
+broke out. The ephemeral leaders of the disordered
+State carried on a Reign of Terror amidst
+unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part,
+less pitiless and less cruel than the princes and
+judges instituted by Iahveh in the kingdoms of
+the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious,
+because they gave judgment in the name
+of Humanity. Unhappily they were easily moved
+to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of
+sensibility are irritable and subject to fits of fury.
+They were virtuous; they had moral laws, that is to
+say they conceived certain narrowly defined moral
+obligations, and judged human actions not by their
+natural consequences but by abstract principles.
+Of all the vices which contribute to the undoing
+of a statesman, virtue is the most fatal; it leads to
+murder. To work effectively for the happiness of
+mankind, a man must be superior to all morals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+like the divine Julius. God, so ill-used for some
+time past, did not, on the whole, suffer excessively
+harsh treatment from these new men. He found
+protectors among them, and was adored under the
+name of the Supreme Being. One might even go
+so far as to say that terror created a diversion from
+philosophy and was profitable to the old demiurge,
+in that he appeared to represent order, public
+tranquillity, and the security of person and
+property.</p>
+
+<p>"While Liberty was coming to birth amid the
+storm, I lived at Auteuil, and visited Madame
+Helvetius, where freethinkers in every branch of
+intellectual activity were to be met with. Nothing
+could be rarer than a freethinker, even after Voltaire's
+day. A man who will face death without
+trembling dare not say anything out of the ordinary
+about morals. That very same respect for Humanity
+which prompts him to go forth to his death, makes
+him bow to public opinion. In those days I enjoyed
+listening to the talk of Volney, Cabanis, and Tracy.
+Disciples of the great Condillac, they regarded the
+senses as the origin of all our knowledge. They
+called themselves ideologists, were the most honourable
+people in the world, and grieved the vulgar
+minds by refusing them immortality. For the
+majority of people, though they do not know what to
+do with this life, long for another that shall have no
+end. During the turmoil, our small philosophical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+society was sometimes disturbed in the peaceful
+shades of Auteuil by patrols of patriots. Condorcet,
+our great man, was an outlaw. I myself was regarded
+as suspect by the friends of the people,
+who, in spite of my rustic appearance and my
+frieze coat, believed me to be an aristocrat, and I
+confess that independence of thought is the proudest
+of all aristocracies.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening while I was stealthily watching
+the dryads of Boulogne, who gleamed amid the
+leaves like the moon rising above the horizon,
+I was arrested as a suspect, and put in prison.
+It was a pure misunderstanding; but the Jacobins
+of those days, like the monks whose place they had
+usurped, laid great stress on unity of obedience. After
+the death of Madame Helvetius our society gathered
+together in the <i>salon</i> of Madame de Condorcet.
+Bonaparte did not disdain to chat with us sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>"Recognizing him to be a great man, we thought
+him an ideologist like ourselves. Our influence in
+the land was considerable. We used it in his favour,
+and urged him towards the Imperial throne, thinking
+to display to the world a second Marcus Aurelius.
+We counted on him to establish universal peace; he
+did not fulfil our expectations, and we were wrong-headed
+enough to be wroth with him for our own
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"Without any doubt he greatly surpassed all other
+men in quickness of intelligence, depth of dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>simulation,
+and capacity for action. What made
+him an accomplished ruler was that he lived entirely
+in the present moment, and had no thoughts for
+anything beyond the immediate and actual reality.
+His genius was far-reaching and agile; his intelligence,
+vast in extent but common and vulgar in character,
+embraced humanity, but did not rise above it. He
+thought what every grenadier in the army thought;
+but he thought it with unprecedented force. He
+loved the game of chance, and it pleased him to
+tempt fortune by urging pigmies in their hundreds
+and thousands against each other. It was the game
+of a child as big as the world. He was too wily not
+to introduce old Iahveh into the game,&mdash;Iahveh,
+who was still powerful on earth, and who resembled
+him in his spirit of violence and domination. He
+threatened him, flattered him, caressed him, and
+intimidated him. He imprisoned his Vicar, of
+whom he demanded, with the knife at his throat,
+that rite of unction which, since the days of Saul
+of old, has bestowed might upon kings; he restored
+the worship of the demiurge, sang <i>Te Deums</i> to
+him, and made himself known through him as God
+of the earth, in small catechisms scattered broadcast
+throughout the Empire. They united their thunders,
+and a fine uproar they made.</p>
+
+<p>"While Napoleon's amusements were throwing
+Europe into a turmoil, we congratulated ourselves on
+our wisdom, a little sad, withal, at seeing the era of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+philosophy ushered in with massacre, torture, and
+war. The worst is that the children of the century,
+fallen into the most distressing disorder, formed the
+conception of a literary and picturesque Christianity,
+which betokens a degeneracy of mind really unbelievable,
+and finally fell into Romanticism. War
+and Romanticism, what terrible scourges! And how
+pitiful to see these same people nursing a childish
+and savage love for muskets and drums! They did
+not understand that war, which trained the courage
+and founded the cities of barbarous and ignorant
+men, brings to the victor himself but ruin and
+misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid
+crime when nations are united together by common
+bonds of art, science, and trade.</p>
+
+<p>"Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others'
+throats, now that one and the same civilisation
+enfolds and unites them all!</p>
+
+<p>"I renounced all converse with these madmen and
+withdrew to this village, where I devoted myself to
+gardening. The peaches in my orchard remind me of
+the sun-kissed skin of the M&aelig;nads. For mankind I
+have retained my old friendship, a little admiration,
+and much pity, and I await, while cultivating this
+enclosure, that still distant day when the great
+Dionysus shall come, followed by his Fauns and his
+Bacchantes, to restore beauty and gladness to the
+world, and bring back the Golden Age. I shall fare
+joyously behind his car. And who knows if in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+day of triumph mankind will be there for us to see?
+Who knows whether their worn-out race will not
+have already fulfilled its destiny, and whether other
+beings will not rise upon the ashes and ruins of
+what once was man and his genius? Who knows
+if winged beings will not have taken possession of
+the terrestrial empire? Even then the work of the
+good demons will not be ended,&mdash;they will teach a
+winged race arts and the joy of life."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we are shown the interior of a bric-a-brac
+shop, and see how p&egrave;re guinardon's
+guilty happiness is marred by the jealousy
+of a love-lorn dame</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 74px;">
+<img src="images/imgp.jpg" width="74" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&Egrave;RE GUINARDON (as Z&eacute;phyrine
+had faithfully reported to Monsieur
+Sariette) smuggled out the pictures,
+furniture, and curios stored in his
+attic in the rue Princesse&mdash;his studio
+he called it&mdash;and used them to stock a shop he had
+taken in the rue de Courcelles. Thither he went to
+take up his abode, leaving Z&eacute;phyrine, with whom
+he had lived for fifty years, without a bed or a
+saucepan or a penny to call her own, except eighteenpence
+the poor creature had in her purse. P&egrave;re
+Guinardon opened an old picture and curiosity shop,
+and in it he installed the fair Octavie.</p></div>
+
+<p>The shop-front presented an attractive appearance:
+there were Flemish angels in green copes, after the
+manner of G&eacute;rard David, a Salom&eacute; of the Luini
+school, a Saint Barbara in painted wood of French
+workmanship, Limoges enamel-work, Bohemian and
+Venetian glass, dishes from Urbino. There were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+specimens of English point-lace which, if her tale
+was true, had been presented to Z&eacute;phyrine, in the
+days of her radiant girlhood, by the Emperor Napoleon
+III. Within, there were golden articles
+that glinted in the shadows, while pictures of Christ,
+the Apostles, high-bred dames, and nymphs also
+presented themselves to the gaze. There was one
+canvas that was turned face to the wall so that it
+should only be looked at by connoisseurs; and
+connoisseurs are scarce. It was a replica of Fragonard's
+<i>Gimblette</i>, a brilliant painting that looked
+as if it had barely had time to dry. Papa Guinardon
+himself remarked on the fact. At the far end of
+the shop was a king-wood cabinet, the drawers of
+which were full of all manner of treasures: water-colours
+by Baudouin, eighteenth-century books of
+illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem,
+the pearl of great price, stood upon an easel veiled
+from public view. It was a <i>Coronation of the Virgin</i>
+by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in
+gold and blue and pink. P&egrave;re Guinardon was asking
+a hundred thousand francs for it. Upon a Louis XV
+chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood
+a vase of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in
+hand. She, having left her glistering rags behind
+her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer presented
+the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt,
+but shone, rather, with the soft radiance and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the delectation
+of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of
+Papa Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained
+alone in the shop all day, while the old
+fellow himself was up aloft working away at the
+deuce knows what picture. About five o'clock he
+used to come downstairs and have a chat with the
+habitu&eacute;s of the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons,
+a thin, cadaverous man. A strand of hair
+issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
+and, broadening as it descended, shed upon
+his chin and chest torrents of snow in which he
+was for ever trailing his long, fleshless, gold-ringed
+fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning
+the loss of his wife, who had been carried off by
+consumption in the flower of her youth and beauty.
+Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
+to hold converse with the dead and in filling
+his lonely mansion with second-rate paintings.
+His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
+Another client who was a scarcely less frequent
+visitor to the shop was Monsieur Blancmesnil, a
+director of a large financial establishment. He was
+a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took
+no great interest in matters of art, and was perhaps
+an indifferent connoisseur, but, in his case, it was
+the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
+like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations
+with her, a fact which P&egrave;re Guinardon alone failed
+to perceive, for the old fellow was still young in
+his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan
+d'Esparvieu used to pay occasional visits to P&egrave;re
+Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity, for he
+strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate
+"faker."</p>
+
+<p>And then that doughty swordsman, Monsieur
+Le Truc de Ruffec, also came to see the old antiquary
+on one occasion, and acquainted him with a plan
+he had on foot. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was
+getting up a little historical exhibition of small
+arms at the Petit Palais in aid of the fund for the
+education of the native children in Morocco and
+wanted P&egrave;re Guinardon to lend him a few of the
+most valuable articles in his collection.</p>
+
+<p>"Our first idea," he said, "was to organise an
+exhibition to be called 'The Cross and the Sword.'
+The juxtaposition of the two words will make the
+idea which has prompted our undertaking sufficiently
+clear to you. It was an idea pre-eminently patriotic
+and Christian which led us to associate the Sword,
+which is the symbol of Honour, with the Cross, which
+is the symbol of Salvation. It was hoped that our
+work would be graced by the distinguished patronage
+of the Minister of War and Monseigneur Cachepot.
+Unfortunately there were difficulties in the way,
+and the full realisation of the project had to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+deferred. In the meantime we are limiting our
+exhibition to 'The Sword.' I have drawn up an
+explanatory note indicating the significance of the
+demonstration."</p>
+
+<p>Having delivered himself of these remarks, Monsieur
+Le Truc de Ruffec produced a pocket-case
+stuffed full of papers. Picking out from a medley
+of judgment summonses and other odds and ends
+a little piece of very crumpled paper, he exclaimed,
+"Ah, here it is," and proceeded to read as follows:
+"'The Sword is a fierce Virgin; it is <i>par excellence</i>
+the Frenchman's weapon. And now, when patriotic
+sentiment, after suffering an all too protracted
+eclipse, is beginning to shine forth again
+more ardently than ever ...' and so forth; you
+see?"</p>
+
+<p>And he repeated his request for some really
+fine specimen to be placed in the most conspicuous
+position in the exhibition to be held on behalf
+of the little native children of Morocco, of
+which General d'Esparvieu was to be honorary
+President.</p>
+
+<p>Arms and armour were by no means P&egrave;re Guinardon's
+strong point. He dealt principally in
+pictures, drawings, and books. But he was never
+to be taken unawares. He took down a rapier
+with a gilt colander-shaped hilt, a highly typical
+piece of workmanship of the Louis XIII-Napoleon
+III period, and presented it to the exhibition pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>moter,
+who, while contemplating it with respect,
+maintained a diplomatic silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something better still in here," said the
+antiquary, and he produced from his inner shop&mdash;where
+it had been lying among the walking-sticks
+and umbrellas&mdash;a real demon of a sword, adorned
+with fleurs-de-lys, a genuine royal relic. It was the
+sword of Philippe-Auguste as worn by an actor at
+the <i>Od&eacute;on</i> when <i>Agn&egrave;s de M&eacute;ranie</i> was being performed
+in 1846. Guinardon held it point downwards,
+as though it were a cross, clasping his hands
+piously on the cross-bar. He looked as loyal as the
+sword itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Have her for your exhibition," said he. "The
+damsel is well worth it. Bouvines is her name."</p>
+
+<p>"If I find a buyer for it," said Monsieur Le
+True de Ruffec, twirling his enormous moustachios,
+"I suppose you will allow me a little commission?"</p>
+
+<p>Some days later, P&egrave;re Guinardon was mysteriously
+displaying a picture to the Comte Desmaisons and
+Monsieur Blancmesnil. It was a newly discovered
+work of El Greco, an amazingly fine example of
+the Master's later style. It represented a Saint
+Francis of Assisi standing erect upon Mont Alverno.
+He was mounting heavenward like a column of
+smoke, and was plunging into the regions of the
+clouds a monstrously narrow head that the distance
+rendered smaller still. In fine it was a real, very
+real, nay, too real El Greco. The two collectors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+were attentively scrutinizing the work, while P&egrave;re
+Guinardon was belauding the depth of the shadows
+and the sublimity of the expression. He was raising
+his arms aloft to convey an idea of the greatness
+of Theotocopuli, who derived from Tintoretto,
+whom, however, he surpassed in loftiness by a hundred
+cubits.</p>
+
+<p>"He was chaste and pure and strong; a mystic,
+a visionary."</p>
+
+<p>Comte Desmaisons declared that El Greco was
+his favourite painter. In his inmost heart Blancmesnil
+was not so entirely struck with it.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan quite
+unexpectedly appeared on the scene.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a glance at the Saint Francis, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my soul!"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Blancmesnil, anxious to improve his
+knowledge, asked him what he thought of this
+artist who was now so much in vogue. Ga&eacute;tan
+replied, glibly enough, that he did not regard El
+Greco as the eccentric, the madman that people
+used to take him for. It was rather his opinion
+that a defect of vision from which Theotocopuli
+suffered compelled him to deform his figures.</p>
+
+<p>"Being afflicted with astigmatism and strabismus,"
+Ga&eacute;tan went on, "he painted the things he saw
+exactly as he used to see them."</p>
+
+<p>Comte Desmaisons was not readily disposed to
+accept so natural an explanation, which, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+by its very simplicity, highly commended itself to
+Monsieur Blancmesnil.</p>
+
+<p>P&egrave;re Guinardon, quite beside himself, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to tell me, Monsieur d'Esparvieu,
+that Saint John was astigmatic because he beheld
+a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with stars,
+with the moon about her feet; the Beast with seven
+heads and ten horns, and the seven angels robed
+in white linen that bore the seven cups filled with
+the wrath of the Living God?"</p>
+
+<p>"After all," said Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan, by way
+of conclusion, "people are right in admiring El
+Greco if he had genius enough to impose his morbidity
+of vision upon them. By the same token,
+the contortions to which he subjects the human
+countenance may give satisfaction to those who
+love suffering,&mdash;a class more numerous than is
+generally supposed."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," replied the Comte Desmaisons,
+stroking his luxuriant beard with his long, thin
+hand, "we must love those that love us. Suffering
+loves us and attaches itself to us. We must love it
+if life is to be supportable to us. In the knowledge of
+this truth lies the strength and value of Christianity.
+Alas! I do not possess the gift of Faith. It is that
+which drives me to despair."</p>
+
+<p>The old man thought of her for whom he had
+been mourning twenty years, and forthwith his
+reason left him, and his thoughts abandoned them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>selves
+unresistingly to the morbid imaginings of
+gentle and melancholy madness.</p>
+
+<p>Having, he said, made a study of psychic matters,
+and having, with the co-operation of a favourable
+medium, carried out experiments concerning the
+nature and duration of the soul, he had obtained
+some remarkable results, which, however, did not
+afford him complete satisfaction. He had succeeded
+in viewing the soul of his dead wife under the appearance
+of a transparent and gelatinous mass
+which bore not the slightest resemblance to his
+adored one. The most painful part about the whole
+experiment&mdash;which he had repeated over and over
+again&mdash;was that the gelatinous mass, which was
+furnished with a number of extremely slender
+tentacles, maintained them in constant motion in
+time to a rhythm apparently intended to make
+certain signs, but of what these movements were
+supposed to convey there was not the slightest
+clue.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of this narrative Monsieur
+Blancmesnil had been whispering in a corner with
+the youthful Octavie, who sat mute and still, with
+her eyes on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Now Z&eacute;phyrine had by no means made up her
+mind to resign her lover into the hands of an unworthy
+rival. She would often go round of a
+morning, with her shopping-basket on her arm, and
+prowl about outside the curio shop. Torn betwixt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
+sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful
+of vitriol on the head of the faithless one;
+at others that she would fling herself at his feet,
+and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands.
+One day, as she was thus eyeing her Michel&mdash;her
+beloved but guilty Michel&mdash;she noticed through
+the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who
+was sitting with her embroidery at a table upon
+which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was swooning to
+death. Z&eacute;phyrine, in a transport of fury, brought
+down her umbrella on her rival's fair head, and
+called her a bitch and a trollop. Octavie fled in terror,
+and ran for the police, while Z&eacute;phyrine, beside
+herself with grief and love, kept digging away with
+her old gamp at the <i>Gimblette</i> of Fragonard, the
+fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the virgins, the
+nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt
+off the Fra Angelico, shrieking all the while:</p>
+
+<p>"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the
+Beato Angelico, the Fragonard, the G&eacute;rard David,
+and the Baudouins&mdash;Guinardon painted the whole
+lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That
+Fra Angelico there, why I saw him painting it on
+my ironing-board, and that G&eacute;rard David he executed
+on an old midwife's sign-board. You and
+that bitch of yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you
+just as I'm doing for these pictures."</p>
+
+<p>And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+who, trembling all over, had hidden himself in the
+darkest corner of the shop, she called him to witness
+to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor.
+The police had simply to tear her out
+of the ruined shop. As she was being taken off
+to the station, followed by a great crowd of people,
+she raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice
+choked with sobs:</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you know Michel? If you knew
+him, you would understand that it is impossible
+to live without him. Michel! He is handsome
+and good and charming. He is a very god. He is
+Love itself. I love him! I love him! I love him!
+I have known men high up in the world&mdash;Dukes,
+Ministers of State, and higher still. Not one of
+them was worthy to clean the mud off Michel's
+boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me
+again."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we are permitted to observe the
+admirable character of bouchotte, who
+resists violence but yields to love. after
+that let no one call the author a misogynist</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imgo.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>N coming away from the Baron
+Everdingen's, Prince Istar went to
+have a few oysters and a bottle of
+white wine at an eating-house in
+the Market. Then, being prudent
+as well as powerful, he paid a visit to his friend,
+Th&eacute;ophile Belais, for his pockets were full of bombs,
+and he wanted to secrete them in the musician's
+cupboard. The composer of <i>Aline, Queen of
+Golconda</i> was not at home. However, the Ker&ucirc;b
+found Bouchotte busily working up the r&ocirc;le of
+Zigouille; for the young artiste was booked to
+play the principal part in <i>Les Apaches</i>, an operetta
+that was then being rehearsed in one of the big
+music halls. The part in question was that of
+a street-walker who by her obscene gestures lures
+a passer-by into a trap, and then, while her victim
+is being gagged and bound, repeats with fiendish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+cruelty the lascivious motions by which he had been
+led astray. The part required that she should appear
+both as mime and singer, and she was in a
+state of high enthusiasm about it.</p></div>
+
+<p>The accompanist had just left. Prince Istar
+seated himself at the piano, and Bouchotte resumed
+her task. Her movements were unseemly and delicious.
+Her tawny hair was flying in all directions in
+wild disordered curls; her skin was moist, it exhaled a
+scent of violets and alkaline salts which made the
+nostrils throb; even she herself felt the intoxication.
+Suddenly, inebriated with her intoxicating presence,
+Prince Istar arose, and with never a word or a look,
+caught her into his arms and drew her on to the couch,
+the little couch with the flowered tapestry which
+Th&eacute;ophile had procured at one of the big shops by
+promising to pay ten francs a month for a long term
+of years. Now Istar might have solicited Bouchotte's
+favours; he might have invited her to a rapid,
+and, withal, a mutual embrace, and, despite her preoccupation
+and excitement, she would not have refused
+him. But Bouchotte was a girl of spirit. The
+merest hint of coercion awoke all her untamable
+pride. She would consent of her own accord, yes;
+but be mastered, never! She would readily yield
+to love, curiosity, pity, to less than that even,
+but she would die rather than yield to force.
+Her surprise immediately gave place to fury. She
+fought her aggressor with all her heart and soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With nails, to which fury lent an added edge,
+she tore at the cheeks and eyelids of the Ker&ucirc;b,
+and, though he held her as in a vice, she arched
+herself so stiffly and made such excellent play
+with knee and elbow, that the human-headed
+bull, blinded with blood and rage, was sent crashing
+into the piano which gave forth a prolonged groan,
+while the bombs, tumbling out of his pockets, fell on
+the floor with a noise like thunder. And Bouchotte,
+with dishevelled locks, and one breast bare, beautiful
+and terrible, stood brandishing the poker over the
+prostrate giant, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"Be off with you, or I'll put your eyes out!"</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar went to wash himself in the kitchen,
+and plunged his gory visage into a basin where
+some haricot beans lay soaking; then he withdrew
+without anger or resentment, for he had a noble soul.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he gone when the door-bell rang.
+Bouchotte, calling upon the absent maid in vain,
+slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door
+herself. A young man, very correct in appearance
+and rather good-looking, bowed politely, and apologising
+for having to introduce himself, gave his
+name. It was Maurice d'Esparvieu.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was still seeking his guardian angel.
+Upheld by a desperate hope, he sought him in
+the queerest places. He enquired for him at the
+houses of sorcerers, magicians, and thaumaturgists,
+who in filthy hovels lay bare the ineffable secrets of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+the future, and who, though masters of all the
+treasures of the earth, wear trousers without any
+seats to them, and eat pigs' brains. That very day,
+having been to a back street in Montmartre to
+consult a priest of Satan, who practised black magic
+by piercing waxen images, Maurice had gone on to
+Bouchotte's, having been sent by Madame de la
+Verdeli&egrave;re, who, being about to give a f&ecirc;te in aid of
+the fund for the Preservation of Country Churches,
+was anxious to secure Bouchotte's services, since
+she had suddenly become&mdash;no one knew why&mdash;a
+fashionable artiste.</p>
+
+<p>Bouchotte invited the visitor to sit down on
+the little flowered couch; at his request she seated
+herself beside him, and our young man of fashion
+explained to the singer what Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re
+desired of her. The lady wished Bouchotte to
+sing one of those <i>apache</i> songs which were giving
+such delight in the fashionable world. Unfortunately
+Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re could only offer a
+very modest fee, one out of all proportion to the
+merits of the artiste, but then it was for a good
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Bouchotte agreed to take part, and accepted the
+reduced fee with the accustomed liberality of the
+poor towards the rich and of artists towards society
+people. Bouchotte was not a selfish girl; the work
+for the preservation of country churches interested
+her. She remembered with sobs and tears her first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+communion, and she still retained her faith. When
+she passed by a church she wanted to enter it,
+especially in the evening. And so she did not love
+the Republic which had done its utmost to destroy
+both the Church and the Army. Her heart rejoiced
+to see the re-birth of national sentiment.
+France was lifting up her head. What was most
+applauded in the music halls were songs about the
+soldiers and the kind nuns. Meanwhile Maurice
+inhaled the odour of her tawny hair, the subtle
+bitter perfume of her body, all the odours of her
+person, and desire grew in him. He felt her near him
+on the little couch, very warm and very soft. He
+complimented the artiste on her great talent. She
+asked him what he liked best in all her repertory.
+He knew nothing about it, still he made replies that
+satisfied her. She had dictated them herself without
+knowing it. The vain creature spoke of her talent, of
+her success, as she wished others to speak of them.
+She never ceased talking of her triumphs, yet withal
+she was candour itself. Maurice in all sincerity
+praised Bouchotte's beauty, her fresh skin, her purity
+of line. She attributed this advantage to the fact
+that she never made up and never "put messes on
+her face." As to her figure, she admitted that there
+was enough everywhere and none too much, and
+to illustrate this assertion she passed her hand over
+all the contours of her charming body, rising lightly
+to follow the delightful curves on which she reposed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Maurice was quite moved by it. It began to
+grow dark; she offered to light up. He begged
+her to do nothing of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>Their talk, at first gay and full of laughter,
+grew more intimate and very sweet, with a certain
+languor in its tone. It seemed to Bouchotte that
+she had known Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu for a
+long time, and holding him for a man of delicacy, she
+gave him her confidence. She told him that she was
+by nature a good woman, but that she had had a
+grasping and unscrupulous mother. Maurice recalled
+her to the consideration of her own beauty,
+and exalted by subtle flattery the excellent opinion
+she had of herself. Patient and calculating, in
+spite of the burning desire growing in him, he
+aroused and increased in the desired one the longing
+to be still further admired. The dressing-gown
+opened and slipped down of its own accord, the
+living satin of her shoulders gleamed in the mysterious
+light of evening. He&mdash;so prudent, so clever,
+so adroit,&mdash;let her sink in his arms, ardent and
+half swooning before she had even perceived she
+had granted anything at all. Their breath and
+their murmurs intermingled. And the little flowery
+couch sighed in sympathy with them.</p>
+
+<p>When they recovered the power to express their
+feelings in words, she whispered in his ear that his
+cheek was even softer than her own.</p>
+
+<p>He answered, holding her embraced:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is charming to hold you like this. One would
+think you had no bones."</p>
+
+<p>She replied, closing her eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"It is because I love you. Love seems to dissolve
+my bones; it makes me as soft and melting as a
+pig's foot <i>&agrave; la Ste. Menebould</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon Th&eacute;ophile came in, and Bouchotte
+called upon him to thank Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu,
+who had been amiable enough to be the
+bearer of a handsome offer from Madame la Comtesse
+de la Verdeli&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>The musician was happy, feeling the quiet and
+peace of the house after a day of fruitless applications,
+of colourless lessons, of failure and humiliation.
+Three new collaborators had been thrust upon him
+who would add their signatures to his on his operetta,
+and receive their share of the author's rights, and he
+had been told to introduce the tango into the Court
+of Golconda. He pressed young d'Esparvieu's hand
+and dropped wearily on to the little couch, which,
+being now at the end of its strength, gave way at
+the four legs and suddenly collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>And the angel, precipitated to the ground, rolled
+terror-struck on to the watch, match-box and
+cigarette-case that had fallen from Maurice's pocket,
+and on to the bombs Prince Istar had left behind
+him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">containing an account of the vicissitudes that
+befel the "lucretius" of the prior de
+vend&ocirc;me</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgl.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&Eacute;GER-MASSIEU, successor to L&eacute;ger
+senior, the binder, whose establishment
+was in the rue de l'Abbaye,
+opposite the old H&ocirc;tel of the Abb&eacute;s
+of Saint Germain-des-Pr&egrave;s, in the
+hotbed of ancient schools and learned societies,
+employed an excellent but by no means numerous
+staff of workmen, and served with leisurely deliberation
+a client&egrave;le who had learned to practise the
+virtue of patience. Six weeks had elapsed since
+he had received the parcel of books that had been
+despatched by Monsieur Sariette, but still L&eacute;ger-Massieu
+had not yet put the work in hand. It
+was not until fifty-three days had come and gone,
+that, after calling over the books against the list
+that had been drawn up by Monsieur Sariette,
+the binder gave them out to his workmen.
+The little <i>Lucretius</i> with the Prior de Vend&ocirc;me's
+arms not being mentioned on the list, it was
+assumed that it had been sent by another customer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>And as it did not figure on any list of goods received
+it remained shut up in a cupboard, from which
+L&eacute;ger-Massieu's son, the youthful Ernest, one day
+surreptitiously abstracted it, and slipped it into
+his pocket. Ernest was in love with a neighbouring
+seamstress whose name was Rose. Rose was fond
+of the country, and liked to hear the birds singing
+in the woods, and in order to procure the wherewithal
+to take her to Chatou one Sunday and give
+her a dinner, Ernest parted with the <i>Lucretius</i>
+for ten francs to old Moranger, a second-hand
+dealer in the rue Saint X&mdash;&mdash;, who displayed no
+great curiosity regarding the origin of his acquisitions.
+Old Moranger handed over the volume, the very
+same day, to Monsieur Poussard, an expert in books,
+of the faubourg Saint Germain, for sixty francs.
+The latter removed the stamp which disclosed the
+ownership of the matchless copy, and sold it for
+five hundred francs to Monsieur Joseph Meyer,
+the well-known collector, who handed it straight
+away for three thousand francs to Monsieur Ardon,
+the bookseller, who immediately transferred it to
+Monsieur R&mdash;&mdash;, the great Parisian bibliopolist,
+who gave six thousand for it, and sold it again a
+fortnight later at a handsome profit to Madame la
+Comtesse de Gorce. Well known in the higher
+ranks of Parisian society, the lady in question is
+what was called in the seventeenth century a
+"curieuse," that is to say, a lover of pictures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+books, and china. In her mansion in the Avenue
+d'J&eacute;na she possesses collections of works of art
+which bear witness to the diversity of her knowledge
+and the excellence of her taste. During the month
+of July, while the Comtesse de Gorce was away at
+her ch&acirc;teau at Sarville in Normandy, the house in
+the Avenue d'J&eacute;na, being unoccupied, was visited
+one night by a thief said to belong to a gang known
+as "The Collectors," who made works of art the
+special objects of their raids.</p>
+
+<p>The police enquiry elicited the fact that the
+marauder had reached the first floor by means of
+the waste-pipe, that he had then climbed over the
+balcony, forced a shutter with a jemmy, broken a
+pane of glass, turned the window-fastener, and made
+his way into the long gallery. There he broke open
+several cupboards and possessed himself of whatever
+took his fancy. His booty consisted for the most
+part of small but valuable articles, such as gold
+caskets, a few ivory carvings of the fourteenth
+century, two splendid fifteenth-century manuscripts,
+and a volume which the Countess's secretary briefly
+described as "a morocco-bound book with a coat
+of arms on it," and which was none other than the
+<i>Lucretius</i> from the d'Esparvieu library.</p>
+
+<p>The malefactor, who was supposed to be an
+English cook, was never discovered. But, two
+months or so after the theft, a well-dressed, clean-shaven
+young man passed down the rue de Cour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>celles,
+in the dimness of twilight, and went to offer
+the Prior de Vend&ocirc;me's <i>Lucretius</i> to P&egrave;re Guinardon.
+The antiquary gave him four shillings for it, examined
+it carefully, recognised its interest and its
+beauty, and put it in the king-wood cabinet, where
+he kept his special treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the vicissitudes which, in the course
+of a single season, befel this thing of beauty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein maurice finds his angel again</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE performance was over. Bouchotte
+in her dressing-room was taking off
+her make-up, when the door opened
+softly and old Monsieur Sandraque,
+her protector, came in, followed by a
+troop of her other admirers. Without so much as
+turning her head, she asked them what they meant
+by coming and staring at her like a pack of imbeciles,
+and whether they thought they were in a tent at
+the Neuilly Fair, looking at the freak woman.</p></div>
+
+<p>"Now, then, ladies and gentlemen," she rattled
+on derisively, "just put a penny in the box for the
+young lady's marriage-portion, and she'll let you feel
+her legs,&mdash;all made of marble!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, with an angry glance at the admiring
+throng, she exclaimed: "Come, off you go! Look
+alive!"</p>
+
+<p>She sent them all packing, her sweetheart Th&eacute;ophile
+among them,&mdash;the pale-faced, long-haired,
+gentle, melancholy, short-sighted, and dreamy Th&eacute;ophile.</p>
+
+<p>But recognizing her little Maurice, she gave him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+a smile. He approached her, and leaning over the
+back of the chair on which she was seated, congratulated
+her on her playing and singing, duly
+performing a kiss at the end of every compliment.
+She did not let him escape thus, and with reiterated
+enquiries, pressing solicitations, feigned incredulity,
+obliged him to repeat his stock panegyrics three or
+four times over, and when he stopped she seemed so
+disappointed that he was forced to take up the
+strain again immediately. He found it trying,
+for he was no connoisseur, but he had the pleasure
+of kissing her plump curved shoulders all golden in
+the light, and of catching glimpses of her pretty
+face in the mirror over the toilet-table.</p>
+
+<p>"You were delicious."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?... you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adorable ... div&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he gave a loud cry. His eyes had seen
+in the mirror a face appear at the back of the dressing-room.
+He turned swiftly round, flung his arms about
+Arcade, and drew him into the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"What manners!" exclaimed Bouchotte, gasping.</p>
+
+<p>But, pushing his way through a troop of performing
+dogs, and a family of American acrobats,
+young d'Esparvieu dragged his angel towards the
+exit.</p>
+
+<p>He hurried him forth into the cool darkness
+of the boulevard, delirious with joy and wondering
+whether it was all too good to be true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here you are!" he cried; "here you are! I
+have been looking for you a long time, Arcade,&mdash;or
+Mirar if you like,&mdash;and I have found you at
+last. Arcade, you have taken my guardian angel
+from me. Give him back to me. Arcade, do you
+love me still?"</p>
+
+<p>Arcade replied that in accomplishing the super-angelic
+task he had set himself he had been forced
+to crush under foot friendship, pity, love, and all
+those feelings which tend to soften the soul; but
+that, on the other hand, his new state, by exposing
+him to suffering and privation, disposed him to
+love Humanity, and that he felt a certain mechanical
+friendship for his poor Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," exclaimed Maurice, "if only
+you love me, come back to me, stay with me. I
+cannot do without you. While I had you with
+me I was not aware of your presence. But no
+sooner did you depart than I felt a horrible blank.
+Without you I am like a body without a soul. Do
+you know that in the little flat in the rue de Rome,
+with Gilberte by my side, I feel lonely, I miss you
+sorely, and long to see you and to hear you as I
+did that day when you made me so angry. Confess
+I was right, and that your behaviour on
+that occasion was not that of a gentleman.
+That you, you of so high an origin, so noble a
+mind, could commit such an indiscretion is extraordinary,
+when one comes to think about it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+Madame des Aubels has not yet forgiven you.
+She blames you for having frightened her by appearing
+at such an inconvenient moment, and
+for being insolent and forward while hooking her
+dress and tying her shoes. I, I have forgotten
+everything. I only remember that you are my
+celestial brother, the saintly companion of my
+childhood. No, Arcade, you must not, you cannot
+leave me. You are my angel; you are my property."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade explained to young d'Esparvieu that he
+could no longer be guiding angel to a Christian,
+having himself gone down into the pit. And he
+painted a horrible picture of himself; he described
+himself as breathing hatred and fury; in fact, an
+infernal spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"All nonsense!" said Maurice, smiling, his eyes
+big with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! our ideas, our destiny, everything tends
+to part us, Maurice. But I cannot stifle the tenderness
+I feel for you, and your candour forces me
+to love you."</p>
+
+<p>"No," sighed Maurice. "You do not love me.
+You have never loved me. In a brother or a sister
+such indifference would be natural; in a friend
+it would be ordinary; in a guardian angel it is monstrous.
+Arcade, you are an abominable being. I
+hate you."</p>
+
+<p>"I have loved you dearly, Maurice, and I still
+love you. You trouble my heart which I deemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+encased in triple bronze. You show me my own
+weakness. When you were a little innocent boy I
+loved you as tenderly and purely as Miss Kate,
+your English governess, who caressed you with
+so much fervour. In the country, when the thin
+bark of the plane trees peels off in long strips and
+discloses the tender green trunk, after the rains
+which make the fine sand run on the sloping paths,
+I showed you how with that sand, those strips
+of bark, a few wild flowers, and a spray of maidenhair
+fern to make rustic bridges, rustic shelters,
+terraces, and those gardens of Adonis, which last
+but an hour. During the month of May in Paris
+we raised an altar to the Virgin, and we burnt
+incense before it, the scent of which, permeating
+all the house, reminded Marcelline, the cook, of
+her village church and her lost innocence, and
+drew from her floods of tears; it also gave your
+mother a headache, your mother who, with all her
+wealth, was crushed with the <i>ennui</i> that is common
+to the fortunate ones of this world. When you
+went to college I interested myself in your progress,
+I shared your work and your play, I pondered with
+you over arduous problems in arithmetic, I sought
+the impenetrable meaning of a phrase of Julius
+C&aelig;sar's. What fine games of prisoners' base and
+football we had together! More than once did we
+know the intoxication of victory, and our young
+laurels were not soaked in blood or tears. Maurice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+I did all I could to protect your innocence, but I
+could not prevent your losing it at the age of fourteen.
+Afterwards I regretfully saw you loving
+women of all sorts, of divers ages, by no means
+beautiful, at least in the eyes of an angel. Saddened
+at the sight, I devoted myself to study; a
+fine library offered me resources rarely met with.
+I delved into the history of religions; you know
+the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"But now, my dear Arcade," concluded young
+d'Esparvieu, "you have lost your position, your
+situation, you are entirely without resource. You
+have lost caste, you are off the lines, a vagabond, a
+bare-footed wanderer."</p>
+
+<p>The Angel replied bitterly that, after all, he
+was a little better clad at present than when he
+was wearing the slops of a suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice alleged in excuse that when he dressed
+his naked angel in a suicide's slops, he was irritated
+with that angel's infidelity. But it was useless to
+dwell on the past or to recriminate. What was
+really needful was to consider what steps to take in
+future.</p>
+
+<p>And he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade, what do you think of doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not already told you, Maurice? To
+fight with Him who reigns in the heavens, dethrone
+Him, and set up Satan in His stead."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not do it. To begin with it is not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+opportune moment. Opinion is not with you.
+You will not be in the swim, as papa says. Conservatism
+and authority are all the go nowadays.
+We like to be ruled, and the President of the Republic
+is going to parley with the Pope. Do not
+be obstinate, Arcade. You are not as bad as you
+say. At bottom you are like the rest of the world,
+you adore the good God."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had already explained to you,
+Maurice, that He whom you consider God is actually
+but a demiurge. He is absolutely ignorant
+of the divine world above him, and in all good
+faith believes himself to be the true and only God.
+You will find in the <i>History of the Church</i>, by Monsignor
+Duchesne&mdash;Vol. I, page 162&mdash;that this
+proud and narrow-minded demiurge is named Ialdabaoth.
+My child, so as not to ruffle your prejudices
+and to deal gently with your feelings in future,
+that is the name I shall give him. If it should
+happen that I should speak of him to you, I shall
+call him Ialdabaoth. I must leave you. Adieu."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not let you go thus. You have deprived
+me of my guardian angel. It is for you to repair
+the injury you have caused me. Give me another
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade objected that it was difficult for him to
+satisfy such a demand. That having quarrelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+with the sovereign dispenser of guardian Spirits,
+he could obtain nothing from that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Maurice," he added, smiling, "ask
+for one yourself from Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p>"No,&mdash;no,&mdash;no," exclaimed Maurice. "You have
+taken away my guardian angel,&mdash;give him back to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it, Arcade, because you are a revolutionary
+that you cannot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"An enemy of God?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"A Satanic spirit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," exclaimed young Maurice, "I will
+be your guardian angel,&mdash;I will not leave you."</p>
+
+<p>And Maurice d'Esparvieu took Arcade to have
+some oysters at P&mdash;&mdash;'s.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">the conclave</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HAT day, convoked by Arcade and
+Zita, the rebellious angels met together
+on the banks of the Seine
+at La Jonch&egrave;re, in a deserted and
+tumble-down entertainment-hall
+that Prince Istar had hired from a pot-house
+keeper called Barattan. Three hundred angels
+crowded together in the stalls and boxes. A table,
+an arm-chair, and a collection of small chairs were
+arranged on the stage, where hung the tattered
+remnants of a piece of rustic scenery. The walls,
+coloured in distemper with flowers and fruit, were
+cracked and stained with damp, and were crumbling
+away in flakes. The vulgar and poverty-stricken
+appearance of the place rendered the
+grandeur of the passions exhibited therein all the
+more striking.</p></div>
+
+<p>When Prince Istar asked the assembly to form
+its Committee, and first of all to elect a President,
+the name that was renowned throughout the world
+entered the minds of all present, but a religious
+respect sealed their lips; and after a moment's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+silence, the absent Nectaire was elected by acclamation.
+Having been invited to take the chair between
+Zita and an angel of Japan, Arcade immediately
+began as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Sons of Heaven! My comrades! You have
+freed yourselves from the bonds of celestial servitude&mdash;you
+have shaken off the thrall of him called
+Iahveh, but to whom we should here accord his
+veritable name of Ialdabaoth, for he is not the
+creator of the worlds, but merely an ignorant and
+barbarous demiurge, who having obtained possession
+of a minute portion of the Universe has therein
+sown suffering and death. Sons of Heaven, tell
+me, I charge you, whether you will combat and
+destroy Ialdabaoth?"</p>
+
+<p>All with one voice made answer:</p>
+
+<p>"We will!"</p>
+
+<p>And many speaking all together swore they
+would scale the mountain of Ialdabaoth, and hurl
+down the walls of jasper and porphyry, and plunge
+the tyrant of Heaven into eternal darkness.</p>
+
+<p>But a voice of crystal pierced through the sullen
+murmur.</p>
+
+<p>"Tremble, ye impious, sacrilegious madmen!
+The Lord hath already lifted his dread arm to smite
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a loyal angel who, with an impulse of
+faith and love, envying the glory of confessors and
+martyrs, jealous and eager, like his God himself, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+emulate man in the beauty of sacrifice, had flung
+himself in the midst of the blasphemers, to brave
+them, to confound them, and to fall beneath their
+blows. The assembly turned upon him with furious
+unanimity. Those nearest to him overwhelmed him
+with blows. He continued to cry, in a clear, ringing
+voice, "Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to
+God!"</p>
+
+<p>A rebel seized him by the neck and strangled
+his praises of the Almighty in his throat. He was
+thrown to the ground, trampled underfoot. Prince
+Istar picked him up, took him by the wings between
+his fingers, then rising like a column of smoke,
+opened a ventilator, which no one else could have
+reached, and passed the faithful angel through it.
+Order was immediately restored.</p>
+
+<p>"Comrades," continued Arcade, "now that we
+have affirmed our stern resolve, we must examine
+the possible plans of campaign, and choose the best.
+You will therefore have to consider if we should
+attack the enemy in full force, or whether it were
+better, by a lengthy and assiduous propaganda, to
+win the inhabitants of Heaven to our cause."</p>
+
+<p>"War! War!" shouted the assembled host.</p>
+
+<p>And it seemed as if one could hear the sound of
+trumpets and the rolling of drums.</p>
+
+<p>Th&eacute;ophile, whom Prince Istar had dragged to
+the meeting, rose, pale and unstrung, and, speaking
+with emotion, said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Brethren, do not take ill what I am about to
+say; for it is the friendship I have for you that
+inspires me. I am but a poor musician. But,
+believe me, all your plans will come to naught
+before the Divine Wisdom which has foreseen
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>Th&eacute;ophile Belais sat down amid hisses. And
+Arcade continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Ialdabaoth foresees everything. I do not contest
+it. He foresees everything, but in order to
+leave us our free will he acts towards us absolutely
+as if he foresaw nothing. Every instant he is
+surprised, disconcerted; the most probable events
+take him unawares. The obligation which he has
+undertaken, to reconcile with his prescience the
+liberty of both men and angels, throws him constantly
+into inextricable difficulties and terrible
+dilemmas. He never sees further than the end of
+his nose. He did not expect Adam's disobedience,
+and so little did he anticipate the wickedness of
+men that he repented having made them, and
+drowned them in the waters of the Flood, and all
+the animals as well, though he had no fault to find
+with the animals. For blindness he is only to be
+compared with Charles X, his favourite king. If
+we are prudent it will be easy to take him by surprise.
+I think that these observations will be calculated
+to reassure my brother."</p>
+
+<p>Th&eacute;ophile made no reply. He loved God, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+he was fearful of sharing the fate of the faithful
+angel.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best-informed Spirits of the assembly,
+Mammon, was not altogether reassured by the
+remarks of his brother Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"Bethink you," said this Spirit, "Ialdabaoth
+has little general culture, but he is a soldier&mdash;to
+the marrow of his bones. The organisation of
+Paradise is a thoroughly military organisation. It
+is founded on hierarchy and discipline. Passive
+obedience is imposed there as a fundamental law.
+The angels form an army. Compare this spot
+with the Elysian Fields which Virgil depicts for
+you. In the Elysian Fields reign liberty, reason,
+and wisdom. The happy shades hold converse
+together in the groves of myrtle. In the Heaven of
+Ialdabaoth there is no civil population. Everyone
+is enrolled, numbered, registered. It is a barracks
+and a field for man&#339;uvres. Remember that."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade replied that they must look at their
+adversary in his true colours, and that the military
+organisation of Paradise was far more reminiscent
+of the villages of King Koffee than of the Prussia
+of Frederick the Great.</p>
+
+<p>"Already," said he, "at the time of the first
+revolt, before the beginning of Time, the conflict
+raged for two days, and Ialdabaoth's throne was
+made to totter. Nevertheless, the demiurge gained
+the victory. But to what did he owe it? To the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+thunderstorm which happened to come on during
+the conflict. The thunderbolts falling on Lucifer
+and his angels struck them down, bruised and
+blackened, and Ialdabaoth owed his victory to the
+thunderbolts. Thunder is his sole weapon. He
+abuses its power. In the midst of thunder and
+lightning he promulgates his laws. 'Fire goeth
+before him,' says the Prophet. Now Seneca, the
+philosopher, said that the thunderbolt in its fall
+brings peril to very few, but fear to all. This
+remark was true enough for men of the first century
+of the Christian era; it is no longer so for the angels
+of the twentieth; all of which goes to prove that,
+in spite of his thunder, he is not very powerful;
+it was acute terror that made men rear him a tower
+of unbaked brick and bitumen. When myriads of
+celestial spirits, furnished with machines which
+modern science puts at their disposal, make an
+assault upon the heavens, think you, comrades,
+that the old master of the solar system surrounded
+with his angels, armed as in the time of Abraham,
+will be able to resist them? To this day the warriors
+of the demiurge wear helmets of gold and
+shields of diamond. Michael, his best captain,
+knows no other tactics than the hand-to-hand
+combat. To him Pharaoh's chariots are still the
+latest thing, and he has never heard of the Macedonian
+phalanx."</p>
+
+<p>And young Arcade lengthily prolonged the parallel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+between the armed herds of Ialdabaoth and the
+intelligent fighting men of the rebel army. Then
+the question of pecuniary resources arose.</p>
+
+<p>Zita asserted that there was enough money to
+commence war, that the electrophores were in order,
+that an initial victory would obtain them credit.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion continued, amid turbulence and
+confusion. In this parliament of angels, as in the
+synods of men, empty words flowed in abundance.
+Disturbances grew more violent and more frequent
+as the time for putting the resolution drew near.
+It was beyond question that supreme command
+would be entrusted to him who had first raised
+the flag of revolt. But as everyone aspired to act
+as Lucifer's Lieutenant, each in describing the
+kind of fighting man to be preferred drew a portrait
+of himself. Thus Alcor, the youngest of the
+rebellious angels, arose and spoke rapidly as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"In Ialdabaoth's army, happily for us, the
+officers obtain their posts by seniority. This
+being the case, there is little likelihood of the command
+falling into the hands of a military genius,
+for men are not made leaders by prolonged habits
+of obedience, and close attention to minuti&aelig; is
+not a good apprenticeship for the evolution of
+vast plans of campaign. If we consult ancient
+and modern history, we shall see that the greatest
+leaders were kings like Alexander and Frederick,
+aristocrats like C&aelig;sar and Turenne, or men im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>patient
+of red-tape like Bonaparte. A routine
+man will always be poor or second-rate. Comrades,
+let us appoint intelligent leaders, men in the prime
+of life, to command us. An old man may retain
+the habit of winning victories, but only a young man
+can acquire it!"</p>
+
+<p>Alcor then gave place to an angel of the philosophic
+order, who mounted the rostrum and spoke
+thus:</p>
+
+<p>"War never was an exact science, a clearly
+defined art. The genius of the race, or the brain
+of the individual, has ever modified it. Now how
+are we to define the qualities necessary for a general
+in command in the war of the future, where one must
+consider greater masses and a larger number of movements
+than the intelligence of man can conceive?
+The multiplication of technical means, by infinitely
+multiplying the opportunities for mistake, paralyses
+the genius of those in command. At a certain
+stage in the progress of military science, a stage
+which our models, the Europeans, are about to
+reach, the cleverest leader and the most ignorant
+become equalized by reason of their incapacity.
+Another result of great modern armaments is,
+that the law of numbers tends to rule with inflexible
+rigour. It is of course true that ten angels
+in revolt are worth more than ten angels of Ialdabaoth;
+it is not at all certain that a million rebellious
+angels are worth more than a million of Ialdabaoth's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+angels. Great numbers, in war as elsewhere, annihilate
+intelligence and individual superiority in
+favour of a sort of exceedingly rudimentary collective
+soul."</p>
+
+<p>A buzz of conversation drowned the voice of
+the philosophic angel, and he concluded his speech
+in an atmosphere of general indifference.</p>
+
+<p>The tribune then resounded with calls to arms
+and promises of victory. The sword was held up
+to praise, the sword which defends the right. The
+triumph of the angels in revolt was celebrated
+twenty times beforehand, to the plaudits of a delirious
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Cries of "War!" rose to the silent heavens;
+"Give us war!"</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these transports Prince Istar
+hoisted himself on to the platform, and the floor
+creaked under his weight.</p>
+
+<p>"Comrades," said he, "you wish for victory,
+and it is a very natural desire, but you must be
+mouldy with literature and poetry if you expect
+to obtain it from war. The idea of making war
+can nowadays only enter the brain of a sottish
+bourgeois or a belated romantic. What is war?
+A burlesque masquerade in the midst of which
+fatuous patriots sing their stupid dithyrambs. Had
+Napoleon possessed a practical mind he would not
+have made war; but he was a dreamer, intoxicated
+with Ossian. You cry, 'Give us war!' You are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The
+thinkers do not look for power and strength from
+any of the dreams which constitute military art:
+tactics, strategy, fortifications, artillery, and all that
+rubbish. They do not believe in war, which is a
+phantasy; they believe in chemistry, which is a
+science. They know the way to put victory into
+an algebraic formula."</p>
+
+<p>And drawing from his pocket a small bottle,
+which he held up to the meeting, Prince Istar exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Victory&mdash;it is here!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we shall see revealed a dark and secret
+mystery and learn how it comes about
+that empires are often hurled against empires,
+and ruin falls alike upon the victors
+and the vanquished; and the wise reader
+(if such there be&mdash;which i doubt) will meditate
+upon this important utterance: "a
+war is a matter of business"</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE Angels had dispersed. At the foot
+of the slopes at Meudon, seated on
+the grass, Arcade and Zita watched
+the Seine flowing by the willows.</p>
+
+<p>"In this world," said Arcade, "in
+this world, which we call a cosmos, though it is
+but a microcosm, no thinking being can imagine
+that he is able to destroy even one atom. At the
+utmost, all we can hope for is that we shall succeed
+in modifying, here and there, the rhythm
+of some group of atoms and the arrangement of
+certain cells. That, when one thinks of it, must be
+the limit of our great enterprise. And when we
+shall have set up the Contradictor in the place of
+Ialdabaoth, we shall have done no more.... Zita,
+is the evil in the nature of things or in their arrange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>ment?
+That is what we ought to know. Zita, I
+am profoundly troubled&mdash;&mdash;"</p></div>
+
+<p>"Arcade," replied Zita, "if to act we had to
+know the secret of Nature, one would never act at
+all. And neither would one live&mdash;since to live is
+to act. Arcade, is your resolution failing you
+already?"</p>
+
+<p>Arcade assured the beautiful angel that he was
+resolved to plunge the demiurge into eternal darkness.</p>
+
+<p>A motor-car passed by on the road, followed by
+a long trail of dust. It stopped before the two
+angels, and the hooked nose of Baron Everdingen
+appeared at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, my celestial friends, good morning,"
+said the capitalist. "Sons of Heaven, I
+am pleased to meet you. I have a word of importance
+to say to you. Do not remain idle&mdash;do
+not go to sleep. Arm! Arm! You may be surprised
+by Ialdabaoth. You have a big war-fund.
+Employ it without stint. I have just learnt that
+the Archangel Michael has given large orders in
+Heaven for thunderbolts and arrows. If you take
+my advice you will procure fifty thousand more
+electrophores. I will take the order. Good day,
+angels. Long live the celestial country!"</p>
+
+<p>And Baron Everdingen flew by the flowery
+shores of Louveciennes in the company of a pretty
+actress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is it true that they are taking up arms at the
+demiurge's?" asked Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," replied Zita, "that up there another
+Baron Everdingen is inciting to arms."</p>
+
+<p>The guardian angel of young Maurice remained
+pensive for some moments. Then he murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be that we are the sport of financiers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" said the beautiful archangel. "War
+is a business. It has always been a business."</p>
+
+<p>Then they discussed at length the means of
+executing their immense enterprise. Rejecting disdainfully
+the anarchistic proceedings of Prince
+Istar, they conceived a formidable and sudden
+invasion of the kingdom of Heaven by their enthusiastic
+and well-drilled troops.</p>
+
+<p>Now Barattan, the innkeeper of La Jonch&egrave;re, who
+had let the entertainment-hall to the rebellious
+angels, was in the employ of the secret police. In
+the reports he furnished to the Prefecture he denounced
+the members of this secret meeting as
+meditating an attack on a certain person whom
+they described as obtuse and cruel, and whom they
+called <i>Alaballotte</i>. The agent believed this to be
+a pseudonym denoting either the President of the
+Republic or the Republic itself. The conspirators
+had unanimously given voice to threats against <i>Alaballotte</i>,
+and one of them, a very dangerous individual,
+well-known in anarchist circles, who
+had already several convictions against him on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+account of writings and speeches of a seditious
+nature, and who was known as Prince Istar or the
+<i>Qu&eacute;roube</i>, had brandished a bomb of very small
+calibre which seemed to contain a formidable
+machine. The other conspirators were unknown
+to Barattan, notwithstanding the fact that he
+frequented revolutionary circles. Many among
+them were very young men, mere beardless youths.
+There were two who, it appeared, had spoken with
+conspicuous vehemence; a certain Arcade, dwelling
+in the Rue St. Jacques, and a woman of easy virtue
+called Zita, living at Montmartre, both without
+visible means of subsistence.</p>
+
+<p>The affair seemed sufficiently serious to the Prefect
+of Police to make him think it necessary to confer
+without delay with the President of the Council.</p>
+
+<p>The Third Republic was then going through
+one of those climacteric periods during which the
+French nation, enamoured of authority and worshipping
+force, gave itself up for lost because it
+was not governed enough, and clamoured loudly
+for a saviour. The President of the Council, and
+Minister of Justice, was only too eager to be that
+longed-for saviour. Still, for him to play that
+part it was first necessary that there should be a
+danger to face. Thus the news of a plot was highly
+welcome to him. He questioned the Prefect of
+Police on the character and importance of the
+affair. The Prefect of Police explained that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+people seemed to have money, intelligence, and
+energy; but that they talked too much and were
+too numerous to undertake secret and concerted
+action. The Minister, leaning back in his arm-chair,
+pondered on the matter. The Empire
+writing-table at which he was seated, the ancient
+tapestry which covered the walls, the clock and
+the candelabra of the Restoration period&mdash;all, in
+this traditional setting, reminded him of those
+great principles of government which remain immutable
+throughout the succession of <i>r&eacute;gimes</i>,
+of stratagem and of bluff. After brief reflexion,
+he concluded that the plot must be allowed to
+grow and take shape, that it would even be fitting
+to nurse it, to embroider it, to colour it, and only
+to stifle it after having extracted every possible
+advantage from it.</p>
+
+<p>He instructed the Prefect of Police to watch the
+affair closely, to render him an account of what
+went on from day to day, and to confine himself
+to the r&ocirc;le of informer.</p>
+
+<p>"I rely on your well-known prudence; observe,
+and do not intervene."</p>
+
+<p>The Minister lit a cigarette. He quite reckoned,
+with the help of this plot, on silencing the Opposition,
+strengthening his own influence, diminishing
+that of his colleagues, humiliating the President of
+the Republic, and becoming the saviour of his
+country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Prefect of Police undertook to follow the
+ministerial instructions, vowing inwardly all the
+while to act in his own way. He had a watch put
+upon the individuals pointed out by Barattan, and
+commanded his agents not to intervene, come what
+might. Perceiving that he was a marked man,
+Prince Istar&mdash;who united prudence with strength&mdash;withdrew
+the bombs from the gutter outside his window
+where he had hidden them, and changing from
+motor 'bus to tube, from tube to motor 'bus, and
+choosing the most cunningly circuitous route, at length
+deposited his machines with the angelic musician.</p>
+
+<p>Every time he left his house in the Rue St. Jacques,
+Arcade found a man of exaggerated smartness
+at his door, with yellow gloves and in his tie
+a diamond bigger than the Regent. Being a stranger
+to the things of this world, the rebellious angel
+paid no attention to the circumstance. But young
+Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had undertaken the
+task of guarding his guardian-angel, viewed this
+gentleman with uneasiness, for he equalled in
+assiduity and surpassed in vigilance that Monsieur
+Mignon who had formerly allowed his inquisitive
+gaze to wander from the rams' heads on
+the H&ocirc;tel de la Sordi&egrave;re in the Rue Garanci&egrave;re to
+the apse of the church of St. Sulpice. Maurice
+came two and three times a day to see Arcade in
+his furnished rooms, warning him of the danger,
+and urging him to change his abode.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every evening he took his angel to night restaurants,
+where they supped with ladies of easy
+virtue. There young d'Esparvieu would foretell
+the issue of some coming glove-fight, and afterwards
+exert himself to demonstrate to Arcade the
+existence of God, the necessity for religion, and
+the beauties of Christianity, and adjure him to
+renounce his impious and criminal undertakings
+wherefrom, he said, he would reap but bitterness
+and disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"For really," said the young apologist, "if Christianity
+were false it would be known."</p>
+
+<p>The ladies approved of Maurice's religious sentiments,
+and when the handsome Arcade uttered
+some blasphemy in language they could understand,
+they put their hands to their ears and bade him be
+silent, for fear of being struck down with him.
+For they believed that God, in his omnipotence
+and sovereign goodness, taking sudden vengeance
+against those who insulted him, was quite capable
+of striking down the innocent with the guilty without
+meaning it.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the angel and his guardian took supper
+with the angelic musician. Maurice, who remembered
+from time to time that he was Bouchotte's
+lover, was displeased to see Arcade taking
+liberties with the singer. She had allowed
+him to do so ever since the day when, the angelic
+musician having had the little flowery couch re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>paired,
+Arcade and Bouchotte had made it a foundation
+for their friendship. Maurice, who loved
+Madame des Aubels a great deal, also loved Bouchotte
+a little, and was rather jealous of Arcade.
+Now jealousy is a feeling natural to man and beast,
+and causes them, however slight the attack, keen
+unhappiness. Therefore, suspecting the truth, which
+Bouchotte's temperament and the angel's character
+made sufficiently obvious, he overwhelmed
+Arcade with sarcasm and abuse, reproaching him
+with the immorality of his ways. Arcade answered,
+tranquilly, that it was difficult to subject physiological
+impulses to perfectly defined rules, and that
+moralists encountered great difficulties in the case
+of certain natural necessities.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover," added Arcade, "I freely acknowledge
+that it is almost impossible systematically to
+constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no
+principles. She furnishes us with no reason to
+believe that human life is to be respected. Nature,
+in her indifference, makes no distinction between
+good and evil."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, then," replied Maurice, "that religion
+is necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Moral law," replied the angel, "which is supposed
+to be revealed to us, is drawn in reality
+from the grossest empiricism. Custom alone regulates
+morals. What Heaven prescribes is merely
+the consecration of ancient customs. The divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+law, promulgated amid fireworks on some Mount
+Sinai, is never anything but the codification of
+human prejudice. And from this fact&mdash;namely,
+that morals change&mdash;religions which endure for a
+long time, such as Jud&aelig;o-Christianity, vary their
+moral law."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate," said Maurice, whose intelligence
+was swelling visibly, "you will grant me that religion
+prevents much profligacy and crime?"</p>
+
+<p>"Except when it promotes crime&mdash;as, for instance,
+the murder of Iphigenia."</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "when I hear you
+argue, I rejoice that I am not an intellectual."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Th&eacute;ophile, with his head bent over
+the piano, his face hidden by the long fair veil of
+his hair, bringing down from on high his inspired
+hands on to the keys, was playing and singing the
+full score of <i>Aline, Queen of Golconda</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar used to come to their friendly reunions,
+his pockets filled with bombs and bottles
+of champagne, both of which he owed to the liberality
+of Baron Everdingen. Bouchotte received
+the Ker&ucirc;b with pleasure, since she saw in him the
+witness and the trophy of the victory she had
+gained on the little flowered couch. He was to her
+as the severed head of Goliath in the hands of the
+youthful David. And she admired the prince for
+his cleverness as an accompanist, his vigour, which she
+had subdued, and his prodigious capacity for drink.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One night, when young d'Esparvieu took his
+angel home in his car from Bouchotte's house to
+the lodgings in the Rue St. Jacques, it was very
+dark; before the door the diamond in the spy's
+necktie glittered like a beacon; three cyclists standing
+in a group under its rays made off in divers
+directions at the car's approach. The angel took
+no notice, but Maurice concluded that Arcade's
+movements interested various important people
+in the State. He judged the danger to be pressing,
+and at once made up his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he came to seek the suspect, to
+take him to the Rue de Rome. The angel was in
+bed. Maurice urged him to dress and to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said he. "This house is no longer safe
+for you. You are watched. One of these days you
+will be arrested. Do you wish to sleep in gaol? No?
+Well, then, come. I will put you in a safe place."</p>
+
+<p>The spirit smiled with some little compassion on
+his na&iuml;ve preserver.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not know," he said, "that an angel
+broke open the doors of the prison where Peter
+was confined, and delivered the apostle? Do you
+believe me, Maurice, to be inferior in power to
+that heavenly brother of mine, and do you suppose
+that I am unable to do for myself what he did for
+the fisherman of the lake of Tiberias?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not count on it, Arcade. He did it miraculously."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Or by a stroke of luck, as a modern historian of
+the Church has it. But no matter. I will follow
+you. Just allow me to burn a few letters and to
+make a parcel of some books I shall need."</p>
+
+<p>He threw some papers in the fire-place, put
+several volumes in his pockets, and followed his
+guide to the car, which was waiting for them not
+far off, outside the College of France. Maurice
+took the wheel. Imitating the Ker&ucirc;b's prudence,
+he made so many windings and turnings, and so
+many rapid twists that he put all the swift and
+numerous cyclists, speeding in pursuit, off the
+scent. At length, having left wheelmarks in every
+direction all over the town, he stopped in the Rue
+de Rome, before the first-door flat, where the angel
+had first appeared.</p>
+
+<p>On entering the dwelling which he had left eighteen
+months before to carry out his mission, Arcade
+remembered the irreparable past, and breathing
+in the scent used by Gilberte, his nostrils throbbed.
+He asked after Madame des Aubels.</p>
+
+<p>"She is very well," replied Maurice. "A little
+plumper and very much more beautiful for it.
+She still bears you a grudge for your forward behaviour.
+I hope that she will one day forgive
+you, as I have forgiven you, and that she will forget
+your offence. But she is still very annoyed with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Young d'Esparvieu did the honours of his flat to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+his angel with the manners of a well-bred man and
+the tender solicitude of a friend. He showed him
+the folding bed which was opened every evening
+in the entrance hall and pushed into a dark cupboard
+in the morning. He showed him the dressing-table,
+with its accessories; the bath, the linen cupboard,
+the chest of drawers; gave him the necessary information
+regarding the heating and lighting; told
+him that his meals would be brought and the rooms
+cleaned by the concierge, and showed him which
+bell to press when he required that person's services.
+He told him also that he must consider himself at
+home, and receive whom he wished.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which treats of a painful domestic scene</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 72px;">
+<img src="images/imgs.jpg" width="72" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>O long as Maurice confined his
+selection of mistresses to respectable
+women, his conduct had called
+forth no reproach. It was a different
+matter when he took up with
+Bouchotte. His mother, who had closed her eyes
+to liaisons which, though guilty, were elegant and
+discreet, was scandalised when it came to her
+ears that her son was openly parading about with
+a music-hall singer. By dint of much prying and
+probing, Berthe, Maurice's younger sister, had got
+to know of her brother's adventures, and she narrated
+them, without any indignation, to her young
+girl friends. His little brother L&eacute;on declared to
+his mother one day, in the presence of several ladies,
+that when he was big he, too, would go on the spree,
+like Maurice. This was a sore wound to the maternal
+heart of Madame d'Esparvieu.</p></div>
+
+<p>About the same time there occurred a family
+event of a very grave nature which occasioned much
+alarm to Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu. Drafts were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+presented to him signed in his name by his son.
+His writing had not been forged, but there was no
+doubt that it had been the son's intention to pass
+off the signature as his father's. It showed a
+perverted moral sense; whence it appeared that
+Maurice was living a life of profligacy, that he was
+running into debt and on the point of outraging the
+decencies. The paterfamilias talked the matter over
+with his wife. It was arranged that he should give
+his son a very severe lecture, hint at vigorous corrective
+measures, and that in due course the mother
+should appear with gentle and sorrowing mien
+and endeavour to soothe the righteous indignation
+of the father. This plan being agreed upon,
+Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu sent for his son to
+come to him in his study. To add to the solemnity
+of the occasion, he had arrayed himself in his
+frock-coat. As soon as Maurice saw it he knew
+there was something serious in the wind. The
+head of the family was pale, and his voice shook
+a little (for he was a nervous man), as he declared
+that he would no longer put up with his son's irregular
+behaviour, and insisted on an immediate
+and absolute reform. No more wild courses, no
+more running into debt, no more undesirable companions,
+but work, steadiness, and reputable connexions.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was quite willing to give a respectful
+reply to his father, whose complaints, after all,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+were perfectly justified; but, unfortunately,
+Maurice, like his father, was shy, and the frock-coat
+which Monsieur d'Esparvieu had donned in order
+to discharge his magisterial duty with greater
+dignity seemed to preclude the possibility of any
+open and unconstrained intercourse. Maurice
+maintained an awkward silence, which looked very
+much like insolence, and this silence compelled
+Monsieur d'Esparvieu to reiterate his complaints,
+this time with additional severity. He opened one
+of the drawers in his historic bureau (the bureau
+on which Alexandre d'Esparvieu had written his
+"Essay on the Civil and Religious Institutions of
+the World"), and produced the bills which Maurice
+had signed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, my boy," said he, "that this is
+nothing more nor less than forgery? To make up
+for such grave misconduct as that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Madame d'Esparvieu, as arranged,
+entered the room attired in her walking-dress.
+She was supposed to play the angel of
+forgiveness, but neither her appearance nor her
+disposition was suitable to the part. She was
+harsh and unsympathetic. Maurice harboured within
+him the seeds of all the ordinary and necessary
+virtues. He loved his mother and respected
+her. His love, however, was more a matter of
+duty than of inclination, and his respect arose
+from habit rather than from feeling. Madame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu's complexion was blotchy, and
+having powdered herself in order to appear to
+advantage at the domestic tribunal, the colour of
+her face suggested raspberries sprinkled over with
+sugar. Maurice, being possessed of some taste,
+could not help realising that she was ugly and rather
+repulsively so. He was out of tune with her, and
+when she began to go through all the accusations
+his father had brought against him, making them
+out to be blacker than ever, the prodigal turned
+away his head to conceal his irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Aunt de Saint-Fain," she went on, "met
+you in the street in such disgraceful company that
+she was really thankful that you forbore to greet
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt de Saint-Fain!" Maurice broke out. "I
+like to hear her talking about scandals! Everyone
+knows the sort of life she has led, and now the
+old hypocrite wants to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped. He had caught sight of his father,
+whose face was even more eloquent of sorrow than
+of anger. Maurice began to feel as though he had
+committed murder, and could not imagine how he
+had allowed such words to escape him. He was on
+the point of bursting into tears, falling on his knees,
+and imploring his father to forgive him, when
+his mother, looking up at the ceiling, said with a
+sigh:</p>
+
+<p>"What offence can I have committed against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+God, to have brought such a wicked son into the
+world?"</p>
+
+<p>This speech struck Maurice as a piece of ridiculous
+affectation, and it pulled him up with a jerk. The
+bitterness of contrition suddenly gave place to the
+delicious arrogance of wrong-doing. He plunged
+wildly into a torrent of insolence and revolt, and
+breathlessly delivered himself of utterances quite
+unfit for a mother's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will have it, mamma, rather than forbid
+me to continue my friendship with a talented
+lyrical artist, you would be better employed in
+preventing my elder sister, Madame de Margy,
+from appearing, night after night, in society and
+at the theatres with a contemptible and disgusting
+individual that everybody knows is her lover.
+You should also keep an eye on my little sister
+Jeanne, who writes objectionable letters to herself
+in a disguised hand, and then, pretending
+she has found them in her prayer-book, shows
+them to you with assumed innocence, to worry
+and alarm you. It would be just as well, too,
+if you prevented my little brother L&eacute;on, a child
+of seven, from being quite so much with Mademoiselle
+Caporal, and you might tell your maid...."</p>
+
+<p>"Get out, sir, I will not have you in the house!"
+cried Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu, white with
+anger, pointing a trembling finger at the door.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we see how the angel, having become
+a man, behaves like a man, coveting
+another's wife and betraying his friend.
+in this chapter the correctness of young
+d'esparvieu's conduct will be made manifest</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE angel was pleased with his lodging.
+He worked of a morning,
+went out in the afternoon, heedless
+of detectives, and came home to
+sleep. As in days gone by, Maurice
+received Madame des Aubels twice or thrice a
+week in the room in which they had seen the apparition.</p></div>
+
+<p>All went very well until one morning Gilberte,
+having, the night before, left her little velvet bag
+on the table in the blue room, came to find it, and
+discovered Arcade stretched on the couch in his
+pyjamas, smoking a cigarette, and dreaming of the
+conquest of Heaven. She gave a loud scream.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Monsieur! Had I thought to find you
+here, you may be quite sure I should not ... I
+came to fetch my little bag, which is in the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+room. Allow me...." And she slipped past the
+angel, cautiously and quickly, as if he were a brazier.</p>
+
+<p>Madame des Aubels that morning, in her pale
+green tailor-made costume, was deliciously attractive.
+Her tight skirt displayed her movements, and her
+every step was one of those miracles of Nature
+which fill men's hearts with amazement.</p>
+
+<p>She reappeared, bag in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Once more&mdash;I ask your pardon.... I never
+dreamt that...."</p>
+
+<p>Arcade begged her to sit down and to stay a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I never expected, Monsieur," said she, "that
+you would be doing the honours of this flat. I knew
+how dearly Monsieur d'Esparvieu loved you....
+Nevertheless, I had no idea that...."</p>
+
+<p>The sky had suddenly grown overcast. A brownish
+glare began to steal into the room. Madame des
+Aubels told him she had walked for her health's
+sake, but a storm was brewing, and she asked if a
+carriage could be called for her.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade flung himself at Gilberte's feet, took her
+in his arms as one takes a precious piece of china,
+and murmured words which, being meaningless in
+themselves, expressed desire.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands over his eyes and on his lips,
+and exclaimed, "I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>And shaking with sobs, she asked for a drink of
+water. She was choking. The angel went to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+assistance. In this moment of extreme peril she
+defended herself courageously. She kept saying:
+"No!... No!... I will not love you. I should
+love you too well...." Nevertheless she succumbed.</p>
+
+<p>In the sweet familiarity which followed their
+mutual astonishment she said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I have often asked after you. I knew that you
+were an assiduous frequenter of the playhouses at
+Montmartre,&mdash;that you were often seen with Mademoiselle
+Bouchotte, who, nevertheless, is not at all
+pretty. I knew that you had become very smart,
+and that you were making a good deal of money.
+I was not surprised. You were born to succeed.
+The day of your"&mdash;and she pointed at the spot
+between the window and the wardrobe with the
+mirror&mdash;"apparition, I was vexed with Maurice
+for having given you a suicide's rags to wear. You
+pleased me.... Oh, it was not your good looks!
+Don't think that women are as sensitive as
+people say to outward attractions. We consider
+other things in love. There is a sort of&mdash;&mdash; Well,
+anyhow I loved you as soon as I saw
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The shadows grew deeper.</p>
+
+<p>She asked:</p>
+
+<p>"You are not an angel, are you? Maurice
+believes you are; but he believes so many things,
+Maurice." She questioned Arcade with her eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+and smiled maliciously. "Confess that you have
+been fooling him, and that you are no angel?"</p>
+
+<p>Arcade replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I only aspire to please you; I will always be
+what you want me to be."</p>
+
+<p>Gilberte decided that he was no angel; first,
+because one never is an angel; secondly, for more
+detailed reasons which drew her thoughts to the
+question of love. He did not argue the matter
+with her, and once again words were found inadequate
+to express their feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the rain was falling thick and fast, the
+windows were streaming, lightning lit up the muslin
+curtains, and thunder shook the panes. Gilberte
+made the sign of the Cross and remained with her
+head hidden in her lover's bosom.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Maurice entered the room. He
+came in wet and smiling, confident, tranquil, happy,
+to announce to Arcade the good news that with
+his half-share in the previous day's race at Longchamps
+the angel had won twelve times his stake.
+Surprising the lady and the angel in their embrace,
+he became furious; anger gripped the muscles
+of his throat, his face grew red with blood, and
+the veins stood out on his forehead. He sprang
+with clenched fists towards Gilberte, and then suddenly
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Interrupted motion was transformed into heat.
+Maurice fumed. His anger did not arm him, like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+Archilochus, with lyrical vengeance. He merely
+applied an offensive epithet to his unfaithful one.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile she had recovered her dignified bearing.
+She rose, full of modesty and grace, and gave
+her accuser a look which expressed both offended
+virtue and loving forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>But as young d'Esparvieu continued to shower
+coarse and monotonous insults on her, she grew
+angry in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a pretty sort of person, are you not?"
+she said. "Did I run after this Arcade of yours?
+It was you who brought him here, and in what a
+state, too! You had only one idea: to give me up
+to your friend. Well, Monsieur, you can do as you
+like&mdash;I am not going to oblige you."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice d'Esparvieu replied simply, "Get out
+of it, you trollop!" And he made a motion as if to
+push her out. It pained Arcade to see his mistress
+treated so disrespectfully, but he thought he lacked
+the necessary authority to interfere with Maurice.
+Madame des Aubels, who had lost none of her
+dignity, fixed young d'Esparvieu with her imperious
+gaze, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Go and get me a carriage."</p>
+
+<p>And so great is the power of woman over a well-bred
+soul, in a gallant nation, that the young Frenchman
+went immediately and told the concierge
+to call a taxi. Madame des Aubels, with a
+studied exhibition of charm in every movement,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+took leave of them, throwing Maurice the contemptuous
+look that a woman owes to him whom
+she has deceived. Maurice witnessed her departure
+with an outward expression of indifference he was
+far from feeling. Then he turned to the angel clad
+in the flowered pyjamas which Maurice himself
+had worn the day of the apparition; and this
+circumstance, trifling in itself, added fuel to the
+anger of the host who had been thus shamefully
+deceived.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "you may pride yourself on
+being a despicable individual. You have behaved
+basely, and all for nothing. If the woman took
+your fancy, you had but to tell me. I was tired of
+her. I had had enough of her. I would have
+willingly left her to you."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke thus to hide his pain, for he loved Gilberte
+more than ever, and the creature's treachery
+caused him great suffering. He pursued:</p>
+
+<p>"I was about to ask you to take her off my hands.
+But you have followed your lower nature&mdash;you have
+behaved like a sweep."</p>
+
+<p>If at this solemn moment Arcade had but spoken
+one word from his heart, Maurice would have
+burst into tears, and forgiven his friend and his
+mistress, and all three would have become content
+and happy once again. But Arcade had not
+been nourished on the milk of human kindness.
+He had never suffered, and did not know how to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+sympathise with suffering. He replied with frigid
+wisdom:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Maurice, that same necessity which
+orders and constrains the actions of living beings,
+produces effects that are often unexpected, and
+sometimes absurd. Thus it is that I have been led
+to displease you. You would not reproach me if
+you had a good philosophical understanding of
+nature; for you would then know that free-will is
+but an illusion, and that physiological affinities are
+as exactly determined as are chemical combinations,
+and, like them, may be summed up in a formula.
+I think that, in your case, it might be possible to
+inculcate these truths, but it would be a difficult
+task, and maybe they would not bring you the
+serenity which eludes you. It is fitting, therefore,
+that I should leave this spot, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stay," said Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice had a very clear sense of social obligations.
+He put honour, when he thought about it, above
+everything. So now he told himself very forcibly
+that the outrage he had suffered could only be
+wiped out with blood. This traditional idea
+instantly lent an unexpected nobility to his speech
+and bearing.</p>
+
+<p>"It is I, Monsieur," said he, "who will quit this
+place, never to return. You will remain here,
+since you are a refugee. My seconds will wait
+upon you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The angel smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I will receive them, if it gives you pleasure,
+but, bethink you, my dear Maurice, I am invulnerable.
+Celestial spirits even when they are
+materialised cannot be touched by point of sword
+or pistol shot. Consider, my dear Maurice, the
+awkward situation in which this fatal inequality
+puts me, and realise that in refusing to appoint
+seconds I cannot give as a reason my celestial nature,&mdash;it
+would be unprecedented."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," replied the heir of the Bussart
+d'Esparvieu, "you should have thought of that
+before you insulted me."</p>
+
+<p>Out he marched haughtily; but no sooner was
+he in the street than he staggered like a drunken
+man. The rain was still falling. He walked
+unseeing, unhearing, at haphazard, dragging his
+feet in the gutters through pools of water, through
+heaps of mud. He followed the outer boulevards
+for a long time, and at length, fordone with weariness,
+lay down on the edge of a piece of waste land.
+He was muddied up to the eyes, mud and tears
+smeared his face, the brim of his hat was dripping
+with rain. A passer-by, taking him for a beggar,
+tossed him a copper. He picked it up, put it carefully
+in his waistcoat pocket, and set off to find his
+seconds.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which treats of an affair of honour, and
+which will afford the reader an opportunity
+of judging whether, as arcade affirms,
+the experience of our faults makes better
+men and women of us</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>THE ground chosen for the combat
+was Colonel Manchon's garden, on
+the Boulevard de la Reine at Versailles.
+Messieurs de la Verdeli&egrave;re
+and Le Truc de Ruffec, who had
+both of them constant practice in affairs of honour
+and knew the rules with great exactness, assisted
+Maurice d'Esparvieu. No duel was ever fought
+in the Catholic world without Monsieur de la
+Verdeli&egrave;re being present; and, in making application
+to this swordsman, Maurice had conformed to
+custom, though not without a certain reluctance, for
+he had been notorious as the lover of Madame de la
+Verdeli&egrave;re; but Monsieur de la Verdeli&egrave;re was not
+to be looked upon as a husband. He was an institution.
+As to Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec, honour
+was his only known profession and avowedly his
+sole resource, and when the matter was made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+subject of ill-natured comment in Society, the
+question was asked what finer career than that of
+honour Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec could possibly
+have adopted. Arcade's seconds were Prince Istar
+and Th&eacute;ophile. The celestial musician had not
+voluntarily nor with a good grace taken a hand in
+this affair. He had a horror of every kind of violence
+and disapproved of single combat. The
+report of pistols and the clash of swords were intolerable
+to him, and the sight of blood made him
+faint. This gentle son of Heaven had obstinately
+refused to act as second to his brother Arcade, and
+to bring him to the starting-point the Ker&ucirc;b had had
+to threaten to break a bottle of panclastite over his
+head.</p></div>
+
+<p>Besides the combatants, the seconds, and the
+doctors, the only people in the garden were a few
+officers from the barracks at Versailles and several
+reporters. Although young d'Esparvieu was
+known merely as a young man of family, and Arcade
+had never been heard of at all, the duel had
+attracted quite a large crowd of inquisitive individuals,
+and the windows of the adjoining houses
+were crammed with photographers, reporters, and
+Society people. What had aroused much curiosity
+was that a woman was known to be the cause
+of the quarrel. Many mentioned Bouchotte, but
+the majority said it was Madame des Aubels.
+It had been remarked upon, moreover, that duels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+in which Monsieur de la Verdeli&egrave;re acted as second
+drew all Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was a soft blue, the garden all a-bloom
+with roses, a blackbird was piping in a tree. Monsieur
+de la Verdeli&egrave;re, who, stick in hand, conducted
+the affair, laid the points of the swords together,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Allez, Messieurs.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Maurice d'Esparvieu attacked by doubling and
+beating the blade. Arcade retired, keeping his
+sword in line. The first engagement was without
+result. The seconds were under the impression that
+Monsieur d'Esparvieu was in a grievous state of
+nervous irritability, and that his adversary would
+wear him down. In the second encounter Maurice
+attacked wildly, spread out his arms, and exposed
+his breast. He attacked as he advanced, gave a
+straight thrust, and the point of his sword grazed
+Arcade on the shoulder. The latter was thought to
+be wounded. But the seconds ascertained with
+surprise that it was Maurice who had received a
+scratch on the wrist. Maurice asserted that he felt
+nothing, and Dr. Quille declared, after examination,
+that his client might continue the fight. After the
+regulation quarter of an hour the duel was resumed.
+Maurice attacked with fury. His adversary was
+obviously nursing him, and, what disturbed Monsieur
+de la Verdeli&egrave;re, seemed to be paying very
+little attention to his own defence. At the opening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+of the fifth bout, a black spaniel that had got into
+the garden no one knew how rushed out from a
+clump of rose-bushes, made its way on to the space
+reserved for the combatants, and, in spite of sticks
+and cries, ran in between Maurice's legs. The
+latter seemed as though his arm were benumbed,
+merely gave a shoulder-thrust at his invulnerable
+opponent. He then delivered a straight lunge and
+impaled his arm on his adversary's sword, which
+made a deep wound just below the elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur de la Verdeli&egrave;re stopped the fight,
+which had lasted an hour and a half. Maurice was
+conscious of a painful shock. They laid him down
+on a grassy bank against a wall covered with wistaria.
+While the surgeon was dressing the wound Maurice
+called Arcade and offered him his wounded hand.
+And when the victor, saddened with his victory,
+advanced, Maurice embraced him tenderly, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Be generous, Arcade; forgive my treachery.
+Now that we have fought, I can ask you to be
+reconciled with me."</p>
+
+<p>He embraced his friend, weeping, and whispered
+in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Come and see me, and bring Gilberte."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice, who was still unreconciled with his
+parents, was taken to the little flat in the Rue de
+Rome. No sooner was he stretched on the bed
+at the far end of the bedroom where the curtains
+were drawn as on the day of the apparition, than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+he saw Arcade and Gilberte appear. He began to
+suffer greatly from his wound; his temperature
+was rising, but he was at peace, happy and contented.
+Angel and woman, both in tears, threw themselves
+at the foot of the bed. He took both their hands
+with his left, smiled on them, and kissed them
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure now that I shall never quarrel with
+either of you again; you will deceive me no more.
+I now know you are capable of anything."</p>
+
+<p>Gilberte, weeping, swore that Maurice had been
+misled by appearances, that she had never betrayed
+him with Arcade, that she had never betrayed him
+at all. And in a great gush of sincerity she persuaded
+herself that this was so.</p>
+
+<p>"You wrong yourself, Gilberte," replied the
+wounded man. "It did happen; it had to. And
+it is well. Gilberte, you were basely false to me
+with my best friend in this very room, and you
+were right. If you had not been we should not be
+here, reunited, all three of us, and I should not be
+at your side tasting the greatest happiness of my
+life. Oh, Gilberte, how wrong of you to deny a
+perfect and accomplished fact!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish, my friend," replied Gilberte, a
+little acidly, "I will not deny it. But it will only
+be to please you."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice made her sit down on the bed, and
+begged Arcade to be seated in the arm-chair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Arcade, "I was innocent.
+I became man. Straightway I did evil. Then I
+became better."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let us exaggerate things," said Maurice.
+"Let's have a game of bridge."</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely, however, had the patient seen three
+aces in his hand and called "no trumps," than his
+eyes began to swim, the cards slipped from his
+fingers, head fell heavily back on the pillow, and
+he complained of a violent headache. Almost
+immediately, Madame des Aubels went off to pay
+some calls, for she made a point of appearing in
+Society, in order that the calmness and confidence
+of her demeanour might give the lie to the various
+rumours that were current concerning her. Arcade
+saw her to the door, and, with a kiss, inhaled from
+her a delicate perfume which he brought back with
+him into the room where Maurice lay dozing.</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly content," murmured the latter,
+"that things should have happened as they have."</p>
+
+<p>"It was bound to be so," answered the Spirit.
+"All the other angels in revolt would have done as
+I did with Gilberte. 'Women,' saith the Apostle,
+'should pray with their heads covered, because of
+the angels,' and the Apostle speaks thus because he
+knows that the angels are disturbed when they look
+upon them and see that they are beautiful. No
+sooner do they touch the earth than they desire
+to embrace mortal women and fulfil their desire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+Their clasp is full of strength and sweetness, they
+hold the secret of those ineffable caresses which
+plunge the daughters of men into unfathomable
+depths of delight. Laying upon the lips of their
+happy victims a honey that burns like fire, making
+their veins flow with torrents of refreshing flames,
+they leave them raptured and undone."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop your clatter, you unclean beast," cried
+the wounded one.</p>
+
+<p>"One word more!" said the angel; "just one
+other word, my dear Maurice, to bear out what I
+say, and I will let you rest quietly. There's nothing
+like having sound references. In order to assure
+yourself that I am not deceiving you, Maurice,
+on this subject of the amorous embraces of angels
+and women, look up Justin, <i>Apologies</i>, I and II;
+Flavius Josephus, <i>Jewish Antiquities</i>, Book I,
+Chapter III; Athenagoras, <i>Concerning the Resurrection</i>;
+Lactantius, Book II, Chapter XV; Tertullian,
+<i>On the Veil of the Virgins</i>; Marcus of Ephesus
+in <i>Psellus</i>; Eusebius, <i>Pr&aelig;paratio Evangelica</i>,
+Book V, Chapter IV; Saint Ambrose, in his
+book on <i>Noah and the Ark</i>, Chapter V; Saint Augustine,
+in his <i>City of God</i>, Book XV, Chapter
+XXIII; Father Meldonat, the Jesuit, <i>Treatise on
+Demons</i>, page 248; Pierre Lebyer the King's Counsellor&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade, please, for pity's sake, be quiet; do,
+please do, and send this dog away," cried Maurice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+whose face was burning, and whose eyes were
+starting from his head; for in his delirium he thought
+he saw a black spaniel on his bed.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re, who was assiduous in
+every modish and patriotic practice, was reckoned,
+in the best French society, as one of the most gracious
+of the great ladies interested in good works. She
+came herself to ask for news of Maurice, and
+offered to nurse the wounded man. But at the
+vehement instigation of Madame des Aubels, Arcade
+shut the door in her face. Expressions of sympathy
+were showered upon Maurice. Piled on
+the salver, visiting cards displayed their innumerable
+little dogs' ears. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec
+was one of the first to show his manly sympathy at
+the flat in the Rue de Rome, and, holding out his
+loyal hand, asked young d'Esparvieu as one honourable
+man to another for twenty-five louis to pay a
+debt of honour.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, my dear Maurice, that is the sort of
+thing one could not ask of everybody."</p>
+
+<p>The same day Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan came to press
+his nephew's hand. The latter introduced Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my guardian angel, whose foot you
+thought so beautiful when you saw the print it
+had made on the tell-tale powder, uncle. He
+appeared to me last year in this very room. You
+don't believe it? Well, it is true, nevertheless."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then turning towards the Spirit he said:</p>
+
+<p>"What say you, Arcade? The Abb&eacute; Patouille,
+who is a great theologian and a good priest, does not
+believe that you are an angel; and Uncle Ga&eacute;tan,
+who doesn't know his catechism and hasn't a scrap
+of religion in him, doesn't think so either. They
+deny you, the pair of them; the one because he
+has faith, the other because he hasn't. After
+that you may be sure that your history, if ever it
+comes to be narrated, will scarcely appear credible.
+Moreover, the man that took it into his head to
+tell your story would not be a man of taste, and
+would not come in for much approval. For your
+story is not a pretty one. I love you, but I sit
+in judgment upon you, too. Since you fell into
+atheism, you have become an abominable scoundrel.
+A bad angel, a bad friend, a traitor, and a homicide,
+for I suppose it was to bring about my death that
+you sent that black spaniel between my legs on the
+duelling-ground."</p>
+
+<p>The angel shrugged his shoulders and, addressing
+Ga&eacute;tan, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! Monsieur, I am not surprised at finding
+little credit in your eyes. I have been told that you
+have fallen out with the Jud&aelig;o-Christian heaven,
+which is where I came from."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," answered Ga&eacute;tan, "my faith in
+Jehovah is not sufficiently strong to enable me to
+believe in his angels."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, he whom you call Jehovah is really
+a coarse and ignorant demiurge, and his name is
+Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, Monsieur, I am perfectly ready
+to believe in him. He is a narrow-minded ignoramus,
+is he? Then belief in his existence offers me no
+further difficulty. How is he getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Badly! We are going to lay him low next
+month."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make too sure of that, Monsieur. You
+remind me of my brother-in-law, Cuissart, who has
+been expecting to hear of the fall of the Republic
+for the past thirty years."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "Uncle
+Ga&eacute;tan thinks as I do. He knows you won't
+succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"And, pray, Monsieur Ga&eacute;tan, what makes you
+think I shall not succeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Ialdabaoth is still very powerful in this
+world, if he isn't in the other. In days gone by he
+used to be upheld by his priests, by those who
+believed in him. Now he is supported by those
+who do not believe in him, by the philosophers.
+A pedant of a fellow called Picrochole has recently
+come on the scene who wants to make a bankrupt of
+science in order to do a good turn to the Church.
+And just lately Pragmatism has been invented for
+the express purpose of gaining credit for religion
+in the minds of rationalists."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You have been studying Pragmatism?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I! I was frivolous once, and I went in for
+metaphysics. I read Hegel and Kant. I have
+become serious with years, and now I only trouble
+myself about things evident to the senses: what
+the eye can see or what the ear can hear. Man is
+summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the conversation went on until evening;
+it was marked by obscenities that would have
+brought a blush&mdash;I will not say to a cuirassier, for
+cuirassiers are frequently chaste, but even to a
+Parisienne.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette came to see his old pupil.
+When he entered the room the bust of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu seemed to take shape behind the
+librarian's bald head. He drew near the bed.
+In the place of blue curtains, mirrored wardrobe,
+and chimney-piece, there straightway came into
+view the heavy-laden bookcases of the room of the
+globes and busts, and the air was heavy with piles
+of papers, records, and files. Monsieur Sariette
+could not be dissociated from his library; one
+could not conceive of him or even see him apart
+from it. He himself was paler, more vague, more
+shadowy, and more a creature of the fancy than the
+fancies he evoked.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice, who had grown very quiet, was sensible
+of this mark of friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Monsieur Sariette,&mdash;you know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+Madame des Aubels. May I introduce Arcade to
+you,&mdash;my guardian angel. It was he who, while
+yet invisible, pillaged your library for two years,
+made you lose all desire for food and drink, and
+drove you to the verge of madness. He it was who
+moved piles of books from the room of the busts
+to my summer-house one day; under your very
+nose, he took away I know not what precious
+volumes; and was the cause of your falling on the
+staircase; another day he took a volume of Salomon
+Reinach's, and, forced to go out with me (for he
+never left me, as I have learnt later), he let the
+volume drop in the gutter of the Rue Princesse.
+Forgive him, Monsieur Sariette,&mdash;he had no pockets.
+He was invisible. I bitterly regret, Monsieur
+Sariette, that all your old books were not
+devoured by fire or swallowed up by a flood. They
+made my angel lose his head. He became man, and
+now knows neither faith nor obedience to laws. It is
+I, now, who am his guardian angel. God knows how
+it will all end."</p>
+
+<p>While listening to this speech, Monsieur Sariette's
+face took on an expression of infinite, irreparable,
+eternal sadness; the sadness of a mummy. Rising
+to take his leave, the sorrowful librarian murmured
+in Arcade's ear:</p>
+
+<p>"The poor child is very ill. He is delirious."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice called the old man back.</p>
+
+<p>"Do stay, Monsieur Sariette. You shall have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+game of bridge with us. Monsieur Sariette, listen
+to my advice. Do not do as I did&mdash;do not keep
+bad company. You will be lost. I shudder at the
+mere thought. Monsieur Sariette, do not go yet.
+I have something very important to ask you. When
+you come again, bring me a book on the truth of
+religion, so that I may study it. I must restore to
+my guardian-angel the faith which he has lost."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">wherein we are led to marvel at the readiness
+with which an honest man of timid and
+gentle nature can commit a horrible
+crime</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 74px;">
+<img src="images/imgp.jpg" width="74" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>ROFOUNDLY distressed by the
+dark utterances of young Maurice,
+Monsieur Sariette took a motor-omnibus,
+and went to see P&egrave;re Guinardon,
+his friend, his only friend, the
+one person in the whole world whom it gave him
+pleasure to see and hear. When Monsieur Sariette
+entered the shop in the Rue de Courcelles, Guinardon
+was alone, dozing in the depths of an antique arm-chair.
+His face, surrounded by his curly hair and
+luxuriant beard, was crimson in hue. Little violet
+filaments spread a network about the fleshy part of
+his nose, to which the wines of Burgundy had imparted
+a purple tint; for there was no longer any
+disguising the fact, P&egrave;re Guinardon drank. Two feet
+away from him, on the fair Octavie's work-table, a
+rose, all but withered, drooped in an empty vase,
+and in a basket a piece of embroidery was lying unfinished
+and neglected. The young Octavie's ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>sences
+from the shop were growing more and more
+frequent, and Monsieur Blancmesnil never called
+when she was not there. The reason of this was
+that they were meeting three times a week at five
+o'clock in a house close to the Champs &Eacute;lys&eacute;es. P&egrave;re
+Guinardon knew nothing of that. He did not know
+the full extent of his misfortune, but he suffered.</p></div>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette shook his old friend by the
+hand; but he did not enquire for the young Octavie,
+for he refused to recognise the connexion.
+He would sooner have talked about Z&eacute;phyrine,
+who had been so cruelly deserted, and whom he
+hoped the old man would make his lawful wife.
+But Monsieur Sariette was prudent. He contented
+himself with asking Guinardon how he was.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly well," was Guinardon's reply; but
+he felt ill, for either age and love-making had undermined
+his sturdy constitution, or else young
+Octavie's faithlessness had dealt her lover a fatal
+blow. "God be praised," he went on, "I still
+retain my powers of mind and body. I am chaste.
+Be chaste, Sariette. Chastity is strength."</p>
+
+<p>That evening P&egrave;re Guinardon had taken some
+specially valuable books out of the king-wood
+cabinet to show to a distinguished bibliophile,
+Monsieur Victor Meyer, and after the latter's
+departure he had dropped off to sleep without
+putting them back in their places. Books had
+an attraction for Monsieur Sariette, and seeing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+these particular volumes on the marble top of
+the cabinet, he began to examine them with interest.
+The first one he looked at was <i>La Pucelle</i>,
+in morocco, with the English continuation. Doubtless
+it pained his patriotic and Christian heart to
+admire its text and illustrations, but a good copy
+was always virtuous and pure in his sight. Continuing
+to chat very affectionately with Guinardon,
+he picked up, one by one, the books which the
+antiquary had, for one reason or another&mdash;binding,
+illustrations, distinguished ownership, or scarcity&mdash;added
+to his stock.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a glorious shout of joy and love broke
+from his lips. He had discovered the <i>Lucretius</i> of
+the Prior de Vend&ocirc;me, his <i>Lucretius</i>, and he was
+clasping it to his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Once again I behold you," he sighed, as he
+pressed it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>At first P&egrave;re Guinardon could not quite make
+out what his old friend was talking about; but
+when the latter declared to him that the volume
+was from the d'Esparvieu collection, that it belonged
+to him, Sariette, and that he was going to take it
+away without further ado, the antiquary completely
+woke up, got on his legs, declared emphatically that
+the book belonged to him, Guinardon, by right of
+true and lawful purchase, and that he would not
+part with it unless he got five thousand francs for
+it cash down.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't take in what I am telling you,"
+answered Sariette. "The book belongs to the
+d'Esparvieu library; I must restore it to its
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pas de &ccedil;a, Lisette</i>"&mdash;&mdash; hummed Guinardon.</p>
+
+<p>"The book belongs to me, I tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are crazy, my good Sariette!"</p>
+
+<p>And noticing that, as a matter of fact, the librarian
+had a wandering look in his eye, he took
+the book from him, and tried to change the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen, Sariette, that the rascals are
+going to rip up the Palais Mazarin, and cover up
+the very heart and centre of the Old Town, the
+finest and most venerable place in the whole of
+Paris, with the deuce knows what works of art of
+theirs? They are worse than the Vandals, for the
+Vandals, although they destroyed the buildings of
+antiquity, did not replace them with hideous and
+disgusting erections and atrocious bridges like the
+Pont d'Alexandre. And your poor Rue Garanci&egrave;re,
+Sariette, has fallen a prey to the barbarians. What
+have they done with the pretty bronze mask of the
+Palace fountain?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Sariette never listened to a word of all
+this.</p>
+
+<p>"Guinardon, you have not understood me. Now
+listen. This book belongs to the d'Esparvieu library.
+It was taken away, how or by whom I know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+not. Dreadful and mysterious things went on in
+that library. But, anyhow, the book was stolen.
+I need scarcely appeal to your sentiments of scrupulous
+probity, my dear friend. You would not
+like to be regarded as the receiver of stolen goods.
+Give me the book. I will return it to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu, who will duly requite you; of that
+you may be sure. Rely on his generosity, and you
+will be acting like the downright good fellow that
+you are."</p>
+
+<p>The antiquary smiled a bitter smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Catch me relying on the generosity of that
+old curmudgeon of a d'Esparvieu. Why, he'd
+skin a flea to get its coat. Look at me, Sariette,
+old boy, and tell me if I look like a dunderhead.
+You know perfectly well that d'Esparvieu refused
+to give fifty francs in a second-hand shop for a
+portrait of Alexandre d'Esparvieu, the founder of
+the family, by Hersent, and that consequently the
+founder of the family has had to remain on the
+Boulevard Montparnasse, propped against a Jew
+hawker's stall, just opposite the cemetery, where all
+the dogs of the neighbourhood come and make
+water on him. Catch me trusting to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's liberality! You've got some bright
+ideas in your head, you have!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Guinardon, I myself will undertake
+to pay you any indemnity that a board of arbitrators
+may fix upon. Do you hear?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now don't go and do the handsome for people
+who won't give you so much as a thank-you. This
+man, d'Esparvieu, has taken your knowledge,
+your energies, your whole life for a salary that
+even a valet wouldn't accept. So leave that idea
+alone. In any case it is too late. The book is
+sold."</p>
+
+<p>"Sold? To whom?" asked Sariette in agonized
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter? You'll never see it
+again. You'll hear no more about it; it's off to
+America."</p>
+
+<p>"To America! The <i>Lucretius</i> with the arms of
+Philippe de Vend&ocirc;me and marginalia in Voltaire's
+own hand! My <i>Lucretius</i> off to America!"</p>
+
+<p>P&egrave;re Guinardon began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Sariette, you remind me of the Chevalier
+des Grieux when he learns that his darling mistress
+is to be transported to the Mississippi. 'My
+dear mistress going to the Mississippi!' says he."</p>
+
+<p>"No! no!" answered Sariette, very pale, "this
+book shall not go to America. It shall return, as it
+ought, to the d'Esparvieu library. Let me have it,
+Guinardon."</p>
+
+<p>The antiquary made a second attempt to put
+an end to an interview that now looked as if it might
+take an ugly turn.</p>
+
+<p>"My good Sariette, you haven't told me what
+you think of my Greco. You never so much as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+glanced at it. It is an admirable piece of work all
+the same."</p>
+
+<p>And Guinardon, putting the picture in a good
+light, went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Now just look at Saint Francis here, the poor
+man of the Lord, the brother of Jesus. See how his
+fuliginous body rises heavenward like the smoke
+from an agreeable sacrifice, like the sacrifice of
+Abel."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the book, Guinardon," said Sariette,
+without turning his head; "give me the book."</p>
+
+<p>The blood suddenly flew to P&egrave;re Guinardon's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough of it," he shouted, as red as a
+turkey-cock, the veins standing out on his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>And he dropped the <i>Lucretius</i> into his jacket
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Straightway old Sariette flew at the antiquary,
+assailed him with sudden fury, and, frail and
+weakly as he was, butted him back into young
+Octavie's arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>Guinardon, in furious amazement, belched forth
+the most horrible abuse on the old maniac and
+gave him a punch that sent him staggering back
+four paces against the <i>Coronation of the Virgin</i>, by
+Fra Angelico, which fell down with a crash. Sariette
+returned to the charge, and tried to drag the book
+out of the pocket in which it lay hid. This time
+P&egrave;re Guinardon would really have floored him had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+he not been blinded by the blood that was rushing
+to his head, and hit sideways at the work-table of his
+absent mistress. Sariette fastened himself on to his
+bewildered adversary, held him down in the arm-chair,
+and with his little bony hands clutched him
+by the neck, which, red as it was already, became
+a deep crimson. Guinardon struggled to get free,
+but the little fingers, feeling the mass of soft, warm
+flesh about them, embedded themselves in it with
+delicious ecstasy. Some unknown force made them
+hold fast to their prey. Guinardon's throat began
+to rattle, saliva was oozing from one corner of his
+mouth. His enormous frame quivered now and
+again beneath the grasp; but the tremors grew
+more and more intermittent and spasmodic. At
+last they ceased. The murderous hands did not
+let go their hold. Sariette had to make a violent
+effort to loose them. His temples were buzzing.
+Nevertheless he could hear the rain falling outside,
+muffled steps going past on the pavement, newspaper
+men shouting in the distance. He could see umbrellas
+passing along in the dim light. He drew
+the book from the dead man's pocket and fled.</p>
+
+<p>The fair Octavie did not go back to the shop
+that night. She went to sleep in a little entresol
+underneath the bric-a-brac stores which Monsieur
+de Blancmesnil had recently bought for her in this
+same Rue de Courcelles. The workman whose
+task it was to shut up the shop found the antiquary's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+body still warm. He called Madame Lenain, the
+concierge, who laid Guinardon on the couch, lit
+a couple of candles, put a sprig of box in a saucer
+of holy water, and closed the dead man's eyes.
+The doctor who was called in to certify the death
+ascribed it to apoplexy.</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;phyrine, informed of what had happened by
+Madame Lenain, hastened to the house, and sat up
+all night with the body. The dead man looked as if
+he were sleeping. In the flickering light of the
+candles El Greco's Saint mounted upwards like a
+wreath of smoke, the gold of the Primitives gleamed
+in the shadows. Near the deathbed a little woman
+by Baudouin was plainly discernible giving herself
+a douche. All through the night Z&eacute;phyrine's lamentations
+could be heard fifty yards away.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead, he's dead!" she kept saying. "My
+friend, my divinity, my all, my love&mdash;&mdash; But
+no! he is not dead, he moves. It is I, Michel;
+I, your Z&eacute;phyrine. Awake, hear me! Answer me;
+I love you; if ever I caused you pain, forgive me.
+Dead! dead! O my God! See how beautiful he is.
+He was so good, so clever, so kind. My God!
+My God! My God! If I had been there he would
+not now be lying dead. Michel! Michel!"</p>
+
+<p>When morning came she was silent. They
+thought she had fallen asleep. She was dead too.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which describes how nectaire's flute was
+heard in the tavern of clodomir</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgm.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>ADAME DE LA VERDELI&Egrave;RE
+having failed to force an <i>entr&eacute;e</i>
+as sick-nurse, returned after several
+days had elapsed,&mdash;during the absence
+of Madame des Aubels,&mdash;to
+ask Maurice d'Esparvieu for his subscription to
+the French churches. Arcade led her to the bedside
+of the convalescent. Maurice whispered in the
+angel's ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Traitor, deliver me from this ogress immediately,
+or you will be answerable for the evil which
+will soon befall."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Be calm," said Arcade, with a confident air.</p>
+
+<p>After the conventional complimentary flourishes,
+Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re signed to Maurice to dismiss
+the angel. Maurice feigned not to understand.
+And Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re disclosed the ostensible
+reason of her visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Our churches," she said, "our beloved country
+churches,&mdash;what is to become of them?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Arcade gazed at her angelically and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"They will disappear, Madame; they will fall
+into ruin. And what a pity! I shall be inconsolable.
+The church amid the villagers' cottages is like the
+hen amidst her chickens."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so!" exclaimed Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re
+with a delighted smile. "It is just like that."</p>
+
+<p>"And the spires, Madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Monsieur, the spires!..."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the spires, Madame, that stick up into
+the skies towards the little Cherubim, like so many
+syringes."</p>
+
+<p>Madame de la Verdeli&egrave;re incontinently left the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>That same day Monsieur l'Abb&eacute; Patouille came
+to offer the wounded man good counsel and consolation.
+He exhorted him to break with his bad
+companions and to be reconciled to his family.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a picture of the sorrowful father, the
+mother in tears, ready to receive their long-lost
+child with open arms. Renouncing with manly
+effort a life of profligacy and deluding joys, Maurice
+would recover his peace and strength of mind, he
+would free himself from devouring chimeras, and
+shake off the Evil Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Young d'Esparvieu thanked Abb&eacute; Patouille for
+all his kindness, and made a protestation of his religious
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," said he, "have I had such faith. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+never have I been in such need of it. Just imagine,
+Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;, I have to teach my guardian
+angel his catechism all over again, for he has quite
+forgotten it!"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur l'Abb&eacute; Patouille heaved a deep sigh,
+and exhorted his dear child to pray, there being
+no other resource but prayer for a soul assailed by
+the Devil.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;," asked Maurice, "may I
+introduce my guardian angel to you? Do stay
+a moment; he has gone to get me some cigarettes."</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy child!"</p>
+
+<p>And Abb&eacute; Patouille's fat cheeks drooped in
+token of affliction. But almost immediately they
+plumped up again, as a sign of light-heartedness.
+For in his heart there was matter for rejoicing.
+Public opinion was improving. The Jacobins, the
+Freemasons, the Coalitionists were everywhere
+in disgrace. The Smart Set led the way. The
+Acad&eacute;mie Fran&ccedil;aise was of the right way of thinking.
+The number of Christian schools was increasing
+by leaps and bounds. The young men
+of the Quartier Latin were submitting to the Church,
+and the &Eacute;cole Normale exhaled the perfume of
+the seminary. The Cross was gaining the day;
+but money was wanted,&mdash;more money, always
+money.</p>
+
+<p>After six weeks' rest, Maurice was allowed by
+his doctor to take a drive. He wore his arm in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+a sling. His mistress and his friend went with
+him. They drove to the Bois, and took a gentle
+pleasure in looking upon the grass and the trees.
+They smiled on everything and everything smiled
+on them. As Arcade had said, their faults had
+made them better. By the unlooked-for ways of
+jealousy and anger, Maurice had attained to calm
+and kindliness. He still loved Gilberte and he
+loved her with an indulgent love. The angel
+still desired her as much as ever, but having once
+possessed her, his desire had lost the sting of
+curiosity. Gilberte forbore trying to please, and
+thereby pleased the more. They drank milk at
+the Cascade, and found it good. They were all
+three innocent. Arcade forgot the injustice of
+the old tyrant of the world. But he was soon to
+be reminded of it.</p>
+
+<p>On entering his friend's house, he found Zita
+awaiting him, looking like a statue in ivory and
+gold.</p>
+
+<p>"You excite my pity," she said to him. "The
+day is at hand the like of which has never dawned
+since the beginning of Time, and perhaps will
+never dawn again before the Sun enters with all
+its train into the constellation of Hercules. We
+are on the eve of surprising Ialdabaoth in his palace
+of porphyry, and you, who are burning to deliver
+the heavens, who were so eager to enter in
+triumph into your emancipated country,&mdash;you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+suddenly forget your noble purpose and fall asleep
+in the arms of the daughters of men. What pleasure
+can you find in intercourse with these unclean little
+animals, composed, as they are, of elements so
+unstable that they may be said to be in a state of
+constant evanescence? O Arcade! I was indeed
+right to distrust you. You are but an intellectual;
+you do but feel idle curiosity. You are incapable
+of action."</p>
+
+<p>"You misjudge me, Zita," replied the angel.
+"It is the nature of the sons of heaven to love the
+daughters of men. Corruptible though it be,
+the material part of women and of flowers charms
+the senses none the less. But not one of these
+little animals can make me forget my hatred and
+my love, and I am ready to rise up against Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p>Zita expressed her satisfaction at seeing him in
+this resolute mood. She urged him to pursue the
+accomplishment of this vast undertaking with
+undiminished ardour. Nothing must be hurried
+or deferred.</p>
+
+<p>"A great action, Arcade, is made up of a multitude
+of small ones; the most majestic whole is composed
+of a thousand minute details. Let us neglect
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>She had come to take him to a meeting where
+his presence was required. They were to take a
+census of the revolutionaries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She added but one word:</p>
+
+<p>"Nectaire will be there."</p>
+
+<p>When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking
+in attraction. She failed to please him because
+she was perfectly beautiful and because true
+beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita
+inspired him with antipathy when he learned that
+she was an angel in revolt and that she had come
+to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>The poor child tried to retain his companion
+by all the means that his wit and the circumstances
+afforded him. If his guardian angel would only
+remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent
+boxing-match, to a "revue" where he would witness
+the apotheosis of Poincar&eacute;, or, lastly, to a
+certain house he knew of where he would behold
+women remarkable for their beauty, talents, vices,
+or deformities. But the angel would not allow
+himself to be tempted, and said he was going with
+Zita.</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"To plot the conquest of the skies."</p>
+
+<p>"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of&mdash;&mdash; but
+there, I proved to you that it was neither
+possible nor desirable."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Maurice."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going? Well, I will accompany
+you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade
+and Zita all the way to Clodomir's restaurant at
+Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an arbour
+in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Istar and Th&eacute;ophile were already there,
+with a little creature who looked like a child, and
+was, in fact, a Japanese angel.</p>
+
+<p>"We are only waiting for Nectaire," said
+Zita.</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment the old gardener noiselessly
+appeared. He took his seat, and his dog lay down
+at his feet. French cooking is the best in the world.
+It is a glory that will transcend all others when
+humanity has grown wise enough to put the spit
+above the sword. Clodomir served the angels,
+and the mortal who was with them, with a soup
+made of cabbages and bacon, a loin of pork and
+kidneys cooked in wine, thereby proving himself
+a real Montmartre cook, and showing that he had
+not been spoilt by the Americans, who corrupt the
+most excellent <i>chefs</i> of the City of Restaurants.</p>
+
+<p>Clodomir brought forth some Bordeaux, which,
+though unrecorded among the renowned vintages
+of M&eacute;doc, gave evidence by its choice and delicate
+aroma of the high nobility of its origin. We must
+not omit to chronicle that, after this wine and
+many others had been drunk, the cellarman, in
+solemn state, produced a Burgundy choice and
+rare, full-bodied yet not heavy, generous yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+delicate, rich with the true Burgundian mellowness,
+a noble and, withal, a somewhat heady wine,
+that brought delight alike to mind and sense.</p>
+
+<p>"Hail to thee, Dionysus, greatest of the Gods!"
+cried old Nectaire, raising his glass on high. "I
+drink to thee who wilt restore the Golden Age,
+and give again to mortal men, who will become
+heroes as of old, the grapes which the Lesbians
+used to cull, long since, from the vines of Methymna;
+who wilt restore the vineyards of Thasus, the
+white clusters of Lake Mareotis, the storehouses
+of Falernus, the vines of the Tmolus, and the wine
+of Phanae, of all wines the king. And the juice
+thereof shall be divine, and, as in old Silenus' day,
+men shall grow drunk with Wisdom and with
+Love."</p>
+
+<p>When the coffee was served, Prince Istar, Zita,
+Arcade, and the Japanese angel took it in turns to
+give an account of the forces assembled against
+Ialdabaoth. Angels, in exchanging eternal bliss
+for the sufferings of an earthly life, grow in intelligence,
+acquire the means of going astray and
+the faculty of self-contradiction. Consequently
+their meetings, like those of men, are tumultuous
+and confused. Did one of them deal in figures,
+the others immediately called them in question.
+They could not add one number to another without
+quarrelling, and arithmetic itself, subjected to
+passion, lost its certitude. The Ker&ucirc;b, who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+brought with him the pious Th&eacute;ophile, waxed
+indignant when he heard the musician praising
+the Lord, and rained down such blows on his head
+as would have felled an ox. But the head of
+a musician is harder than a bucranium, and the
+blows which Th&eacute;ophile received did not avail to
+modify that angel's notion of divine providence.
+Arcade, having at great length set up his scientific
+idealism in opposition to Zita's pragmatism, the
+beautiful archangel told him that he argued
+badly.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed
+young Maurice's guardian angel. "I argue, like
+you, in the language of human beings. And what
+is human language but the cry of the beasts of the
+forests or the mountains, complicated and corrupted
+by arrogant anthropoids. How then,
+Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a
+collection of angry or plaintive sounds like that?
+Angels do not reason at all; men, being superior
+to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not
+mention the professors who think to define the
+absolute with the aid of cries that they have inherited
+from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials,
+and reptiles, their ancestors! It is a
+colossal joke! How it would amuse the demiurge,
+if he had any brains!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener
+was silent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play
+to us on your flute, if you are not afraid that the
+Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their depths
+thereby."</p>
+
+<p>Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice
+lighted a cigarette. The flame burnt brightly
+for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars
+into the shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire
+sang of the flame on his divine flute. The silvery
+voice soared aloft and sang:</p>
+
+<p>"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled
+its destiny in less than a minute. Suns and planets
+were formed therein. Venus Urania apportioned
+the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite
+spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros&mdash;the first of
+the gods,&mdash;plants, animals, and thoughts sprang
+into being. In the twenty seconds which hurried
+by betwixt the life and death of those worlds,
+civilizations were unfolded, and empires sank in
+long decline. Mothers shed tears, and songs of
+love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward
+to the silent skies.</p>
+
+<p>"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe
+lasted as long as this one&mdash;whereof we see a few
+atoms glittering above our heads&mdash;has lasted or will
+last. They are, one no less than the other, but a
+gleam in the Infinite."</p>
+
+<p>As the clear, pure notes welled up into the
+charmed air, the earth melted into a soft mist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits, the
+Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and
+wide. Orion's belt was shattered; the Pole Star
+forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose incandescent
+flame had lit up the far horizon, grew
+blue, then red, flickered, and suddenly died out. The
+shaken constellations formed new signs which
+were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations
+the magic flute had compressed into one brief
+moment the life and the movement of this universe
+which seems unchanging and eternal both to men
+and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed
+their immemorial aspect. Nectaire had vanished.
+Clodomir asked his guests if they were pleased
+with the cabbage soup which, in order that it
+might be strong, had been kept simmering for
+twenty-four hours on the fire, and he sang
+the praises of the Beaujolais which they had
+drunk.</p>
+
+<p>The night was mild. Arcade, accompanied by
+his guardian angel, Th&eacute;ophile, Prince Istar, and the
+Japanese angel, escorted Zita home.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">how a dreadful crime plunges paris into a
+state of terror</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgt.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>HE city was asleep. Their footsteps
+rang loudly on the deserted pavement.
+Having reached the corner
+of the Rue Feutrier, half-way up
+Montmartre, the little company
+halted before the dwelling of the beautiful angel.
+Arcade was talking about the Thrones and Dominations
+with Zita, who, her finger on the bell,
+could not make up her mind to ring. Prince
+Istar was tracing the mechanism of a new sort of
+bomb on the pavement with the end of his stick, and
+bellowed so loudly that he woke the sleeping citizens
+and stirred into activity the amatory passions
+of the neighbouring Pasipha&euml;s. Th&eacute;ophile
+was singing the barcarole from the second act of
+<i>Aline, Queen of Golconda</i> at the top of his voice.
+Maurice, his arm in a sling, was fencing left-handed
+with the Japanese, striking sparks from the pavement,
+and crying "A hit! a hit!" in a piercing
+voice.</p></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Inspector Grolle at the corner of
+the next street was dreaming. He had the bearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+of a Roman legionary and displayed all the characteristics
+of that proudly servile race, who, ever
+since men first took to building cities, have been
+the mainstay of Empires and the support of ruling
+houses. Inspector Grolle was very strong, but
+very tired. He suffered from an arduous profession
+and from lack of food. He was a man devoted to
+duty, but still a man, and he was unable to resist
+the wiles, the charms, and the blandishments of
+the gay ladies whom he met in swarms in the
+shadows along the empty streets and round about
+pieces of waste ground; he loved them. He loved
+like a soldier under arms. It tired him, but courage
+conquered fatigue. Though he had not yet
+reached the middle of Life's way, he longed for
+sweet repose and peaceful country pursuits.
+At the corner of the Rue Muller, on this mild
+night, he stood lost in thought. He was dreaming
+of the house where he was born, of the little
+olive wood, of his father's bit of ground, of his
+old mother, bent with long and heavy labour,
+whom he would never see again. Roused from
+his reverie by the nocturnal tumult, Inspector
+Grolle turned the corner of the street, and looked
+rather unfavourably at the band of loiterers,
+wherein his social instinct suspected enemies of
+law and order. He was patient and resolute.
+After a lengthy silence, he said, with awe-inspiring
+calm:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Move on, there!"</p>
+
+<p>But Maurice and the Japanese angel were fencing
+and heard nothing. The musician heard nothing
+but his own melodies. Prince Istar was absorbed
+in the explanation of explosive formul&aelig;. Zita
+was discussing with Arcade the greatest enterprise
+that had ever been conceived since the solar system
+issued from its original nebula,&mdash;and thus they all
+remained unconscious of their surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"Move on, I tell you!" repeated Inspector
+Grolle.</p>
+
+<p>This time the angels heard the solemn word of
+warning, but either through indifference or contempt,
+they neglected to obey, and continued their
+talk, their songs, and their cries.</p>
+
+<p>"So you want to be taken up, do you?" shouted
+Inspector Grolle, clapping his great hand on Prince
+Istar's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The Ker&ucirc;b was indignant at this vile contact,
+and with one blow from his formidable fist sent
+the Inspector flying into the gutter. But Constable
+Fesandet was already running to his comrade's
+aid, and they both fell upon the Prince, whom
+they belaboured with mechanic fury, and whom,
+notwithstanding his strength and weight, they
+would perchance have dragged all bleeding to the
+police station, had not the Japanese angel overset
+them one after the other without effort, and reduced
+them to writhing and shrieking in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+mud, before Maurice, Arcade, and Zita had time
+to intervene. As to the angelic musician, he stood
+apart trembling, and invoked the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment two bakers who were kneading
+their dough in a neighbouring cellar ran out at the
+noise, in their white aprons, stripped to the waist.
+With an instinctive feeling for social solidarity
+they took the side of the downfallen police. Th&eacute;ophile
+conceived a just fear at the sight of them,
+and fled away; they caught him and were about
+to hand him over to the guardians of the peace,
+when Arcade and Zita tore him from their hands.
+The fight continued, unequal and terrible, between
+the two angels and the two bakers. Like an
+athlete of Lysippus in strength and beauty, Arcade
+smothered his heavy adversary in his arms. The
+beautiful archangel drove her dagger into the
+baker who had attacked her. A dark stream of
+blood flowed down over his hairy chest, and the
+two white-capped supporters of the law sank to
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Constable Fesandet had fainted face downwards
+in the gutter. But Inspector Grolle, who had got
+up, blew a blast on his whistle loud enough to
+be heard at the neighbouring police-station, and
+sprang upon young Maurice, who, having but
+one arm with which to defend himself, fired his
+revolver with his left hand at the inspector, who
+put his hand to his heart, staggered, and dropped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+down. He gave a long sigh, and the shadows of
+eternity darkened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, windows opened one by one, and
+heads looked out on the street. A sound of heavy
+steps approached. Two policemen on bicycles
+debouched upon the street. Thereupon Prince
+Istar flung a bomb which shook the ground, put
+out the gas, shattered some of the houses, and
+enveloped the flight of young Maurice and the
+angels in a dense smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade and Maurice came to the conclusion
+that the safest thing to do after this adventure
+was to return to the little flat in the Rue de Rome.
+They would certainly not be sought for immediately
+and probably not at all, the bomb thrown by the
+Ker&ucirc;b having fortunately wiped out all witnesses
+of the affair. They fell asleep towards dawn,
+and they had not yet awoke at ten o'clock in the
+morning when the concierge brought their tea.
+While eating his toast and butter and slice of ham,
+young d'Esparvieu remarked to the angel:</p>
+
+<p>"I used to think that a murder was something
+very extraordinary. Well, I was mistaken. It is
+the simplest, the most natural action in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"And of most ancient tradition," replied the
+angel. "For long centuries it was both usual and
+necessary for man to kill and despoil his fellows.
+It is still recommended in warfare. It is also
+honourable to attempt human life in certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+definite circumstances, and people approved when
+you wanted to assassinate me, Maurice, because
+it appeared to you that I had been intimate with
+your mistress. But killing a police-inspector is
+not the action of a man of fashion."</p>
+
+<p>"Be silent," exclaimed Maurice, "be silent,
+scoundrel! I killed the poor Inspector instinctively,
+not knowing what I was doing. I am grieved to
+my heart about it. But it is not I, it is you who
+are the guilty one; you who are the murderer.
+It was you who lured me along this path of revolt
+and violence which leads to the pit. You have
+been my undoing. You have sacrificed my peace
+of mind, my happiness, to your pride and your
+wickedness, and all in vain; for I warn you, Arcade,
+you will not succeed in what you are undertaking."</p>
+
+<p>The concierge brought in the newspapers. On
+seeing them Maurice grew pale. They announced
+the outrage in the Rue de Ramey in huge headlines:</p>
+
+<p>"An Inspector killed&mdash;Two cyclist policemen
+and two bakers seriously wounded&mdash;Three houses
+blown up, numerous victims."</p>
+
+<p>Maurice let the paper drop, and said in a weak,
+plaintive voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Arcade, why did you not slay me in the little
+garden at Versailles amidst the roses, to the song
+of the blackbirds?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the
+public squares, and in the crowded streets, house-wives,
+string-bag in hand, grew pale as they listened
+to the story of the crime, and consigned the perpetrators
+to the most dreadful punishment. Shop-keepers,
+standing at the doors of their shops, put
+it all down to the anarchists, syndicalists, socialists,
+and radicals, and demanded that special measures
+should be taken against them.</p>
+
+<p>The more thoughtful people recognized the
+handiwork of the Jew and the German, and demanded
+the expulsion of all aliens. Many vaunted
+the ways of America and advocated lynching.
+In addition to the printed news sinister rumours
+became current. Explosions had been heard at
+various places; everywhere bombs had been
+discovered; everywhere individuals, taken for
+malefactors, had been struck down by the popular
+arm and given up to justice, torn to ribbons. On
+the Place de la R&eacute;publique a drunkard who was
+crying "Down with the police" was torn to pieces
+by the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The President of the Council and Minister of
+Justice held long conferences with the Prefect
+of Police, and they agreed to take immediate action.
+In order to allay the excitement of the
+Parisians, they arrested five or six hooligans out of
+the thirty thousand which the Capital contains.
+The chief of the Russian police, believing he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+recognised in this attack the methods of the Nihilists,
+demanded, on behalf of his Government, that a
+dozen refugees should be given up. The demand
+was immediately granted. Proceedings were also
+taken for certain individuals to be extradited to ensure
+the safety of the King of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>On learning of these energetic measures, Paris
+breathed once more, and the evening papers congratulated
+the Government. There was excellent
+news of the wounded. They were out of danger
+and identified as their assailants all who were brought
+before them.</p>
+
+<p>True, Inspector Grolle was dead; but two Sisters
+of Mercy kept vigil at his side, and the President
+of the Council came and laid the Cross of Honour
+on the breast of this victim of duty.</p>
+
+<p>At night there were panics. In the Avenue de
+la R&eacute;volte the police, noticing a travelling acrobat's
+caravan on a piece of waste ground, took it for
+the retreat of a band of robbers. They whistled
+for help, and when they were a goodly number,
+attacked the caravan. Some worthy citizens joined
+them; fifteen thousand revolver-shots were fired,
+the caravan was blown up with dynamite, and
+among the d&eacute;bris they found the corpse of a monkey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">which contains an account of the arrest of
+bouchotte and maurice, of the disaster
+which befell the d'esparvieu library, and
+of the departure of the angels</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 73px;">
+<img src="images/imgm.jpg" width="73" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>AURICE D'ESPARVIEU passed a
+terrible night. At the least sound
+he seized his revolver that he
+might not fall alive into the hands
+of justice. When morning came
+he snatched the newspapers from the hands of the
+concierge, devoured them greedily, and gave a
+cry of joy; he had just read that Inspector Grolle
+having been taken to the Morgue for the post-mortem,
+the police-surgeons had only discovered
+bruises and contusions of a very superficial nature,
+and stated that death had been brought about by
+the rupture of an aneurism of the aorta.</p></div>
+
+<p>"You see, Arcade," he exclaimed triumphantly;
+"you see I am not an assassin. I am innocent.
+I could never have imagined how extremely agreeable
+it is to be innocent."</p>
+
+<p>Then he grew thoughtful, and&mdash;no unusual
+phenomenon&mdash;reflection dissipated his gaiety.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am innocent,&mdash;but there is no disguising the
+fact," he said, shaking his head, "I am one of
+a band of malefactors. I live with miscreants.
+You are in your right place there, Arcade, for
+you are deceitful, cruel, and perverse. But I come
+of good family and have received an excellent education,
+and I blush for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I also," said Arcade, "have received an excellent
+education."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Arcade, no; you never had any education.
+If good principles had been inculcated into you,
+you would still hold them. Such principles are
+never lost. In my childhood I learnt to revere
+my family, my country, my religion. I have not
+forgotten the lesson and I never shall. Do you
+know what shocks me most in you? It is not
+your perversity, your cruelty, your black ingratitude;
+it is not your agnosticism, which may be borne
+with at a pinch; it is not your scepticism, though
+it is very much out of date (for since the national
+awakening there is no longer any scepticism in
+France);&mdash;no, what disgusts me in you is your
+lack of taste, the bad style of your ideas, the inelegance
+of your doctrines. You think like an
+intellectual, you speak like a freethinker, you have
+theories which reek of radicalism and Combeism
+and all ignoble systems. Get along with you! you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+disgust me. Arcade, my old friend, Arcade, my
+dear angel, Arcade, my beloved child, listen to
+your guardian angel! Yield to my prayers, renounce
+your mad ideas; become good, simple, innocent,
+and happy once more. Put on your hat, come
+with me to N&ocirc;tre-Dame. We will say a prayer and
+burn a candle together."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile public opinion was still active in
+the matter; the leading papers, the organs of the
+national awakening, in articles of real elevation
+and real depth, unravelled the philosophy of this
+monstrous attack which was revolting to the conscience.
+They discovered the real origin, the indirect
+but effective cause in the revolutionary
+doctrines which had been disseminated unchecked,
+in the weakening of social ties, the relaxing of
+moral discipline, in the repeated appeals to every
+appetite, to every greedy desire. It would be
+needful, so as to cut down the evil at its root, to
+repudiate as quickly as possible all such chimeras
+and Utopias as syndicalism, the income-tax, etc.,
+etc., etc. Many newspapers, and these not the
+least important, pointed out that the recrudescence
+of crime was but the natural fruit of impiety
+and concluded that the salvation of society lay
+in an unanimous and sincere return to religion.
+On the Sunday which followed the crime the congregations
+in the churches were noticed to be unusually
+large.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judge Salneuve, who was entrusted with the
+task of investigation, first examined the persons
+arrested by the police, and lost his way among
+attractive but illusory clues; however, the report
+of the detective Montremain, which was laid
+before him, put him on the right road, and soon
+led him to recognise the miscreants of La Jonch&egrave;re
+as the authors of the crime of the Rue de Ramey.
+He ordered a search to be made for Arcade and
+Zita, and issued a warrant against Prince Istar,
+on whom the detectives laid hands as he was leaving
+Bouchotte's, where he had been depositing
+some bombs of new design. The Ker&ucirc;b, on learning
+the detectives' intentions, smiled broadly and
+asked them if they had a powerful motor-car.
+On their replying that they had one at the door,
+he assured them that was all he wanted. Thereupon
+he felled the two detectives on the stairs,
+walked up to the waiting car, flung the chauffeur
+under a motor-'bus which was opportunely passing,
+and seized the steering wheel under the eyes of
+the terrified crowd.</p>
+
+<p>That same evening Monsieur Jeancourt, the
+Police Magistrate, entered Th&eacute;ophile's rooms just
+when Bouchotte was swallowing a raw egg to
+clear her voice, for she was to sing her new song,
+"They haven't got any in Germany," at the "National
+Eldorado" that evening. The musician
+was absent. Bouchotte received the Magistrate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+and received him with a hauteur which intensified
+the simplicity of her attire; Bouchotte was <i>en d&eacute;shabille</i>.
+The worthy Magistrate seized the score
+of <i>Aline, Queen of Golconda</i>, and the love-letters
+which the singer carefully preserved in the drawer
+of the table by her bed, for she was an orderly
+young woman. He was about to withdraw when
+he espied a cupboard, which he opened with a
+careless air, and found machines capable of blowing
+up half Paris, and a pair of large white wings,
+whose nature and use appeared inexplicable to
+him. Bouchotte was invited to complete her
+toilette, and, in spite of her cries, was taken off
+to the police-station.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Salneuve was indefatigable. After
+the examination of the papers seized in Bouchotte's
+house, and acting on the information of Montremain,
+he issued a warrant for the arrest of young
+d'Esparvieu, which was executed on Wednesday,
+the 27th May, at seven o'clock in the morning,
+with great discretion. For three days Maurice
+had neither slept nor eaten, loved nor lived. He
+had not a moment's doubt as to the nature of
+the matutinal visit. At the sight of the police
+magistrate a strange calm fell on him. Arcade
+had not returned to sleep in the flat. Maurice
+begged the magistrate to wait for him, dressed
+with care, and then accompanied the magistrate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+a calmness of mind which was barely disturbed when
+the door of the Conciergerie closed on him. Alone
+in his cell, he climbed upon the table to look out.
+His tranquillity was due to his weariness of spirit,
+to his numbed senses, and to the fact that he no
+longer stood in fear of arrest. His misfortune
+endowed him with superior wisdom. He felt he
+had fallen into a state of grace. He did not
+think too highly or too humbly of himself, but
+left his cause in the hands of God. With no desire
+to cover up his faults, which he would not hide
+even from himself, he addressed himself in mind
+to Providence, to point out that if he had fallen
+into disorder and rebellion it was to lead his erring
+angel back into the straight path. He stretched
+himself on the couch and slept in peace.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing of the arrest of a music-hall singer
+and of a young man of fashion, both Paris and
+the provinces felt painful surprise. Deeply stirred
+by the tragic accounts which the leading newspapers
+were bringing out, the general idea was
+that the sort of people the authorities ought to
+bring to justice were ferocious anarchists, all reeking
+and dripping from deeds of blood and arson;
+but they failed to understand what the world
+of Art and Fashion should have to do with
+such things. At this news, which he was one of
+the last to hear, the President of the Council
+and Keeper of the Seals started up in his chair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+The Sphinxes that adorned it were less terrible
+than he, and in the throes of his angry meditation
+he cut the mahogany of his imperial table with his
+penknife, after the manner of Napoleon. And
+when Judge Salneuve, whose attendance he had
+commanded, appeared before him, the President
+flung his penknife in the grate, as Louis XIV flung
+his cane out of the window in the presence of Lauzun;
+and it cost him a supreme effort to master himself
+and to say in a voice of suppressed fury:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you mad? Surely I said often enough
+that I meant the plot to be anarchist, anti-social,
+fundamentally anti-social and anti-governmental,
+with a shade of syndicalism. I have made it clear
+enough that I wanted it kept within these lines;
+and what do you go and make of it?... The
+vengeance of anarchists and aspirants to freedom?
+Whom do you arrest? A singer adored of the
+nationalist public, and the son of a man highly
+esteemed in the Catholic party, who receives our
+bishops and has the <i>entr&eacute;e</i> to the Vatican; a man
+who may be one day sent as ambassador to the
+Pope. At one blow you alienate one hundred and
+sixty Deputies and forty Senators of the Right on
+the very eve of a motion to discuss the question
+of religious pacification; you embroil me with my
+friends of to-day, with my friends of to-morrow.
+Was it to find out if you were in the same dilemma
+as des Aubels that you seized the love-letters of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+young Maurice d'Esparvieu? I can put your
+mind at rest on that point. You are, and all Paris
+knows it. But it is not to avenge your personal
+affronts that you are on the Bench."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur le Garde des Sceaux," murmured
+the Judge, nearly apoplectic and in a choked voice.
+"I am an honest man."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a fool ... and a provincial. Listen
+to me; if Maurice d'Esparvieu and Mademoiselle
+Bouchotte are not released within half an hour
+I will crush you like a piece of glass. Be off!"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu went himself to
+fetch his son from the Conciergerie and took
+him back to the old house in the Rue Garanci&egrave;re.
+The return was triumphant. The news had been
+disseminated that Maurice had with generous
+imprudence interested himself in an attempt to
+restore the monarchy, and that Judge Salneuve,
+the infamous freemason, the tool of Combes and
+Andr&eacute;, had tried to compromise the young man
+by making him out to be an accomplice of a band
+of criminals.</p>
+
+<p>That was what Abb&eacute; Patouille seemed to think,
+and he answered for Maurice as for himself. It
+was known, moreover, that breaking with his
+father, who had rallied to the support of the Republic,
+young d'Esparvieu was on the high
+road to becoming an out-and-out Royalist. The
+people who had an inside knowledge of things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+saw in his arrest the vengeance of the Jews. Was
+not Maurice a notorious anti-Semite? Catholic
+youths went forth to hurl imprecations at Judge
+Salneuve under the windows of his residence in
+the Rue Gu&eacute;n&eacute;gaud, opposite the Mint.</p>
+
+<p>On the Boulevard du Palais a band of students
+presented Maurice with a branch of palm. Maurice
+made a charming reply.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was overcome with emotion when he
+beheld the old house in which his childhood had
+been spent, and fell weeping into his mother's
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great day, unhappily marred by one
+painful incident. Monsieur Sariette, who had lost
+his reason as a consequence of the shocking events
+that had taken place in the Rue de Courcelles, had
+suddenly become violent. He had shut himself
+up in the library, and there he had remained for
+twenty-four hours, uttering the most horrible
+cries, and, turning a deaf ear alike to threats and
+entreaties, refused to come out. He had spent the
+night in a condition of extreme restlessness, for all
+night long the lamp had been seen passing rapidly
+to and fro behind the curtains. In the morning,
+hearing Hippolyte shouting to him from the
+court below, he opened the window of the
+Hall of the Spheres and the Philosophers, and
+heaved two or three rather weighty tomes on to
+the old valet's head. The whole of the domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+staff&mdash;men, women, and boys&mdash;hurried to the
+spot, and the librarian proceeded to throw out
+books by the armful on to their heads. In view of
+the gravity of the situation, Monsieur Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu
+did not disdain to intervene. He appeared in
+night-cap and dressing-gown, and attempted to
+reason with the poor lunatic, whose only reply
+was to pour forth torrents of abuse on the man
+whom till then he had worshipped as his benefactor,
+and to endeavour to crush him beneath all the
+Bibles, all the Talmuds, all the sacred books of
+India and Persia, all the Greek Fathers, and all
+the Latin Fathers, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint
+Gregory Nazianzen, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome,
+all the apologists, ay! and under the <i>Histoire des
+Variations</i>, annotated by Bossuet himself! Octavos,
+quartos, folios came crashing down, and lay in
+a sordid heap on the courtyard pavement. The
+letters of Gassendi, of P&egrave;re Mersenne, of Pascal,
+were blown about hither and thither by the wind.
+The lady's-maid who had stooped down to rescue
+some of the sheets from the gutter got a blow on
+the head from an enormous Dutch atlas. Madame
+Ren&eacute; d'Esparvieu had been terrified by the ominous
+sounds, and appeared on the scene without waiting
+to apply the finishing touches of powder and paint.
+When he caught sight of her, old Sariette became
+more violent than ever. Down they came one
+after another as hard as he could pelt them;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+the busts of the poets, philosophers, and historians
+of antiquity&mdash;Homer, &AElig;schylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato,
+Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace,
+Seneca, Epictetus&mdash;all lay scattered on the ground.
+The celestial sphere and the terrestrial globe
+descended with a terrifying crash that was followed
+by a ghastly hush, broken only by the shrill laughter
+of little L&eacute;on, who was looking down on the scene
+from a window above. A locksmith having opened
+the library door, all the household hastened to enter,
+and found the aged Sariette entrenched behind
+piles of books, busily engaged in tearing and slashing
+away at the <i>Lucretius</i> of the Prior de Vend&ocirc;me
+annotated in Voltaire's own hand. They had to
+force a way through the barricade. But the
+maniac, perceiving that his stronghold was being
+invaded, fled away and escaped on to the roof. For
+two whole hours he gave vent to shouts and yells
+that were heard far and wide. In the Rue Garanci&egrave;re
+the crowd kept growing bigger and bigger.
+All had their eyes fixed on the unhappy creature,
+and whenever he stumbled on the slates, which
+cracked beneath him, they gave a shout of terror.
+In the midst of the crowd, the Abb&eacute; Patouille,
+who expected every moment to see him hurled
+into space, was reciting the prayers for the dying,
+and making ready to give him the absolution
+<i>in extremis</i>. There was a cordon of police round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+the house keeping order. Someone summoned the
+fire-brigade, and the sound of their approach was
+soon heard. They placed a ladder against the
+wall of the house, and after a terrific struggle
+managed to secure the maniac, who in the course
+of his desperate resistance had one of the muscles
+of his arm torn out. He was immediately removed
+to an asylum.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice dined at home, and there were smiles of
+tenderness and affection when Victor, the old
+butler, brought on the roast veal. Monsieur l'Abb&eacute;
+Patouille sat at the right hand of the Christian
+mother, unctuously contemplating the family which
+Heaven had so plentifully blessed. Nevertheless,
+Madame d'Esparvieu was ill at ease. Every day
+she received anonymous letters of so insulting and
+coarse a nature that she thought at first they must
+come from a discharged footman. She now knew
+they were the handiwork of her youngest daughter,
+Berthe, a mere child! Little L&eacute;on, too, gave her
+pain and anxiety. He paid no attention to his
+lessons, and was given to bad habits. He showed
+a cruel disposition. He had plucked his sister's
+canaries alive; he stuck innumerable pins into
+the chair on which Mademoiselle Caporal was accustomed
+to sit, and had stolen fourteen francs
+from the poor girl, who did nothing but cry and
+dab her eyes and nose from morning till night.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was dinner over than Maurice rushed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+off to the little dwelling in the Rue de Rome, impatient
+to meet his angel again. Through the
+door he heard a loud sound of voices, and saw
+assembled in the room where the apparition had
+taken place, Arcade, Zita, the angelic musician,
+and the Ker&ucirc;b, who was lying on the bed, smoking
+a huge pipe, carelessly scorching pillows, sheets,
+and coverlets. They embraced Maurice, and
+announced their departure. Their faces shone
+with happiness and courage. Alone, the inspired
+author of <i>Aline, Queen of Golconda</i>, shed tears and
+raised his terrified gaze to heaven. The Ker&ucirc;b
+forced him into the party of rebellion by setting
+before him two alternatives: either to allow himself
+to be dragged from prison to prison on earth, or to
+carry fire and sword into the palace of Ialdabaoth.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice perceived with sorrow that the earth
+had scarcely any hold over them. They were
+setting out filled with immense hope, which was
+quite justifiable. Doubtless they were but a few
+combatants to oppose the innumerable soldiers of
+the sultan of the heavens; but they counted on
+compensating for the inferiority of their numbers
+by the irresistible impetus of a sudden attack.
+They were not ignorant of the fact that Ialdabaoth,
+who flatters himself on knowing all things, sometimes
+allows himself to be taken by surprise. And
+it certainly looked as if the first attack would have
+taken him unawares had it not been for the warning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+of the archangel Michael. The celestial army
+had made no progress since its victory over the
+rebels before the beginning of Time.</p>
+
+<p>As regards armaments and material it was as
+out of date as the army of the Moors. Its generals
+slumbered in sloth and ignorance. Loaded with
+honours and riches, they preferred the delights
+of the banquet to the fatigues of war. Michael,
+the commander-in-chief, ever loyal and brave,
+had lost, with the passing of centuries, his fire and
+enthusiasm. The conspirators of 1914, on the
+other hand, knew the very latest and the most
+delicate appliances of science for the art of destruction.
+At length all was ready and decided upon.
+The army of revolt, assembled by corps each a
+hundred thousand angels strong, on all the waste
+places of the earth&mdash;steppes, pampas, deserts,
+fields of ice and snow&mdash;was ready to launch itself
+against the sky. The angels, in modifying the
+rhythm of the atoms of which they are composed, are
+able to traverse the most varied mediums. Spirits
+that have descended on to the earth, being formed,
+since their incarnation, of too compact a substance,
+can no longer fly of themselves, and to rise into
+ethereal regions and then insensibly grow volatilized,
+have need of the assistance of their brothers, who,
+though revolutionaries like themselves, nevertheless,
+stayed behind in the Empyrean and remained, not
+immaterial (for all is matter in the Universe), but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+gloriously untrammelled and diaphanous. Certes,
+it was not without painful anxiety that Arcade, Istar,
+and Zita prepared themselves to pass from the
+heavy atmosphere of the earth to the limpid depths
+of the heavens. To plunge into the ether there is
+need to expend such energy that the most intrepid
+hesitate to take flight. Their very substance,
+while penetrating this fine medium, must in itself
+grow fine-spun, become vaporised, and pass from
+human dimensions to the volume of the vastest
+clouds which have ever enveloped the earth.
+Soon they would surpass in grandeur the uttermost
+planets, whose orbits they, invisible and imponderable,
+would traverse without disturbing.</p>
+
+<p>In this enterprise&mdash;the vastest that angels could
+undertake&mdash;their substance would be ultimately
+hotter than the fire and colder than the ice, and
+they would suffer pangs sharper than death.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice read all the daring and the pain of the
+undertaking in the eyes of Arcade.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going?" he said to him, weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going, with Nectaire, to seek the great
+archangel to lead us to victory."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you call thus?"</p>
+
+<p>"The priests of the demiurge have made him
+known to you in their calumnies."</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy being," sighed Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>Arcade embraced him, and Maurice felt the
+angel's tears as they dropped upon his cheek.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">and last, wherein the sublime dream of satan
+is unfolded</span></p></div>
+
+<div class='clearfix'><div class="figleft" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/imgc.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>LIMBING the seven steep terraces
+which rise up from the bed of
+the Ganges to the temples muffled
+in creepers, the five angels reached,
+by half-obliterated paths, the wild
+garden filled with perfumed clusters of grapes
+and chattering monkeys, and, at the far end thereof,
+they discovered him whom they had come to
+seek. The archangel lay with his elbow on black
+cushions embroidered with golden flames. At his
+feet crouched lions and gazelles. Twined in the
+trees, tame serpents turned on him their friendly
+gaze. At the sight of his angelic visitors his face
+grew melancholy. Long since, in the days when,
+with his brow crowned with grapes and his sceptre
+of vine-leaves in his hand, he had taught and comforted
+mankind, his heart had many times been
+heavy with sorrow; but never yet, since his glorious
+downfall, had his beautiful face expressed such
+pain and anguish.</p></div>
+
+<p>Zita told him of the black standards assembled in
+crowds in all the waste places of the globe; of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+deliverance premeditated and prepared in the
+provinces of Heaven, where the first revolt had
+long ago been fomented.</p>
+
+<p>"Prince," she went on, "your army awaits you.
+Come, lead it on to victory."</p>
+
+<p>"Friends," replied the great archangel, "I was
+aware of the object of your visit. Baskets of fruit
+and honeycombs await you under the shade of
+this mighty tree. The sun is about to descend into
+the roseate waters of the Sacred River. When you
+have eaten, you will slumber pleasantly in this
+garden, where the joys of the intellect and of the
+senses have reigned since the day when I drove
+hence the spirit of the old Demiurge. To-morrow
+I will give you my answer."</p>
+
+<p>Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan
+fell asleep. He had a dream, and in that dream,
+soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with
+angels in revolt, beautiful as gods, whose eyes
+darted lightning. And from pole to pole one
+single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted
+towards him, filled with hope and love. And
+Satan said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary
+in his high abode." And he led the countless
+host of angels over the celestial plains. And
+Satan was cognizant of what took place in the
+heavenly citadel. When news of this second revolt
+came thither, the Father said to the Son:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The irreconcilable foe is rising once again.
+Let us take heed to ourselves, and in this, our time
+of danger, look to our defences, lest we lose our
+high abode."</p>
+
+<p>And the Son, consubstantial with the Father,
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"We shall triumph under the sign that gave
+Constantine the victory."</p>
+
+<p>Indignation burst forth on the Mountain of
+God. At first the faithful Seraphim condemned
+the rebels to terrible torture, but afterwards
+decided on doing battle with them. The anger
+burning in the hearts of all inflamed each countenance.
+They did not doubt of victory, but
+treachery was feared, and eternal darkness had been
+at once decreed for spies and alarmists.</p>
+
+<p>There was shouting and singing of ancient hymns
+and praise of the Almighty. They drank of the
+mystic wine. Courage, over-inflated, came near
+to giving way, and a secret anxiety stole into the
+inner depths of their souls. The archangel Michael
+took supreme command. He reassured their minds
+by his serenity. His countenance, wherein his
+soul was visible, expressed contempt for danger.
+By his orders, the chiefs of the thunderbolts, the
+Ker&ucirc;bs, grown dull with the long interval of peace,
+paced with heavy steps the ramparts of the Holy
+Mountain, and, letting the gaze of their bovine
+eyes wander over the glittering clouds of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+Lord, strove to place the divine batteries in
+position. After inspecting the defences, they
+swore to the Most High that all was in readiness.
+They took counsel together as to the plan they
+should follow. Michael was for the offensive. He,
+as a consummate soldier, said it was the supreme
+law. Attack, or be attacked,&mdash;there was no middle
+course.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover," he added, "the offensive attitude
+is particularly suitable to the ardour of the Thrones
+and Dominations."</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that, it was impossible to obtain a word
+from the valiant chief, and this silence seemed the
+mark of a genius sure of himself.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the approach of the enemy was announced,
+Michael sent forth three armies to
+meet them, commanded by the archangels Uriel,
+Raphael, and Gabriel. Standards, displaying all
+the colours of the Orient, were unfurled above
+the ethereal plains, and the thunders rolled over
+the starry floors. For three days and three nights
+was the lot of the terrible and adorable armies unknown
+on the Mountain of God. Towards dawn
+on the fourth day news came, but it was vague
+and confused. There were rumours of indecisive
+victories; of the triumph now of this side, now of
+that. There came reports of glorious deeds which
+were dissipated in a few hours.</p>
+
+<p>The thunderbolts of Raphael, hurled against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+rebels, had, it was said, consumed entire squadrons.
+The troops commanded by the impure Zita were
+thought to have been swallowed up in the whirlwind
+of a tempest of fire. It was believed that
+the savage Istar had been flung headlong into
+the gulf of perdition so suddenly that the blasphemies
+begun in his mouth had been forced backwards
+with explosive results. It was popularly
+supposed that Satan, laden with chains of adamant,
+had been plunged once again into the abyss. Meanwhile,
+the commanders of the three armies had
+sent no messages. Mutterings and murmurs, mingling
+with the rumours of glory, gave rise to fears
+of an indecisive battle, a precipitate retreat. Insolent
+voices gave out that a spirit of the lowest
+category, a guardian angel, the insignificant Arcade,
+had checked and routed the dazzling host of the
+three great archangels.</p>
+
+<p>There were also rumours of wholesale defection
+in the Seventh Heaven, where rebellion had broken
+out before the beginning of Time, and some had
+even seen black clouds of impious angels joining
+the armies of the rebels on Earth. But no one lent
+an ear to the odious rumours, and stress was laid
+on the news of victory which ran from lip to lip,
+each statement readily finding confirmation. The
+high places resounded with hymns of joy; the
+Seraphim celebrated on harp and psaltery Sabaoth,
+God of Thunder. The voices of the elect united<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+with those of the angels in glorifying the Invisible
+and at the thought of the bloodshed that the ministers
+of holy wrath had caused among the rebels,
+sighs of relief and jubilation were wafted from the
+Heavenly Jerusalem towards the Most High. But
+the beatitude of the most blessed, having swelled
+to the utmost limit before due time, could increase
+no more, and the very excess of their felicity
+completely dulled their senses.</p>
+
+<p>The songs had not yet ceased when the guards
+watching on the ramparts signalled the approach
+of the first fugitives of the divine army; Seraphim
+on tattered wing, flying in disorder, maimed
+Ker&ucirc;bs going on three feet. With impassive
+gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured the
+extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence
+penetrated its causes. The armies of the living
+God had taken the offensive, but by one of those
+fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of
+the greatest captains, the enemy had also taken
+the offensive, and the effect was evident. Scarcely
+were the gates of the citadel opened to receive
+the glorious but shattered remnants of the three
+armies, when a rain of fire fell on the Mountain
+of God. Satan's army was not yet in sight, but the
+walls of topaz, the cupolas of emerald, the roofs of
+diamond, all fell in with an appalling crash under
+the discharge of the electrophores. The ancient
+thunderclouds essayed to reply, but the bolts fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+short, and their thunders were lost in the deserted
+plains of the skies.</p>
+
+<p>Smitten by an invisible foe, the faithful angels
+abandoned the ramparts. Michael went to announce
+to his God that the Holy Mountain would fall into
+the hands of the demon in twenty-four hours,
+and that nothing remained for the Master of the
+Heavens but to seek safety in flight. The Seraphim
+placed the jewels of the celestial crown in coffers.
+Michael offered his arm to the Queen of Heaven,
+and the Holy Family escaped from the palace by
+a subterranean passage of porphyry. A deluge of
+fire was falling on the citadel. Regaining his post
+once more, the glorious archangel declared that
+he would never capitulate, and straightway advanced
+the standards of the living God. That
+same evening the rebel host made its entry into
+the thrice-sacred city. On a fiery steed Satan led
+his demons. Behind him marched Arcade, Istar,
+and Zita. As in the ancient revels of Dionysus,
+old Nectaire bestrode his ass. Thereafter,
+floating out far behind, followed the black
+standards.</p>
+
+<p>The garrison laid down their arms before Satan.
+Michael placed his flaming sword at the feet of
+the conquering archangel.</p>
+
+<p>"Take back your sword, Michael," said Satan.
+"It is Lucifer who yields it to you. Bear it in
+defence of peace and law." Then letting his gaze<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+fall on the leaders of the celestial cohorts, he cried
+in a ringing voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Archangel Michael, and you, Powers, Thrones,
+and Dominations, swear all of you to be faithful to
+your God."</p>
+
+<p>"We swear it," they replied with one voice.</p>
+
+<p>And Satan said:</p>
+
+<p>"Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, of all past
+wars, I wish but to remember the invincible courage
+that you displayed and the loyalty which you
+rendered to authority, for these assure me of the
+steadfastness of the fealty you have just sworn to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>The following day, on the ethereal plain, Satan
+commanded the black standards to be distributed
+to the troops, and the winged soldiers covered them
+with kisses and bedewed them with tears.</p>
+
+<p>And Satan had himself crowned God. Thronging
+round the glittering walls of Heavenly Jerusalem,
+apostles, pontiffs, virgins, martyrs, confessors, the
+whole company of the elect, who during the fierce
+battle had enjoyed delightful tranquillity, tasted
+infinite joy in the spectacle of the coronation.</p>
+
+<p>The elect saw with ravishment the Most High
+precipitated into Hell, and Satan seated on the
+throne of the Lord. In conformity with the will
+of God which had cut them off from sorrow they
+sang in the ancient fashion the praises of their new
+Master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Satan, piercing space with his keen glance,
+contemplated the little globe of earth and water
+where of old he had planted the vine and formed
+the first tragic chorus. And he fixed his gaze on
+that Rome where the fallen God had founded
+his empire on fraud and lie. Nevertheless, at that
+moment a saint ruled over the Church. Satan
+saw him praying and weeping. And he said to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"To thee I entrust my Spouse. Watch over her
+faithfully. In thee I confirm the right and power
+to decide matters of doctrine, to regulate the use
+of the sacraments, to make laws and to uphold
+purity of morals. And the faithful shall be under
+obligation to conform thereto. My Church is
+eternal, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
+against it. Thou art infallible. Nothing is changed."</p>
+
+<p>And the successor of the apostles felt flooded
+with rapture. He prostrated himself, and with his
+forehead touching the floor, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord, my God, I recognise Thy voice! Thy
+breath has been wafted like balm to my heart.
+Blessed be Thy name. Thy will be done on Earth,
+as it is in Heaven. Lead us not into temptation,
+but deliver us from evil."</p>
+
+<p>And Satan found pleasure in praise and in the
+exercise of his grace; he loved to hear his wisdom
+and his power belauded. He listened with joy
+to the canticles of the cherubim who celebrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+his good deeds, and he took no pleasure in listening
+to Nectaire's flute, because it celebrated nature's
+self, yielded to the insect and to the blade of grass
+their share of power and love, and counselled
+happiness and freedom. Satan, whose flesh had
+crept, in days gone by, at the idea that suffering
+prevailed in the world, now felt himself inaccessible
+to pity. He regarded suffering and death as the
+happy results of omnipotence and sovereign kindness.
+And the savour of the blood of victims
+rose upward towards him like sweet incense. He
+fell to condemning intelligence and to hating curiosity.
+He himself refused to learn anything more,
+for fear that in acquiring fresh knowledge he
+might let it be seen that he had not known
+everything at the very outset. He took pleasure in
+mystery, and believing that he would seem less
+great by being understood, he affected to be unintelligible.
+Dense fumes of Theology filled his
+brain. One day, following the example of his
+predecessor, he conceived the notion of proclaiming
+himself one god in three persons. Seeing Arcade
+smile as this proclamation was made, he drove him
+from his presence. Istar and Zita had long since
+returned to earth. Thus centuries passed like
+seconds. Now, one day, from the altitude of his
+throne, he plunged his gaze into the depths of the
+pit and saw Ialdabaoth in the Gehenna where he
+himself had long lain enchained. Amid the ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>lasting
+gloom Ialdabaoth still retained his lofty
+mien. Blackened and shattered, terrible and
+sublime, he glanced upwards at the palace of the
+King of Heaven with a look of proud disdain,
+then turned away his head. And the new god, as
+he looked upon his foe, beheld the light of intelligence
+and love pass across his sorrow-stricken
+countenance. And lo! Ialdabaoth was now contemplating
+the Earth and, seeing it sunk in wickedness
+and suffering, he began to foster thoughts of
+kindliness in his heart. On a sudden he rose up,
+and beating the ether with his mighty arms, as
+though with oars, he hastened thither to instruct
+and to console mankind. Already his vast shadow
+shed upon the unhappy planet a shade soft as a
+night of love.</p>
+
+<p>And Satan awoke bathed in an icy sweat.</p>
+
+<p>Nectaire, Istar, Arcade, and Zita were standing
+round him. The finches were singing.</p>
+
+<p>"Comrades," said the great archangel, "no&mdash;we
+will not conquer the heavens. Enough to
+have the power. War engenders war, and victory
+defeat.</p>
+
+<p>"God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan,
+conquering, will become God. May the fates
+spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which
+formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have
+done some good, if it be possible to do any good in
+this fearful world where beings live but by rapine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+Now, thanks to us, the god of old is dispossessed of
+his terrestrial empire, and every thinking being on
+this globe disdains him or knows him not. But
+what matter that men should be no longer submissive
+to Ialdabaoth if the spirit of Ialdabaoth is
+still in them; if they, like him, are jealous, violent,
+quarrelsome, and greedy, and the foes of the arts
+and of beauty? What matter that they have
+rejected the ferocious Demiurge, if they do not
+hearken to the friendly demons who teach all truths;
+to Dionysus, Apollo, and the Muses? As to ourselves,
+celestial spirits, sublime demons, we have
+destroyed Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant, if in ourselves
+we have destroyed Ignorance and Fear."</p>
+
+<p>And Satan, turning to the gardener, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Nectaire, you fought with me before the birth
+of the world. We were conquered because we failed
+to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and that it is
+in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must
+attack and destroy Ialdabaoth."</p>
+
+<p class='center'>THE END</p>
+
+
+<div class='transnote'>
+<h3><a name="tnote" id="tnote"></a>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_74">74</a>: "Madame des Aubel's" amended to "Madame des Aubels'"</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_170">170</a>: "clomb" <i>sic</i> (archaic; past tense of <i>climb</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_210">210</a>: "befel" <i>sic</i> (archaic).</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_230">230</a>: "Bouchette" amended to "Bouchotte"</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_234">234</a>: "befel" <i>sic</i> (archaic).</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_259">259</a>: "cetain" amended to "certain"</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_278">278</a>: "youself" amended to "yourself"</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_284">284</a>: "wistaria" <i>sic</i>; alternative spelling.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_309">309</a>: "Bergundy" amended to "Burgundy"</p>
+
+<p>Accents and hyphenation have generally been standardised.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32596-h.htm or 32596-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/5/9/32596/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/32596-h/images/img01.jpg b/32596-h/images/img01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31e4f59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/img01.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/img01th.jpg b/32596-h/images/img01th.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba40f20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/img01th.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/img02.jpg b/32596-h/images/img02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d15829
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/img02.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/img03.jpg b/32596-h/images/img03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..232d5d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/img03.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/img03th.jpg b/32596-h/images/img03th.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00968c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/img03th.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imga.jpg b/32596-h/images/imga.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..568641c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imga.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgb.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgb.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0fa70f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgb.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgc.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgc.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c06aeed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgc.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgd.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgd.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5a2483
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgd.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgi.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgi.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cdf3205
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgi.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgl.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgl.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d821e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgl.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgm.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgm.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5a80e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgm.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgn.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgn.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e00f3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgn.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgo.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgo.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d62761e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgo.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgp.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgp.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d17d03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgp.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgr.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgr.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..caf16ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgr.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgs.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgs.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71d5880
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgs.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgt.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgt.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0d7a1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgt.jpg
diff --git a/32596-h/images/imgw.jpg b/32596-h/images/imgw.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db69d4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596-h/images/imgw.jpg
diff --git a/32596.txt b/32596.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7b5b7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8444 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Revolt of the Angels
+
+Author: Anatole France
+
+Editor: Frederic Chapman
+
+Translator: Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2010 [EBook #32596]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Note                                         |
+  |                                                            |
+  | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in        |
+  | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of   |
+  | this document.                                             |
+  +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
+IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
+EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE REVOLT
+OF THE ANGELS
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+A TRANSLATION BY
+MRS. WILFRID JACKSON
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+
+NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+
+MCMXXIV
+
+
+Copyright, 1914,
+by
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A
+
+
+
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     CONTAINING IN A FEW LINES THE HISTORY OF A FRENCH FAMILY
+     FROM 1789 TO THE PRESENT DAY
+
+
+Beneath the shadow of St. Sulpice the ancient mansion of the d'Esparvieu
+family rears its austere three stories between a moss-grown fore-court
+and a garden hemmed in, as the years have elapsed, by ever loftier and
+more intrusive buildings, wherein, nevertheless, two tall chestnut trees
+still lift their withered heads.
+
+Here from 1825 to 1857 dwelt the great man of the family, Alexandre
+Bussart d'Esparvieu, Vice-President of the Council of State under the
+Government of July, Member of the Academy of Moral and Political
+Sciences, and author of an _Essay on the Civil and Religious
+Institutions of Nations_, in three octavo volumes, a work unfortunately
+left incomplete.
+
+This eminent theorist of a Liberal monarchy left as heir to his name his
+fortune and his fame, Fulgence-Adolphe Bussart d'Esparvieu, senator
+under the Second Empire, who added largely to his patrimony by buying
+land over which the Avenue de l'Imperatice was destined ultimately to
+pass, and who made a remarkable speech in favour of the temporal power
+of the popes.
+
+Fulgence had three sons. The eldest, Marc-Alexandre, entering the army,
+made a splendid career for himself: he was a good speaker. The second,
+Gaetan, showing no particular aptitude for anything, lived mostly in the
+country, where he hunted, bred horses, and devoted himself to music and
+painting. The third son, Rene, destined from his childhood for the law,
+resigned his deputyship to avoid complicity in the Ferry decrees against
+the religious orders; and later, perceiving the revival under the
+presidency of Monsieur Fallieres of the days of Decius and Diocletian,
+put his knowledge and zeal at the service of the persecuted Church.
+
+From the Concordat of 1801 down to the closing years of the Second
+Empire all the d'Esparvieus attended mass for the sake of example.
+Though sceptics in their inmost hearts, they looked upon religion as an
+instrument of government.
+
+Mark and Rene were the first of their race to show any sign of sincere
+devotion. The General, when still a colonel, had dedicated his regiment
+to the Sacred Heart, and he practised his faith with a fervour
+remarkable even in a soldier, though we all know that piety, daughter of
+Heaven, has marked out the hearts of the generals of the Third Republic
+as her chosen dwelling-place on earth.
+
+Faith has its vicissitudes. Under the old order the masses were
+believers, not so the aristocracy or the educated middle class. Under
+the First Empire the army from top to bottom was entirely irreligious.
+To-day the masses believe nothing. The middle classes wish to believe,
+and succeed at times, as did Marc and Rene d'Esparvieu. Their brother
+Gaetan, on the contrary, the country gentleman, failed to attain to
+faith. He was an agnostic, a term commonly employed by the modish to
+avoid the odious one of freethinker. And he openly declared himself an
+agnostic, contrary to the admirable custom which deems it better to
+withhold the avowal.
+
+In the century in which we live there are so many modes of belief and of
+unbelief that future historians will have difficulty in finding their
+way about. But are we any more successful in disentangling the condition
+of religious beliefs in the time of Symmachus or of Ambrose?
+
+A fervent Christian, Rene d'Esparvieu was deeply attached to the liberal
+ideas his ancestors had transmitted to him as a sacred heritage.
+Compelled to oppose a Jacobin and atheistical Republic, he still called
+himself Republican. And it was in the name of liberty that he demanded
+the independence and sovereignty of the Church.
+
+During the long debates on the Separation and the quarrels over the
+Inventories, the synods of the bishops and the assemblies of the
+faithful were held in his house. While the most authoritatively
+accredited leaders of the Catholic party: prelates, generals, senators,
+deputies, journalists, were met together in the big green drawing-room,
+and every soul present turned towards Rome with a tender submission or
+enforced obedience; while Monsieur d'Esparvieu, his elbow on the marble
+chimney-piece, opposed civil law to canon law, and protested eloquently
+against the spoliation of the Church of France, two faces of other days,
+immobile and speechless, looked down on the modern crowd; on the right
+of the fire-place, painted by David, was Romain Bussart, a
+working-farmer at Esparvieu in shirt-sleeves and drill trousers, with a
+rough-and-ready air not untouched with cunning. He had good reason to
+smile: the worthy man laid the foundation of the family fortunes when he
+bought Church lands. On the left, painted by Gerard in full-dress
+bedizened with orders, was the peasant's son, Baron Emile Bussart
+d'Esparvieu, prefect under the Empire, Keeper of the Great Seal under
+Charles X, who died in 1837, churchwarden of his parish, with couplets
+from _La Pucelle_ on his lips.
+
+Rene d'Esparvieu married in 1888 Marie-Antoinette Coupelle, daughter of
+Baron Coupelle, ironmaster at Blainville (Haute Loire). Madame Rene
+d'Esparvieu had been president since 1903 of the Society of Christian
+Mothers. These perfect spouses, having married off their eldest daughter
+in 1908, had three children still at home--a girl and two boys.
+
+Leon, the younger, aged seven, had a room next to his mother and his
+sister Berthe. Maurice, the elder, lived in a little pavilion comprising
+two rooms at the bottom of the garden. The young man thus gained a
+freedom which enabled him to endure family life. He was rather
+good-looking, smart without too much pretence, and the faint smile which
+merely raised one corner of his mouth did not lack charm.
+
+At twenty-five Maurice possessed the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Doubting
+whether a man hath any profit of all his labour which he taketh under
+the sun he never put himself out about anything. From his earliest
+childhood this young hopeful's sole concern with work had been
+considering how he might best avoid it, and it was through his remaining
+ignorant of the teaching of the _Ecole de Droit_ that he became a doctor
+of law and a barrister at the Court of Appeal.
+
+He neither pleaded nor practised. He had no knowledge and no desire to
+acquire any; wherein he conformed to his genius whose engaging fragility
+he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately telling him that it was
+better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.
+
+As Monsieur l'Abbe Patouille expressed it, Maurice had received from
+Heaven the benefits of a Christian education. From his childhood piety
+was shown to him in the example of his home, and when on leaving college
+he was entered at the _Ecole de Droit_, he found the lore of the
+doctors, the virtues of the confessors, and the constancy of the nursing
+mothers of the Church assembled around the paternal hearth. Admitted to
+social and political life at the time of the great persecution of the
+Church of France, Maurice did not fail to attend every manifestation of
+youthful Catholicism; he lent a hand with his parish barricades at the
+time of the Inventories, and with his companions he unharnessed the
+archbishop's horses when he was driven out from his palace. He showed on
+all these occasions a modified zeal; one never saw him in the front
+ranks of the heroic band exciting soldiers to a glorious disobedience or
+flinging mud and curses at the agents of the law.
+
+He did his duty, nothing more; and if he distinguished himself on the
+occasion of the great pilgrimage of 1911 among the stretcher-bearers at
+Lourdes, we have reason to fear it was but to please Madame de la
+Verdeliere, who admired men of muscle. Abbe Patouille, a friend of the
+family and deeply versed in the knowledge of souls, knew that Maurice
+had only moderate aspirations to martyrdom. He reproached him with his
+lukewarmness, and pulled his ear, calling him a bad lot. Anyway, Maurice
+remained a believer.
+
+Amid the distractions of youth his faith remained intact, since he left
+it severely alone. He had never examined a single tenet. Nor had he
+enquired a whit more closely into the ideas of morality current in the
+grade of society to which he belonged. He took them just as they came.
+Thus in every situation that arose he cut an eminently respectable
+figure which he would have assuredly failed to do, had he been given to
+meditating on the foundations of morality. He was irritable and
+hot-tempered and possessed of a sense of honour which he was at great
+pains to cultivate. He was neither vain nor ambitious. Like the majority
+of Frenchmen, he disliked parting with his money. Women would never have
+obtained anything from him had they not known the way to make him give.
+He believed he despised them; the truth was he adored them. He indulged
+his appetites so naturally that he never suspected that he had any. What
+people did not know, himself least of all,--though the gleam that
+occasionally shone in his fine, light-brown eyes might have furnished
+the hint--was that he had a warm heart and was capable of friendship.
+For the rest, he was, in the ordinary intercourse of life, no very
+brilliant specimen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     WHEREIN USEFUL INFORMATION WILL BE FOUND CONCERNING A
+     LIBRARY WHERE STRANGE THINGS WILL SHORTLY COME TO PASS
+
+
+Desirous of embracing the whole circle of human knowledge, and anxious
+to bequeath to the world a concrete symbol of his encyclopaedic genius
+and a display in keeping with his pecuniary resources, Baron Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu had formed a library of three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes, both printed and in manuscript, whereof the greater part
+emanated from the Benedictines of Liguge.
+
+By a special clause in his will he enjoined his heirs to add to his
+library, after his death, whatever they might deem worthy of note in
+natural, moral, political, philosophical, and religious science.
+
+He had indicated the sums which might be drawn from his estate for the
+fulfilment of this object, and charged his eldest son, Fulgence-Adolphe,
+to proceed with these additions. Fulgence-Adolphe accomplished with
+filial respect the wishes expressed by his illustrious father.
+
+After him, this huge library, which represented more than one child's
+share of the estate, remained undivided between the Senator's three sons
+and two daughters; and Rene d'Esparvieu, on whom devolved the house in
+the Rue Garanciere, became the guardian of the valuable collection. His
+two sisters, Madame Paulet de Saint-Fain and Madame Cuissart, repeatedly
+demanded that such a large but unremunerative piece of property should
+be turned into money. But Rene and Gaetan bought in the shares of their
+two co-legatees, and the library was saved. Rene d'Esparvieu even busied
+himself in adding to it, thus fulfilling the intentions of its founder.
+But from year to year he lessened the number and importance of the
+acquisitions, opining that the intellectual output in Europe was on the
+wane.
+
+Nevertheless, Gaetan enriched it, out of his funds, with works published
+both in France and abroad which he thought good, and he was not lacking
+in judgment, though his brothers would never allow that he had a
+particle. Thanks to this man of leisurely and inquiring mind, Baron
+Alexandre's collection was kept practically up to date. Even at the
+present day the d'Esparvieu library, in the departments of theology,
+jurisprudence, and history is one of the finest private libraries in all
+Europe. Here you may study physical science, or to put it better,
+physical sciences in all their branches, and for that matter metaphysic
+or metaphysics, that is to say, all that is connected with physics and
+has no other name, so impossible is it to designate by a substantive
+that which has no substance, and is but a dream and an illusion. Here
+you may contemplate with admiration philosophers addressing themselves
+to the solution, dissolution, and resolution of the Absolute, to the
+determination of the Indeterminate and to the definition of the
+Infinite.
+
+Amid this pile of books and booklets, both sacred and profane, you may
+find everything down to the latest and most fashionable pragmatism.
+
+Other libraries there are, more richly abounding in bindings of
+venerable antiquity and illustrious origin, whose smooth and soft-hued
+texture render them delicious to the touch; bindings which the gilder's
+art has enriched with gossamer, lace-work, foliage, flowers, emblematic
+devices, and coats of arms; bindings that charm the studious eye with
+their tender radiance. Other libraries perhaps harbour a greater array
+of manuscripts illuminated with delicate and brilliant miniatures by
+artists of Venice, Flanders, or Touraine. But in handsome, sound
+editions of ancient and modern writers, both sacred and profane, the
+d'Esparvieu library is second to none. Here one finds all that has come
+down to us from antiquity; all the Fathers of the Church, the Apologists
+and the Decretalists, all the Humanists of the Renaissance, all the
+Encylopaedists, the whole world of philosophy and science. Therefore it
+was that Cardinal Merlin, when he deigned to visit it, remarked:
+
+"There is no man whose brain is equal to containing all the knowledge
+which is piled upon these shelves. Happily it doesn't matter."
+
+Monseigneur Cachepot, who worked there often when a curate in Paris, was
+in the habit of saying:
+
+"I see here the stuff to make many a Thomas Aquinas and many an Arius,
+if only the modern mind had not lost its ancient ardour for good and
+evil."
+
+There was no gainsaying that the manuscripts formed the more valuable
+portion of this immense collection. Noteworthy indeed was the
+unpublished correspondence of Gassendi, of Father Mersenne, and of
+Pascal, which threw a new light on the spirit of the seventeenth
+century. Nor must we forget the Hebrew Bibles, the Talmuds, the
+Rabbinical treatises, printed and in manuscript, the Aramaic and
+Samaritan texts, on sheepskin and on tablets of sycamore; in fine, all
+these antique and valuable copies collected in Egypt and in Syria by the
+celebrated Moise de Dina, and acquired at a small cost by Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu in 1836, when the learned Hebraist died of old age and
+poverty in Paris.
+
+The Esparvienne library occupied the whole of the second floor of the
+old house. The works thought to be of but mediocre interest, such as
+books of Protestant exegesis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
+the gift of Monsieur Gaetan, were relegated unbound to the limbo of the
+upper regions. The catalogue, with its various supplements, ran into no
+less than eighteen folio volumes. It was quite up to date, and the
+library was in perfect order. Monsieur Julien Sariette, archivist and
+palaeographer, who, being poor and retiring, used to make his living by
+teaching, became, in 1895, tutor to young Maurice on the recommendation
+of the Bishop of Agra, and with scarcely an interval found himself
+curator of the Bibliotheque Esparvienne. Endowed with business-like
+energy and dogged patience, Monsieur Sariette himself classified all the
+members of this vast body. The system he invented and put into practice
+was so complicated, the labels he put on the books were made up of so
+many capital letters and small letters, both Latin and Greek, so many
+Arabic and Roman numerals, asterisks, double asterisks, triple
+asterisks, and those signs which in arithmetic express powers and roots,
+that the mere study of it would have involved more time and labour than
+would have been required for the complete mastery of algebra, and as no
+one could be found who would give the hours, that might be more
+profitably employed in discovering the law of numbers, to the solving
+of these cryptic symbols, Monsieur Sariette remained the only one
+capable of finding his way among the intricacies of his system, and
+without his help it had become an utter impossibility to discover, among
+the three hundred and sixty thousand volumes confided to his care, the
+particular volume one happened to require. Such was the result of his
+labours. Far from complaining about it, he experienced on the contrary a
+lively satisfaction.
+
+Monsieur Sariette loved his library. He loved it with a jealous love. He
+was there every day at seven o'clock in the morning busy cataloguing at
+a huge mahogany desk. The slips in his handwriting filled an enormous
+case standing by his side surmounted by a plaster bust of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu. Alexandre wore his hair brushed straight back, and had a
+sublime look on his face. Like Chateaubriand, he affected little
+feathery side whiskers. His lips were pursed, his bosom bare. Punctually
+at midday Monsieur Sariette used to sally forth to lunch at a _cremerie_
+in the narrow gloomy Rue des Canettes. It was known as the _Cremerie des
+Quatre Eveques_, and had once been the haunt of Baudelaire, Theodore de
+Banville, Charles Asselineau, and a certain grandee of Spain who had
+translated the "Mysteries of Paris" into the language of the
+_conquistadores_. And the ducks that paddled so nicely on the old stone
+sign which gave its name to the street used to recognize Monsieur
+Sariette. At a quarter to one, to the very minute, he went back to his
+library, where he remained until seven o'clock. He then again betook
+himself to the _Quatre Eveques_, and sat down to his frugal dinner, with
+its crowning glory of stewed prunes. Every evening, after dinner, his
+crony, Monsieur Guinardon, universally known as Pere Guinardon, a
+scene-painter and picture-restorer, who used to do work for churches,
+would come from his garret in the Rue Princesse to have his coffee and
+liqueur at the _Quatre Eveques_, and the two friends would play their
+game of dominoes.
+
+Old Guinardon, who was like some rugged old tree still full of sap, was
+older than he could bring himself to believe. He had known Chenavard.
+His chastity was positively ferocious, and he was for ever denouncing
+the impurities of neo-paganism in language of alarming obscenity. He
+loved talking. Monsieur Sariette was a ready listener. Old Guinardon's
+favourite subject was the Chapelle des Anges in St. Sulpice, in which
+the paintings were peeling off the walls, and which he was one day to
+restore; when, that is, it should please God, for, since the Separation,
+the churches belonged solely to God, and no one would undertake the
+responsibility of even the most urgent repairs. But old Guinardon
+demanded no salary.
+
+"Michael is my patron saint," he said. "And I have a special devotion
+for the Holy Angels."
+
+After they had had their game of dominoes, Monsieur Sariette, very thin
+and small, and old Guinardon, sturdy as an oak, hirsute as a lion, and
+tall as a Saint Christopher, went off chatting away side by side across
+the Place Saint Sulpice, heedless of whether the night were fine or
+stormy. Monsieur Sariette always went straight home, much to the regret
+of the painter, who was a gossip and a nightbird.
+
+The following day, as the clock struck seven, Monsieur Sariette would
+take up his place in the library, and resume his cataloguing. As he sat
+at his desk, however, he would dart a Medusa-like look at anyone who
+entered, fearing lest he should prove to be a book-borrower. It was not
+merely the magistrates, politicians, and prelates whom he would have
+liked to turn to stone when they came to ask for the loan of a book with
+an air of authority bred of their familiarity with the master of the
+house. He would have done as much to Monsieur Gaetan, the library's
+benefactor, when he wanted some gay or scandalous old volume wherewith
+to beguile a wet day in the country. He would have meted out similar
+treatment to Madame Rene d'Esparvieu, when she came to look for a book
+to read to her sick poor in hospital, and even to Monsieur Rene
+d'Esparvieu himself, who generally contented himself with the Civil Code
+and a volume of Dalloz. The borrowing of the smallest book seemed like
+dragging his heart out. To refuse a volume even to such as had the most
+incontestable right to it, Monsieur Sariette would invent countless
+far-fetched or clumsy fibs, and did not even shrink from slandering
+himself as curator or from casting doubts on his own vigilance by saying
+that such and such a book was mislaid or lost, when a moment ago he had
+been gloating over that very volume or pressing it to his bosom. And
+when ultimately forced to part with a volume he would take it back a
+score of times from the borrower before he finally relinquished it.
+
+He was always in agony lest one of the objects confided to his care
+should escape him. As the guardian of three hundred and sixty thousand
+volumes, he had three hundred and sixty thousand reasons for alarm.
+Sometimes he woke at night bathed in sweat, and uttering a cry of fear,
+because he had dreamed he had seen a gap on one of the shelves of his
+bookcases. It seemed to him a monstrous, unheard-of, and most grievous
+thing that a volume should leave its habitat. This noble rapacity
+exasperated Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, who, failing to understand the
+good qualities of his paragon of a librarian, called him an old maniac.
+Monsieur Sariette knew nought of this injustice, but he would have
+braved the cruellest misfortune and endured opprobrium and insult to
+safeguard the integrity of his trust. Thanks to his assiduity, his
+vigilance and zeal, or, in a word, to his love, the Esparvienne library
+had not lost so much as a single leaflet under his supervision during
+the sixteen years which had now rolled by, this ninth of September,
+1912.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     WHEREIN THE MYSTERY BEGINS
+
+
+At seven o'clock on the evening of that day, having as usual replaced
+all the books which had been taken from their shelves, and having
+assured himself that he was leaving everything in good order, he quitted
+the library, double-locking the door after him. According to his usual
+habit, he dined at the _Cremerie des Quatre Eveques_, read his
+newspaper, _La Croix_, and at ten o'clock went home to his little house
+in the Rue du Regard. The good man had no trouble and no presentiment of
+evil; his sleep was peaceful. The next morning at seven o'clock to the
+minute, he entered the little room leading to the library, and,
+according to his daily habit, doffed his grand frock-coat, and taking
+down an old one which hung in a cupboard over his washstand, put it on.
+Then he went in to his workroom, where for sixteen years he had been
+cataloguing six days out of the seven, under the lofty gaze of Alexandre
+d'Esparvieu. Preparing to make a round of the various rooms, he entered
+the first and largest, which contained works on theology and religion
+in huge cupboards whose cornices were adorned with bronze-coloured busts
+of poets and orators of ancient days.
+
+Two enormous globes representing the earth and the heavens filled the
+window-embrasures. But at his first step Monsieur Sariette stopped dead,
+stupefied, powerless alike to doubt or to credit what his eyes beheld.
+On the blue cloth cover of the writing-table books lay scattered about
+pell-mell, some lying flat, some standing upright. A number of quartos
+were heaped up in a tottering pile. Two Greek lexicons, one inside the
+other, formed a single being more monstrous in shape than the human
+couples of the divine Plato. A gilt-edged folio was all a-gape, showing
+three of its leaves disgracefully dog's-eared.
+
+Having, after an interval of some moments, recovered from his profound
+amazement, the librarian went up to the table and recognised in the
+confused mass his most valuable Hebrew, French, and Latin Bibles, a
+unique Talmud, Rabbinical treatises printed and in manuscript, Aramaic
+and Samaritan texts and scrolls from the synagogues--in fine, the most
+precious relics of Israel all lying in a disordered heap, gaping and
+crumpled.
+
+Monsieur Sariette found himself confronted with an inexplicable
+phenomenon; nevertheless he sought to account for it. How eagerly he
+would have welcomed the idea that Monsieur Gaetan, who, being a
+thoroughly unprincipled man, presumed on the right gained him by his
+fatal liberality towards the library to rummage there unhindered during
+his sojourns in Paris, had been the author of this terrible disorder.
+But Monsieur Gaetan was away travelling in Italy. After pondering for
+some minutes Monsieur Sariette's next supposition was that Monsieur Rene
+d'Esparvieu had entered the library late in the evening with the keys of
+his manservant Hippolyte, who, for the past twenty-five years, had
+looked after the second floor and the attics. Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu,
+however, never worked at night, and did not read Hebrew. Perhaps,
+thought Monsieur Sariette, perhaps he had brought or allowed to be
+brought to this room some priest, or Jerusalem monk, on his way through
+Paris; some Oriental _savant_ given to scriptural exegesis. Monsieur
+Sariette next wondered whether the Abbe Patouille, who had an enquiring
+mind, and also a habit of dog's-earing his books, had, peradventure,
+flung himself on these talmudic and biblical texts, fired with sudden
+zeal to lay bare the soul of Shem. He even asked himself for a moment
+whether Hippolyte, the old manservant, who had swept and dusted the
+library for a quarter of a century, and had been slowly poisoned by the
+dust of accumulated knowledge, had allowed his curiosity to get the
+better of him, and had been there during the night, ruining his eyesight
+and his reason, and losing his soul poring by moonlight over these
+undecipherable symbols. Monsieur Sariette even went so far as to imagine
+that young Maurice, on leaving his club or some nationalist meeting,
+might have torn these Jewish volumes from their shelves, out of hatred
+for old Jacob and his modern posterity; for this young man of family was
+a declared anti-semite, and only consorted with those Jews who were as
+anti-semitic as himself. It was giving a very free rein to his
+imagination, but Monsieur Sariette's brain could not rest, and went
+wandering about among speculations of the wildest extravagance.
+
+Impatient to know the truth, the zealous guardian of the library called
+the manservant.
+
+Hippolyte knew nothing. The porter at the lodge could not furnish any
+clue. None of the domestics had heard a sound. Monsieur Sariette went
+down to the study of Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, who received him in
+nightcap and dressing-gown, listened to his story with the air of a
+serious man bored with idle chatter, and dismissed him with words which
+conveyed a cruel implication of pity.
+
+"Do not worry, my good Monsieur Sariette; be sure that the books were
+lying where you left them last night."
+
+Monsieur Sariette reiterated his enquiries a score of times, discovered
+nothing, and suffered such anxiety that sleep entirely forsook him.
+When, on the following day at seven o'clock he entered the room with
+the busts and globes, and saw that all was in order, he heaved a sigh of
+relief. Then suddenly his heart beat fit to burst. He had just seen
+lying flat on the mantelpiece a paper-bound volume, a modern work, the
+boxwood paper-knife which had served to cut its pages still thrust
+between the leaves. It was a dissertation on the two parallel versions
+of Genesis, a work which Monsieur Sariette had relegated to the attic,
+and which had never left it up to now, no one in Monsieur d'Esparvieu's
+circle having had the curiosity to differentiate between the parts for
+which the polytheistic and monotheistic contributors were respectively
+responsible in the formation of the first of the sacred books. This book
+bore the label R > 3214-VIII/2. And this painful truth was suddenly
+borne in upon the mind of Monsieur Sariette: to wit, that the most
+scientific system of numbering will not help to find a book if the book
+is no longer in its place. Every day of the ensuing month found the
+table littered with books. Greek and Latin lay cheek by jowl with
+Hebrew. Monsieur Sariette asked himself whether these nocturnal
+flittings were the work of evil-doers who entered by the skylights to
+steal valuable and precious volumes. But he found no traces of burglary,
+and, notwithstanding the most minute search, failed to discover that
+anything had disappeared. Terrible anxiety took possession of his mind,
+and he fell to wondering whether it was possible that some monkey in the
+neighbourhood came down the chimney and acted the part of a person
+engaged in study. Deriving his knowledge of the habits of these animals
+in the main from the paintings of Watteau and Chardin, he took it that,
+in the art of imitating gestures or assuming characters they resembled
+Harlequin, Scaramouch, Zerlin, and the Doctors of the Italian comedy; he
+imagined them handling a palette and brushes, pounding drugs in a
+mortar, or turning over the leaves of an old treatise on alchemy beside
+an athanor. And so it was that, when, on one unhappy morning, he saw a
+huge blot of ink on one of the leaves of the third volume of the
+polyglot Bible bound in blue morocco and adorned with the arms of the
+Comte de Mirabeau, he had no doubt that a monkey was the author of the
+evil deed. The monkey had been pretending to take notes and had upset
+the inkpot. It must be a monkey belonging to a learned professor.
+
+Imbued with this idea, Monsieur Sariette carefully studied the
+topography of the district, so as to draw a cordon round the group of
+houses amid which the d'Esparvieu house stood. Then he visited the four
+surrounding streets, asking at every door if there was a monkey in the
+house. He interrogated porters and their wives, washer-women, servants,
+a cobbler, a greengrocer, a glazier, clerks in bookshops, a priest, a
+bookbinder, two guardians of the peace, children, thus testing the
+diversity of character and variety of temper in one and the same people;
+for the replies he received were quite dissimilar in nature; some were
+rough, some were gentle; there were the coarse and the polished, the
+simple and the ironical, the prolix and the abrupt, the brief and even
+the silent. But of the animal he sought he had had neither sight nor
+sound, when under the archway of an old house in the Rue Servandoni, a
+small freckled, red-haired girl who looked after the door, made reply:
+
+"There is Monsieur Ordonneau's monkey; would you care to see it?"
+
+And without another word she conducted the old man to a stable at the
+other end of the yard. There on some rank straw and old bits of cloth, a
+young macaco with a chain round his middle sat and shivered. He was no
+taller than a five-year-old child. His livid face, his wrinkled brow,
+his thin lips were all expressive of mortal sadness. He fixed on the
+visitor the still lively gaze of his yellow eyes. Then with his small
+dry hand he seized a carrot, put it to his mouth, and forthwith flung it
+away. Having looked at the newcomers for a moment, the exile turned away
+his head, as if he expected nothing further of mankind or of life.
+Sitting huddled up, one knee in his hand, he made no further movement,
+but at times a dry cough shook his breast.
+
+"It's Edgar," said the small girl. "He is for sale, you know."
+
+But the old book-lover, who had come armed with anger and resentment,
+thinking to find a cynical enemy, a monster of malice, an
+antibibliophile, stopped short, surprised, saddened, and overcome,
+before this little being devoid of strength and joy and hope.
+
+Recognising his mistake, troubled by the almost human face which sorrow
+and suffering made more human still, he murmured "Forgive me" and bowed
+his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     WHICH IN ITS FORCEFUL BREVITY PROJECTS US TO THE LIMITS OF
+     THE ACTUAL WORLD
+
+
+Two months elapsed; the domestic upheaval did not subside, and Monsieur
+Sariette's thoughts turned to the Freemasons. The papers he read were
+full of their crimes. Abbe Patouille deemed them capable of the darkest
+deeds, and believed them to be in league with the Jews and meditating
+the total overthrow of Christendom.
+
+Having now arrived at the acme of power, they wielded a dominating
+influence in all the principal departments of State, they ruled the
+Chambers, there were five of them in the Ministry, and they filled the
+Elysee. Having some time since assassinated a President of the Republic
+because he was a patriot, they were getting rid of the accomplices and
+witnesses of their execrable crime. Few days passed without Paris being
+terror-stricken at some mysterious murder hatched in their Lodges. These
+were facts concerning which no doubt was possible. By what means did
+they gain access to the library? Monsieur Sariette could not imagine.
+What task had they come to fulfil? Why did they attack sacred antiquity
+and the origins of the Church? What impious designs were they forming? A
+heavy shadow hung over these terrible undertakings. The Catholic
+archivist feeling himself under the eye of the sons of Hiram was
+terrified and fell ill.
+
+Scarcely had he recovered, when he resolved to pass the night in the
+very spot where these terrible mysteries were enacted, and to take the
+subtle and dangerous visitors by surprise. It was an enterprise that
+demanded all his slender courage. Being a man of delicate physique and
+of nervous temperament, Monsieur Sariette was naturally inclined to be
+fearful. On the 8th of January at nine o'clock in the evening, while the
+city lay asleep under a whirling snowstorm, he built up a good fire in
+the room containing the busts of the ancient poets and philosophers, and
+ensconced himself in an arm-chair at the chimney corner, a rug over his
+knees. On a small stand within reach of his hand were a lamp, a bowl of
+black coffee, and a revolver borrowed from the youthful Maurice. He
+tried to read his paper, _La Croix_, but the letters danced beneath his
+eyes. So he stared hard in front of him, saw nothing but the shadows,
+heard nothing but the wind, and fell asleep.
+
+When he awoke the fire was out, the lamp was extinguished, leaving an
+acrid smell behind. But all around, the darkness was filled with milky
+brightness and phosphorescent lights. He thought he saw something
+flutter on the table. Stricken to the marrow with cold and terror, but
+upheld by a resolve stronger than any fear, he rose, approached the
+table, and passed his hands over the cloth. He saw nothing; even the
+lights faded, but under his fingers he felt a folio wide open; he tried
+to close it, the book resisted, jumped up and hit the imprudent
+librarian three blows on the head.
+
+Monsieur Sariette fell down unconscious....
+
+Since then things had gone from bad to worse. Books left their allotted
+shelves in greater profusion than ever, and sometimes it was impossible
+to replace them; they disappeared. Monsieur Sariette discovered fresh
+losses daily. The Bollandists were now an imperfect set, thirty volumes
+of exegesis were missing. He himself had become unrecognisable. His face
+had shrunk to the size of one's fist and grown yellow as a lemon, his
+neck was elongated out of all proportion, his shoulders drooped, the
+clothes he wore hung on him as on a peg. He ate nothing, and at the
+_Cremerie des Quatre Eveques_ he would sit with dull eyes and bowed
+head, staring fixedly and vacantly at the saucer where, in a muddy
+juice, floated his stewed prunes. He did not hear old Guinardon relate
+how he had at last begun to restore the Delacroix paintings at St.
+Sulpice.
+
+Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, when he heard the unhappy curator's alarming
+reports, used to answer drily:
+
+"These books have been mislaid, they are not lost; look carefully,
+Monsieur Sariette, look carefully and you will find them."
+
+And he murmured behind the old man's back:
+
+"Poor old Sariette is in a bad way."
+
+"I think," replied Abbe Patouille, "that his brain is going."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     WHEREIN EVERYTHING SEEMS STRANGE BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS
+     LOGICAL
+
+
+The Chapel of the Holy Angels, which lies on the right hand as you enter
+the Church of St. Sulpice, was hidden behind a scaffolding of planks.
+Abbe Patouille, Monsieur Gaetan, Monsieur Maurice, his nephew, and
+Monsieur Sariette, entered in single file through the low door cut in
+the wooden hoarding, and found old Guinardon on the top of his ladder
+standing in front of the Heliodorus. The old artist, surrounded by all
+sorts of tools and materials, was putting a white paste in the crack
+which cut in two the High Priest Onias. Zephyrine, Paul Baudry's
+favourite model, Zephyrine, who had lent her golden hair and polished
+shoulders to so many Magdalens, Marguerites, sylphs, and mermaids, and
+who, it is said, was beloved of the Emperor Napoleon III, was standing
+at the foot of the ladder with tangled locks, cadaverous cheeks, and dim
+eyes, older than old Guinardon, whose life she had shared for more than
+half a century. She had brought the painter's lunch in a basket.
+
+Although the slanting rays fell grey and cold through the leaded and
+iron-barred window, Delacroix's colouring shone resplendent, and the
+roses on the cheeks of men and angels dimmed with their glorious beauty
+the rubicund countenance of old Guinardon, which stood out in relief
+against one of the temple's columns. These frescoes of the Chapel of the
+Holy Angels, though derided and insulted when they first appeared, have
+now become part of the classic tradition, and are united in immortality
+with the masterpieces of Rubens and Tintoretto.
+
+Old Guinardon, bearded and long-haired, looked like Father Time effacing
+the works of man's genius. Gaetan, in alarm, called out to him:
+
+"Carefully, Monsieur Guinardon, carefully. Do not scrape too much."
+
+The painter reassured him.
+
+"Fear nothing, Monsieur Gaetan. I do not paint in that style. My art is
+a higher one. I work after the manner of Cimabue, Giotto, and Beato
+Angelico, not in the style of Delacroix. This surface here is too
+heavily charged with contrast and opposition to give a really sacred
+effect. It is true that Chenavard said that Christianity loves the
+picturesque, but Chenavard was a rascal with neither faith nor
+principle--an infidel.... Look, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, I fill up the
+crevice, I relay the scales of paint which are peeling. That is all....
+The damage, due to the sinking of the wall, or more probably to a
+seismic shock, is confined to a very small space. This painting of oil
+and wax applied on a very dry foundation is far more solid than one
+might think.
+
+"I saw Delacroix engaged on this work. Impassioned but anxious, he
+modelled feverishly, scraped out, re-painted unceasingly; his mighty
+hand made childish blunders, but the thing is done with the mastery of a
+genius and the inexperience of a schoolboy. It is a marvel how it
+holds."
+
+The good man was silent, and went on filling in the crevice.
+
+"How classic and traditional the composition is," said Gaetan. "Time was
+when one could recognise nothing but its amazing novelty; now one can
+see in it a multitude of old Italian formulas."
+
+"I may allow myself the luxury of being just, I possess the
+qualifications," said the old man from the top of his lofty ladder.
+"Delacroix lived in a blasphemous and godless age. A painter of the
+decadence, he was not without pride nor grandeur. He was greater than
+his times. But he lacked faith, single-heartedness, and purity. To be
+able to see and paint angels he needed that virtue of angels and
+primitives, that supreme virtue which, with God's help, I do my best to
+practise, chastity."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Michel; you are as big a brute as any of them."
+
+Thus Zephyrine, devoured with jealousy because that very morning on the
+stairs she had seen her lover kiss the bread-woman's daughter, to wit
+the youthful Octavie, who was as squalid and radiant as one of
+Rembrandt's Brides. She had loved Michel madly in the happy days long
+since past, and love had never died out in Zephyrine's heart.
+
+Old Guinardon received the flattering insult with a smile that he
+dissembled, and raised his eyes to the ceiling, where the archangel
+Michael, terrible in azure cuirass and gilt helmet, was springing
+heavenwards in all the radiance of his glory.
+
+Meanwhile Abbe Patouille, blinking, and shielding his eyes with his hat
+against the glaring light from the window, began to examine the pictures
+one after another: Heliodorus being scourged by the angels, St. Michael
+vanquishing the Demons, and the combat of Jacob and the Angel.
+
+"All this is exceedingly fine," he murmured at last, "but why has the
+artist only represented wrathful angels on these walls? Look where I
+will in this chapel, I see but heralds of celestial anger, ministers of
+divine vengeance. God wishes to be feared; He wishes also to be loved. I
+would fain perceive on these walls messengers of peace and of clemency.
+I should like to see the Seraphim who purified the lips of the prophet,
+St. Raphael who gave back his sight to old Tobias, Gabriel who announced
+the Mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, the Angel who delivered St.
+Peter from his chains, the Cherubim who bore the dead St. Catherine to
+the top of Sinai. Above all, I should like to be able to contemplate
+those heavenly guardians which God gives to every man baptized in His
+name. We each have one who follows all our steps, who comforts us and
+upholds us. It would be pleasant indeed to admire these enchanting
+spirits, these beautiful faces."
+
+"Ah, Abbe! it depends on the point of view," answered Gaetan. "Delacroix
+was no sentimentalist. Old Ingres was not very far wrong in saying that
+this great man's work reeks of fire and brimstone. Look at the sombre,
+splendid beauty of those angels, look at those androgynes so proud and
+fierce, at those pitiless youths who lift avenging rods against
+Heliodorus, note this mysterious wrestler touching the patriarch on the
+hip...."
+
+"Hush," said Abbe Patouille. "According to the Bible he is no angel like
+the others; if he be an angel, he is the Angel of Creation, the Eternal
+Son of God. I am surprised that the Venerable Cure of St. Sulpice, who
+entrusted the decoration of this chapel to Monsieur Eugene Delacroix,
+did not tell him that the patriarch's symbolic struggle with Him who was
+nameless took place in profound darkness, and that the subject is quite
+out of place here, since it prefigures the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
+The best artists go astray when they fail to obtain their ideas of
+Christian iconography from a qualified ecclesiastic. The institutions of
+Christian art form the subject of numerous works with which you are
+doubtless acquainted, Monsieur Sariette."
+
+Monsieur Sariette was gazing vacantly about him. It was the third
+morning after his adventurous night in the library. Being, however, thus
+called upon by the venerable ecclesiastic, he pulled himself together
+and replied:
+
+"On this subject we may with advantage consult Molanus, _De Historia
+Sacrarum Imaginum et Picturarum_, in the edition given us by Noel
+Paquot, dated Louvain, 1771; Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, _De Pictura
+Sacra_, and the Iconography of Didron; but this last work must be read
+with caution."
+
+Having thus spoken, Monsieur Sariette relapsed into silence. He was
+pondering on his devastated library.
+
+"On the other hand," continued Abbe Patouille, "since an example of the
+holy anger of the angels was necessary in this chapel, the painter is to
+be commended for having depicted for us in imitation of Raphael the
+heavenly messengers who chastised Heliodorus. Ordered by Seleucus, King
+of Syria, to carry off the treasures contained in the Temple, Heliodorus
+was stricken by an angel in a cuirass of gold mounted on a magnificently
+caparisoned steed. Two other angels smote him with rods. He fell to
+earth, as Monsieur Delacroix shows us here, and was swallowed up in
+darkness. It is right and salutary that this adventure should be cited
+as an example to the Republican Commissioners of Police and to the
+sacrilegious agents of the law. There will always be Heliodoruses, but,
+let it be known, every time they lay their hands on the property of the
+Church, which is the property of the poor, they shall be chastised with
+rods and blinded by the angels."
+
+"I should like this painting, or, better still, Raphael's sublimer
+conception of the same subject, to be engraved in little pictures fully
+coloured, and distributed as rewards in all the schools."
+
+"Uncle," said young Maurice, with a yawn, "I think these things are
+simply ghastly. I prefer Matisse and Metzinger."
+
+These words fell unheeded, and old Guinardon from his ladder held forth:
+
+"Only the primitives caught a glimpse of Heaven. Beauty is only to be
+found between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The antique, the
+impure antique, which regained its pernicious influence over the minds
+of the sixteenth century, inspired poets and painters with criminal
+notions and immodest conceptions, with horrid impurities, filth. All the
+artists of the Renaissance were swine, including Michael-Angelo."
+
+Then, perceiving that Gaetan was on the point of departure, Pere
+Guinardon assumed an air of bonhomie, and said to him in a confidential
+tone:
+
+"Monsieur Gaetan, if you're not afraid of climbing up my five flights,
+come and have a look at my den. I've got two or three little canvases I
+wouldn't mind parting with, and they might interest you. All good,
+honest, straightforward stuff. I'll show you, among other things, a
+tasty, spicy little Baudouin that would make your mouth water."
+
+At this speech Gaetan made off. As he descended the church steps and
+turned down the Rue Princesse, he found himself accompanied by old
+Sariette, and fell to unburdening himself to him, as he would have done
+to any human creature, or indeed to a tree, a lamp-post, a dog, or his
+own shadow, of the indignation with which the aesthetic theories of the
+old painter inspired him.
+
+"Old Guinardon overdoes it with his Christian art and his Primitives!
+Whatever the artist conceives of Heaven is borrowed from earth; God, the
+Virgin, the Angels, men and women, saints, the light, the clouds. When
+he was designing figures for the chapel windows at Dreux, old Ingres
+drew from life a pure, fine study of a woman, which may be seen, among
+many others, in the Musee Bonnat at Bayonne. Old Ingres had written at
+the bottom of the page in case he should forget: 'Mademoiselle Cecile,
+admirable legs and thighs'--and so as to make Mademoiselle Cecile into a
+saint in Paradise, he gave her a robe, a cloak, a veil, inflicting thus
+a shameful decline in her estate, for the tissues of Lyons and Genoa are
+worthless compared with the youthful living tissue, rosy with pure
+blood; the most beautiful draperies are despicable compared with the
+lines of a beautiful body. In fact, clothing for flesh that is desirable
+and ripe for wedlock is an unmerited shame, and the worst of
+humiliations"; and Gaetan, walking carelessly in the gutter of the Rue
+Garanciere, continued: "Old Guinardon is a pestilential idiot. He
+blasphemes Antiquity, sacred Antiquity, the age when the gods were kind.
+He exalts an epoch when the painter and the sculptor had all their
+lessons to learn over again. In point of fact, Christianity has run
+contrary to art in so much as it has not favoured the study of the nude.
+Art is the representation of nature, and nature is pre-eminently the
+human body; it is the nude."
+
+"Pardon, pardon," purred old Sariette. "There is such a thing as
+spiritual, or, as one might term it, inward beauty, which, since the
+days of Fra Angelico down to those of Hippolyte Flandrin, Christian art
+has--"
+
+But Gaetan, never hearing a word of all this, went on hurling his
+impetuous observations at the stones of the old street and the
+snow-laden clouds overhead:
+
+"The Primitives cannot be judged as a whole, for they are utterly unlike
+each other. This old madman confounds them all together. Cimabue is a
+corrupt Byzantine, Giotto gives hints of powerful genius, but his
+modelling is bad, and, like children, he gives all his characters the
+same face. The early Italians have grace and joy, because they are
+Italians. The Venetians have an instinct for fine colour. But when all
+is said and done these exquisite craftsmen enamel and gild rather than
+paint. There is far too much softness about the heart and the colouring
+of your saintly Angelico for me. As for the Flemish school, that's quite
+another pair of shoes. They can use their hands, and in glory of
+workmanship they are on a level with the Chinese lacquer-workers. The
+technique of the brothers Van Eyck is a marvel, but I cannot discover in
+their Adoration of the Lamb the charm and mystery that some have
+vaunted. Everything in it is treated with a pitiless perfection; it is
+vulgar in feeling and cruelly ugly. Memling may touch one perhaps; but
+he creates nothing but sick wretches and cripples; under the heavy,
+rich, and ungraceful robing of his virgins and saints one divines some
+very lamentable anatomy. I did not wait for Rogier van der Wyden to call
+himself Roger de la Pasture and turn Frenchman in order to prefer him to
+Memling. This Rogier or Roger is less of a ninny; but then he is more
+lugubrious, and the rigidity of his lines bears eloquent testimony to
+his poverty-stricken figures. It is a strange perversion to take
+pleasure in these carnivalesque figures when one can have the paintings
+of Leonardo, Titian, Correggio, Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin,
+or Prud'hon. Really it is a perverted instinct."
+
+Meanwhile the Abbe Patouille and Maurice d'Esparvieu were strolling
+leisurely along in the wake of the esthete and the librarian. As a
+general rule the Abbe Patouille was little inclined to talk theology
+with laymen, or, for that matter, with clerics either. Carried away,
+however, by the attractiveness of the subject, he was telling the
+youthful Maurice all about the sacred mission of those guardian angels
+which Monsieur Delacroix had so inopportunely excluded from his picture.
+And in order to give more adequate expression to his thoughts on such
+lofty themes, the Abbe Patouille borrowed whole phrases and sentences
+from Bossuet. He had got them up by heart to put in his sermons, for he
+adhered strongly to tradition.
+
+"Yes, my son," he was saying, "God has appointed tutelary spirits to be
+near us. They come to us laden with His gifts. They return laden with
+our prayers. Such is their task. Not an hour, not a moment passes but
+they are at our side, ready to help us, ever fervent and unwearying
+guardians, watchmen that never slumber."
+
+"Quite so, Abbe," murmured Maurice, who was wondering by what cunning
+artifice he could get on the soft side of his mother and persuade her to
+give him some money of which he was urgently in need.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     WHEREIN PERE SARIETTE DISCOVERS HIS MISSING TREASURES
+
+
+Next morning Monsieur Sariette entered Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu's study
+without knocking. He raised his arms to the heavens, his few hairs were
+standing straight up on his head. His eyes were big with terror. In
+husky tones he stammered out the dreadful news. A very old manuscript of
+Flavius Josephus; sixty volumes of all sizes; a priceless jewel, namely,
+a _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior
+of France, with notes in Voltaire's own hand; a manuscript of Richard
+Simon, and a set of Gassendi's correspondence with Gabriel Naude,
+comprising two hundred and thirty-eight unpublished letters, had
+disappeared. This time the owner of the library was alarmed.
+
+He mounted in haste to the abode of the philosophers and the globes, and
+there with his own eyes confirmed the magnitude of the disaster.
+
+There were yawning gaps on many a shelf. He searched here and there,
+opened cupboards, dragged out brooms, dusters, and fire-extinguishers,
+rattled the shovel in the coke fire, shook out Monsieur Sariette's best
+frock-coat that was hanging in the cloak-room, and then stood and gazed
+disconsolately at the empty places left by the Gassendi portfolios.
+
+For the past half-century the whole learned world had been loudly
+clamouring for the publication of this correspondence. Monsieur Rene
+d'Esparvieu had not responded to the universal desire, unwilling either
+to assume so heavy a task, or to resign it to others. Having found much
+boldness of thought in these letters, and many passages of more
+libertine tendency than the piety of the twentieth century could endure,
+he preferred that they should remain unpublished; but he felt himself
+responsible for their safe-keeping, not only to his country but to the
+whole civilized world.
+
+"How can you have allowed yourself to be robbed of such a treasure?" he
+asked severely of Monsieur Sariette.
+
+"How can I have allowed myself to be robbed of such a treasure?"
+repeated the unhappy librarian. "Monsieur, if you opened my breast, you
+would find that question engraved upon my heart."
+
+Unmoved by this powerful utterance, Monsieur d'Esparvieu continued with
+pent-up fury:
+
+"And you have discovered no single sign that would put you on the track
+of the thief, Monsieur Sariette? You have no suspicion, not the
+faintest idea, of the way these things have come to pass? You have seen
+nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing, learnt nothing? You must grant
+this is unbelievable. Think, Monsieur Sariette, think of the possible
+consequences of this unheard-of theft, committed under your eyes. A
+document of inestimable value in the history of the human mind
+disappears. Who has stolen it? Why has it been stolen? Who will gain by
+it? Those who have got possession of it doubtless know that they will be
+unable to dispose of it in France. They will go and sell it in America
+or Germany. Germany is greedy for such literary monuments. Should the
+correspondence of Gassendi with Gabriel Naude go over to Berlin, if it
+is published there by German savants, what a disaster, nay, what a
+scandal! Monsieur Sariette, have you not thought of that?..."
+
+Beneath the stroke of an accusation all the more cruel in that he
+brought it against himself, Monsieur Sariette stood stupefied, and was
+silent. And Monsieur d'Esparvieu continued to overwhelm him with bitter
+reproaches.
+
+"And you make no effort. You devise nothing to find these inestimable
+treasures. Make enquiries, bestir yourself, Monsieur Sariette; use your
+wits. It is well worth while."
+
+And Monsieur d'Esparvieu went out, throwing an icy glance at his
+librarian.
+
+Monsieur Sariette sought the lost books and manuscripts in every spot
+where he had already sought them a hundred times, and where they could
+not possibly be. He even looked in the coke-box and under the leather
+seat of his arm-chair. When midday struck he mechanically went
+downstairs. At the foot of the stairs he met his old pupil Maurice, with
+whom he exchanged a bow. But he only saw men and things as through a
+mist.
+
+The broken-hearted curator had already reached the hall when Maurice
+called him back.
+
+"Monsieur Sariette, while I think of it, do have the books removed that
+are choking up my garden-house."
+
+"What books, Maurice?"
+
+"I could not tell you, Monsieur Sariette, but there are some in Hebrew,
+all worm-eaten, with a whole heap of old papers. They are in my way. You
+can't turn round in the passage."
+
+"Who took them there?"
+
+"I'm bothered if I know."
+
+And the young man rushed off to the dining-room, the luncheon gong
+having sounded quite a minute ago.
+
+Monsieur Sariette tore away to the summer-house. Maurice had spoken the
+truth. About a hundred volumes were there, on tables, on chairs, even on
+the floor. When he saw them he was divided betwixt joy and fear, filled
+with amazement and anxiety. Happy in the finding of his lost treasure,
+dreading to lose it again, and completely overwhelmed with astonishment,
+the man of books alternately babbled like an infant and uttered the
+hoarse cries of a maniac. He recognised his Hebrew Bibles, his ancient
+Talmuds, his very old manuscript of Flavius Josephus, his portfolios of
+Gassendi's letters to Gabriel Naude, and his richest jewel of all, to
+wit, _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of the Grand Prior of France, and
+with notes in Voltaire's own hand. He laughed, he cried, he kissed the
+morocco, the calf, the parchment, and vellum, even the wooden boards
+studded with nails.
+
+As fast as Hippolyte, the manservant, returned with an armful to the
+library, Monsieur Sariette, with a trembling hand, restored them piously
+to their places.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     OF A SOMEWHAT LIVELY INTEREST, WHEREOF THE MORAL WILL, I
+     HOPE, APPEAL GREATLY TO MY READERS, SINCE IT CAN BE
+     EXPRESSED BY THIS SORROWFUL QUERY: "THOUGHT, WHITHER DOST
+     THOU LEAD ME?" FOR IT IS A UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED TRUTH THAT
+     IT IS UNHEALTHY TO THINK AND THAT TRUE WISDOM LIES IN NOT
+     THINKING AT ALL
+
+
+All the books were now once more assembled in the pious keeping of
+Monsieur Sariette. But this happy reunion was not destined to last. The
+following night twenty volumes left their places, among them the
+_Lucretius_ of Prior de Vendome. Within a week the old Hebrew and Greek
+texts had all returned to the summer-house, and every night during the
+ensuing month they left their shelves and secretly went on the same
+path. Others betook themselves no one knew whither.
+
+On hearing of these mysterious occurrences, Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu
+merely remarked with frigidity to his librarian:
+
+"My poor Sariette, all this is very queer, very queer indeed."
+
+And when Monsieur Sariette tentatively advised him to lodge a formal
+complaint or to inform the Commissaire de Police, Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+cried out upon him:
+
+"What are you suggesting, Monsieur Sariette? Divulge domestic secrets,
+make a scandal! You cannot mean it. I have enemies, and I am proud of
+it. I think I have deserved them. What I might complain about is that I
+am wounded in the house of my friend, attacked with unheard-of violence,
+by fervent loyalists, who, I grant you, are good Catholics, but
+exceedingly bad Christians.... In a word, I am watched, spied upon,
+shadowed, and you suggest, Monsieur Sariette, that I should make a
+present of this comic-opera mystery, this burlesque adventure, this
+story in which we both cut somewhat pitiable figures, to a set of
+spiteful journalists? Do you wish to cover me with ridicule?"
+
+The result of the colloquy was that the two gentlemen agreed to change
+all the locks in the library. Estimates were asked for and workmen
+called in. For six weeks the d'Esparvieu household rang from morning
+till night with the sound of hammers, the hum of centre-bits, and the
+grating of files. Fires were always going in the abode of the
+philosophers and globes, and the people of the house were simply
+sickened by the smell of heated oil. The old, smooth, easy-running locks
+were replaced, on the cupboards and doors of the rooms, by stubborn and
+tricky fastenings. There was nothing but combinations of locks,
+letter-padlocks, safety-bolts, bars, chains, and electric alarm-bells.
+
+All this display of ironmongery inspired fear. The lock-cases glistened,
+and there was much grinding of bolts. To gain access to a room, a
+cupboard, or a drawer, it was necessary to know a certain number, of
+which Monsieur Sariette alone was cognisant. His head was filled with
+bizarre words and tremendous numbers, and he got entangled among all
+these cryptic signs, these square, cubic, and triangular figures. He
+himself couldn't get the doors and the cupboards undone, yet every
+morning he found them wide open, and the books thrown about, ransacked,
+and hidden away. In the gutter of the Rue Servandoni a policeman picked
+up a volume of Salomon Reinach on the identity of Barabbas and Jesus
+Christ. As it bore the book-plate of the d'Esparvieu library he returned
+it to the owner.
+
+Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, not even deigning to inform Monsieur Sariette
+of the fact, made up his mind to consult a magistrate, a friend in whom
+he had complete confidence, to wit, a certain Monsieur des Aubels,
+Counsel at the Law Courts, who had put through many an important affair.
+He was a little plump man, very red, very bald, with a cranium that
+shone like a billiard ball. He entered the library one morning feigning
+to come as a book-lover, but he soon showed that he knew nothing about
+books. While all the busts of the ancient philosophers were reflected in
+his shining pate, he put divers insidious questions to Monsieur
+Sariette, who grew uncomfortable and turned red, for innocence is easily
+flustered. From that moment Monsieur des Aubels had a mighty suspicion
+that Monsieur Sariette was the perpetrator of the very thefts he
+denounced with horror; and it immediately occurred to him to seek out
+the accomplices of the crime. As regards motives, he did not trouble
+about them; motives are always to be found. Monsieur des Aubels told
+Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu that, if he liked, he would have the house
+secretly watched by a detective from the Prefecture.
+
+"I will see that you get Mignon," he said. "He is an excellent servant,
+assiduous and prudent."
+
+By six o'clock next morning Mignon was already walking up and down
+outside the d'Esparvieus' house, his head sunk between his shoulders,
+wearing love-locks which showed from under the narrow brim of his bowler
+hat, his eye cocked over his shoulder. He wore an enormous dull-black
+moustache, his hands and feet were huge; in fact, his whole appearance
+was distinctly memorable. He paced regularly up and down from the
+nearest of the big rams' head pillars which adorn the Hotel de la
+Sordiere to the end of the Rue Garanciere, towards the apse of St.
+Sulpice Church and the dome of the Chapel of the Virgin.
+
+Henceforth it became impossible to enter or leave the d'Esparvieus'
+house without feeling that one's every action, that one's very thoughts,
+were being spied upon. Mignon was a prodigious person endowed with
+powers that Nature denies to other mortals. He neither ate nor slept. At
+all hours of the day and night, in wind and rain, he was to be found
+outside the house, and no one escaped the X-rays of his eye. One felt
+pierced through and through, penetrated to the very marrow, worse than
+naked, bare as a skeleton. It was the affair of a moment; the detective
+did not even stop, but continued his everlasting walk. It became
+intolerable. Young Maurice threatened to leave the paternal roof if he
+was to be so radiographed. His mother and his sister Berthe complained
+of his piercing look; it offended the chaste modesty of their souls.
+Mademoiselle Caporal, young Leon d'Esparvieu's governess, felt an
+indescribable embarrassment. Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu was sick of the
+whole business. He never crossed his own threshold without crushing his
+hat over his eyes to avoid the investigating ray and without wishing old
+Sariette, the _fons et origo_ of all the evil, at the devil. The
+intimates of the household, such as Abbe Patouille and Uncle Gaetan,
+made themselves scarce; visitors gave up calling, tradespeople hesitated
+about leaving their goods, the carts belonging to the big shops scarcely
+dared stop. But it was among the domestics that the spying roused the
+most disorder.
+
+The footman, afraid, under the eye of the police, to go and join the
+cobbler's wife over her solitary labours in the afternoon, found the
+house unbearable and gave notice. Odile, Madame d'Esparvieu's
+lady's-maid, not daring, as was her custom after her mistress had
+retired, to introduce Octave, the handsomest of the neighbouring
+bookseller's clerks, to her little room upstairs, grew melancholy,
+irritable and nervous, pulled her mistress's hair while dressing it,
+spoke insolently, and made advances to Monsieur Maurice. The cook,
+Madame Malgoire, a serious matron of some fifty years, having no more
+visits from Auguste, the wine-merchant's man in the Rue Servandoni, and
+being incapable of suffering a privation so contrary to her temperament,
+went mad, sent up a raw rabbit to table, and announced that the Pope had
+asked her hand in marriage. At last, after a fortnight of superhuman
+assiduity, contrary to all known laws of organic life, and to the
+essential conditions of animal economy, Mignon, the detective, having
+observed nothing abnormal, ceased his surveillance and withdrew without
+a word, refusing to accept a gratuity. In the library the dance of the
+books became livelier than ever.
+
+"That is all right," said Monsieur des Aubels. "Since nothing comes in
+nor goes out, the evil-doer must be in the house."
+
+The magistrate thought it possible to discover the criminal without
+police-warrant or enquiry. On a date agreed upon at midnight, he had the
+floor of the library, the treads of the stairs, the vestibule, the
+garden path leading to Monsieur Maurice's summer-house, and the entrance
+hall of the latter, all covered with a coating of talc.
+
+The following morning Monsieur des Aubels, assisted by a photographer
+from the Prefecture, and accompanied by Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu and
+Monsieur Sariette, came to take the imprints. They found nothing in the
+garden, the wind had blown away the coating of talc; nothing in the
+summer-house either. Young Maurice told them he thought it was some
+practical joke and that he had brushed away the white dust with the
+hearth-brush. The real truth was, he had effaced the traces left by the
+boots of Odile, the lady's-maid. On the stairs and in the library the
+very light print of a bare foot could be discerned, it seemed to have
+sprung into the air and to have touched the ground at rare intervals and
+without any pressure. They discovered five of these traces. The clearest
+was to be found in the abode of the busts and spheres, on the edge of
+the table where the books were piled. The photographer took several
+negatives of this imprint.
+
+"This is more terrifying than anything else," murmured Monsieur
+Sariette.
+
+Monsieur des Aubels did not hide his surprise.
+
+Three days later the anthropometrical department of the Prefecture
+returned the proofs exhibited to them, saying that they were not in the
+records.
+
+After dinner Monsieur Rene showed the photographs to his brother Gaetan,
+who examined them with profound attention, and after a long silence
+exclaimed:
+
+"No wonder they have not got this at the Prefecture; it is the foot of a
+god or of an athlete of antiquity. The sole that made this impression is
+of a perfection unknown to our races and our climates. It exhibits toes
+of exquisite grace, and a divine heel."
+
+Rene d'Esparvieu cried out upon his brother for a madman.
+
+"He is a poet," sighed Madame d'Esparvieu.
+
+"Uncle," said Maurice, "you'll fall in love with this foot if you ever
+come across it."
+
+"Such was the fate of Vivant Denon, who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt,"
+replied Gaetan. "At Thebes, in a tomb violated by the Arabs, Denon
+found the little foot of a mummy of marvellous beauty. He contemplated
+it with extraordinary fervour, 'It is the foot of a young woman,' he
+pondered, 'of a princess--of a charming creature. No covering has ever
+marred its perfect shape.' Denon admired, adored, and loved it. You may
+see a drawing of this little foot in Denon's atlas of his journey to
+Egypt, whose leaves one could turn over upstairs, without going further
+afield, if only Monsieur Sariette would ever let us see a single volume
+of his library."
+
+Sometimes, in bed, Maurice, waking in the middle of the night, thought
+he heard the sound of pages being turned over in the next room, and the
+thud of bound volumes falling on the floor.
+
+One morning at five o'clock he was coming home from the club, after a
+night of bad luck, and while he stood outside the door of the
+summer-house, hunting in his pocket for his keys, his ears distinctly
+heard a voice sighing:
+
+"Knowledge, whither dost thou lead me? Thought, whither dost thou lure
+me?"
+
+But entering the two rooms he saw nothing, and told himself that his
+ears must have deceived him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     WHICH SPEAKS OF LOVE, A SUBJECT WHICH ALWAYS GIVES PLEASURE,
+     FOR A TALE WITHOUT LOVE IS LIKE BEEF WITHOUT MUSTARD: AN
+     INSIPID DISH
+
+
+Nothing ever astonished Maurice. He never sought to know the causes of
+things and dwelt tranquilly in the world of appearances. Not denying the
+eternal truth, he nevertheless followed vain things as his fancy led
+him.
+
+Less addicted to sport and violent exercise than most young people of
+his generation, he followed unconsciously the old erotic traditions of
+his race. The French were ever the most gallant of men, and it were a
+pity they should lose this advantage. Maurice preserved it. He was in
+love with no woman, but, as St. Augustine said, he loved to love. After
+paying the tribute that was rightly due to the imperishable beauty and
+secret arts of Madame de la Bertheliere, he had enjoyed the impetuous
+caresses of a young singer called Luciole. At present he was joylessly
+experiencing the primitive perversity of Odile, his mother's
+lady's-maid, and the tearful adoration of the beautiful Madame
+Boittier. And he felt a great void in his heart.
+
+It chanced that one Wednesday, on entering the drawing-room where his
+mother entertained her friends--who were, generally speaking,
+unattractive and austere ladies, with a sprinkling of old men and very
+young people--he noticed, in this intimate circle, Madame des Aubels,
+the wife of the magistrate at the Law Courts, whom Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+had vainly consulted on the mysterious ransacking of his library. She
+was young, he found her pretty, and not without cause. Gilberte had been
+modelled by the Genius of the Race, and no other genius had had a part
+in the work.
+
+Thus all her attributes inspired desire, and nothing in her shape or her
+being aroused any other sentiment.
+
+The law of attraction which draws world to world moved young Maurice to
+approach this delicious creature, and under its influence he offered to
+escort her to the tea-table. And when Gilberte was served with tea, he
+said:
+
+"We should hit it off quite well together, you and I, don't you think?"
+
+He spoke in this way, according to modern usage, so as to avoid inane
+compliments and to spare a woman the boredom of listening to one of
+those old declarations of love which, containing nothing but what is
+vague and undefined, require neither a truthful nor an exact reply.
+
+And profiting by the fact that he had an opportunity of conversing
+secretly with Madame des Aubels for a few minutes, he spoke urgently and
+to the point. Gilberte, so far as one could judge, was made rather to
+awaken desire than to feel it. Nevertheless, she well knew that her fate
+was to love, and she followed it willingly and with pleasure. Maurice
+did not particularly displease her. She would have preferred him to be
+an orphan, for experience had taught her how disappointing it sometimes
+is to love the son of the house.
+
+"Will you?" he said by way of conclusion.
+
+She pretended not to understand, and with her little _foie-gras_
+sandwich raised half-way to her mouth she looked at Maurice with
+wondering eyes.
+
+"Will I _what_?" she asked.
+
+"You know quite well."
+
+Madame des Aubels lowered her eyes, and sipped her tea, for her
+prudishness was not quite vanquished. Meanwhile Maurice, taking her
+empty cup from her hand, murmured:
+
+"Saturday, five o'clock, 126 Rue de Rome, on the ground-floor, the door
+on the right, under the arch. Knock three times."
+
+Madame des Aubels glanced severely and imperturbably at the son of the
+house, and with a self-possessed air rejoined the circle of highly
+respectable women to whom the Senator Monsieur Le Fol was explaining
+how artificial incubators were employed at the agricultural colony at
+St. Julienne.
+
+The following Saturday, Maurice, in his ground-floor flat, awaited
+Madame des Aubels. He waited her in vain. No light hand came to knock
+three times on the door under the arch. And Maurice gave way to
+imprecation, inwardly calling the absent one a jade and a hussy. His
+fruitless wait, his frustrated desires, rendered him unjust. For Madame
+des Aubels in not coming where she had never promised to go hardly
+deserved these names; but we judge human actions by the pleasure or pain
+they cause us.
+
+Maurice did not put in an appearance in his mother's drawing-room until
+a fortnight after the conversation at the tea-table. He came late.
+Madame des Aubels had been there for half an hour. He bowed coldly to
+her, took a seat some way off, and affected to be listening to the talk.
+
+"Worthily matched," a rich male voice was saying; "the two antagonists
+were well calculated to render the struggle a terrible and uncertain
+one. General Bol, with unprecedented tenacity, maintained his position
+as though he were rooted in the very soil. General Milpertuis, with an
+agility truly superhuman, kept carrying out movements of the most
+dazzling rapidity around his immovable adversary. The battle continued
+to be waged with terrible stubbornness. We were all in an agony of
+suspense...."
+
+It was General d'Esparvieu describing the autumn manoeuvres to a company
+of breathlessly interested ladies. He was talking well and his audience
+were delighted. Proceeding to draw a comparison between the French and
+German methods, he defined their distinguishing characteristics and
+brought out the conspicuous merits of both with a lofty impartiality. He
+did not hesitate to affirm that each system had its advantages, and at
+first made it appear to his circle of wondering, disappointed, and
+anxious dames, whose countenances were growing increasingly gloomy, that
+France and Germany were practically in a position of equality. But
+little by little, as the strategist went on to give a clearer definition
+of the two methods, that of the French began to appear flexible,
+elegant, vigorous, full of grace, cleverness, and verve; that of the
+Germans heavy, clumsy, and undecided. And slowly and surely the faces of
+the ladies began to clear and to light up with joyous smiles. In order
+to dissipate any lingering shadows of misgiving from the minds of these
+wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the General gave them to understand
+that we were in a position to make use of the German method when it
+suited us, but that the Germans could not avail themselves of the French
+method. No sooner had he delivered himself of these sentiments than he
+was button-holed by Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec, who was engaged in
+founding a patriotic society known as "Swordsmen All," of which the
+object was to regenerate France and ensure her superiority over all her
+adversaries. Even children in the cradle were to be enrolled, and
+Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec offered the honorary presidency to General
+d'Esparvieu.
+
+Meanwhile Maurice was appearing to be interested in a conversation that
+was taking place between a very gentle old lady and the Abbe Lapetite,
+Chaplain to the Dames du Saint Sang. The old lady, severely tried of
+late by illness and the loss of friends, wanted to know how it was that
+people were unhappy in this world.
+
+"How," she asked Abbe Lapetite, "do you explain the scourges that
+afflict mankind? Why are there plagues, famines, floods, and
+earthquakes?"
+
+"It is surely necessary that God should sometimes remind us of his
+existence," replied Abbe Lapetite, with a heavenly smile.
+
+Maurice appeared keenly interested in this conversation. Then he seemed
+fascinated by Madame Fillot-Grandin, quite a personable young woman,
+whose simple innocence, however, detracted all piquancy from her beauty,
+all savour from her bodily charms. A very sour, shrill-voiced old lady,
+who, affecting the dowdy, woollen weeds of poverty, displayed the pride
+of a great lady in the world of Christian finance, exclaimed in a
+squeaky voice:
+
+"Well, my dear Madame d'Esparvieu, so you have had trouble here. The
+papers speak darkly of robbery, of thefts committed in Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's valuable library, of stolen letters...."
+
+"Oh," said Madame d'Esparvieu, "if we are to believe all the newspapers
+say...."
+
+"Oh, so, dear Madame, you have got your treasures back. All's well that
+ends well."
+
+"The library is in perfect order," asserted Madame d'Esparvieu. "There
+is nothing missing."
+
+"The library is on the floor above this, is it not?" asked young Madame
+des Aubels, showing an unexpected interest in the books.
+
+Madame d'Esparvieu replied that the library occupied the whole of the
+second floor, and that they had put the least valuable books in the
+attics.
+
+"Could I not go and look at it?"
+
+The mistress of the house declared that nothing could be easier. She
+called to her son:
+
+"Maurice, go and do the honours of the library to Madame des Aubels."
+
+Maurice rose, and without uttering a word, mounted to the second floor
+in the wake of Madame des Aubels.
+
+He appeared indifferent, but inwardly he rejoiced, for he had no doubt
+that Gilberte had feigned her ardent desire to inspect the library
+simply to see him in secret. And, while affecting indifference, he
+promised himself to renew those offers which, this time, would not be
+refused.
+
+Under the romantic bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu, they were met by the
+silent shadow of a little wan, hollow-eyed old man, who wore a settled
+expression of mute terror.
+
+"Do not let us disturb you, Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice. "I am
+showing Madame des Aubels round the library."
+
+Maurice and Madame des Aubels passed on into the great room where
+against the four walls rose presses filled with books and surmounted by
+bronze busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity. All was
+in perfect order, an order which seemed never to have been disturbed
+from the beginning of things.
+
+Only, a black void was to be seen in the place which, only the evening
+before, had been filled by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon.
+Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked Monsieur Sariette,
+pale, faded, and silent.
+
+"Really and truly, you have not been nice," said Maurice, with a look of
+reproach at Madame des Aubels.
+
+She signed to him that the librarian might over-hear. But he reassured
+her.
+
+"Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has become a complete idiot."
+And he repeated: "No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited you. You
+did not come. You have made me unhappy."
+
+After a moment's silence, while one heard the low melancholy whistling
+of asthma in poor Sariette's bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued
+insistently:
+
+"You are wrong."
+
+"Why wrong?"
+
+"Wrong not to do as I ask you."
+
+"Do you still think so?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You meant it seriously?"
+
+"As seriously as can be."
+
+Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant feeling, and thinking
+she had resisted sufficiently, Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had
+refused him a fortnight ago.
+
+They slipped into an embrasure of the window, behind an enormous
+celestial globe whereon were graven the Signs of the Zodiac and the
+figures of the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion, the
+Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a multitude of Bibles, before
+the works of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of
+Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates,
+Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and
+Epictetus, they exchanged vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.
+
+Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought herself that she still
+had some calls to pay, and that she must make her escape quickly, for
+love had not made her lose all sense of her own importance. But she had
+barely crossed the landing with Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and
+saw Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming as he went:
+
+"Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped from the shelf by
+itself. It crossed the room ... there it is--there! It's going
+downstairs. Stop it! It has gone out of the door on the ground floor!"
+
+"What?" asked Maurice.
+
+Monsieur Sariette looked out of the landing window, murmuring
+horror-struck:
+
+"It's crossing the garden! It's going into the summer-house. Stop it,
+stop it!"
+
+"But what is it?" repeated Maurice--"in God's name, what is it?"
+
+"My Flavius Josephus," exclaimed Monsieur Sariette. "Stop it!"
+
+And he fell down unconscious.
+
+"You see he is quite mad," said Maurice to Madame des Aubels, as he
+lifted up the unfortunate librarian.
+
+Gilberte, a little pale, said she also thought she had seen something in
+the direction indicated by the unhappy man, something flying.
+
+Maurice had seen nothing, but he had felt what seemed like a gust of
+wind.
+
+He left Monsieur Sariette in the arms of Hippolyte and the housekeeper,
+who had both hastened to the spot on hearing the noise.
+
+The old gentleman had a wound in his head.
+
+"All the better," said the housekeeper; "this wound may save him from
+having a fit."
+
+Madame des Aubels gave her handkerchief to stop the blood, and
+recommended an arnica compress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT, AS AN ANCIENT GREEK POET SAID,
+     "NOTHING IS SWEETER THAN APHRODITE THE GOLDEN"
+
+
+Although he had enjoyed Madame des Aubels' favours for six whole months,
+Maurice still loved her. True they had had to separate during the
+summer. For lack of funds of his own he had had to go to Switzerland
+with his mother, and then to stop with the whole family at the Chateau
+d'Esparvieu. She had spent the summer with her mother at Niort, and the
+autumn with her husband at a little Normandy seaside place, so that they
+had hardly seen each other four or five times. But since the winter,
+kindly to lovers, had brought them back to town again, Maurice had been
+receiving her twice a week in his little flat in the Rue de Rome, and
+received no one else. No other woman had inspired him with feelings of
+such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his pleasure was that he
+believed himself loved, and indeed he was not unpleasing.
+
+He thought that she did not deceive him, not that he had any reason to
+think so, but it appeared right and fitting that she should be content
+with him alone. What annoyed him was that she always kept him waiting,
+and was unpunctual in coming to their meeting-place; she was invariably
+late,--at times very late.
+
+Now on Saturday, January 30th, since four o'clock in the afternoon,
+Maurice had been awaiting Madame des Aubels in the little pink room,
+where a bright fire was burning. He was gaily clad in a suit of flowered
+pyjamas, smoking Turkish cigarettes. At first he dreamt of receiving her
+with long kisses, with hitherto unknown caresses. A quarter of an hour
+having passed, he meditated serious and affectionate reproaches, then
+after an hour of disappointed waiting he vowed he would meet her with
+cold disdain.
+
+At length she appeared, fresh and fragrant.
+
+"It was scarcely worth while coming," he said bitterly, as she laid her
+muff and her little bag on the table and untied her veil before the
+wardrobe mirror.
+
+Never, she told her beloved, had she had such trouble to get away. She
+was full of excuses, which he obstinately rejected. But no sooner had
+she the good sense to hold her tongue than he ceased his reproaches, and
+then nothing detracted from the longing with which she inspired him.
+
+The curtains were drawn, the room was bathed in warm shadows lit by the
+dancing gleams of the fire. The mirrors in the wardrobe and on the
+chimney-piece shone with mysterious lights. Gilberte, leaning on her
+elbow, head on hand, was lost in thought. A little jeweller, a
+trustworthy and intelligent man, had shown her a wonderfully pretty
+pearl and sapphire bracelet; it was worth a great deal, and was to be
+had for a mere nothing. He had got it from a _cocotte_ down on her luck,
+who was in a hurry to dispose of it. It was a rare chance; it would be a
+huge pity to let it slip.
+
+"Would you like to see it, darling? I will ask the little man to let me
+have it to show you."
+
+Maurice did not actually decline the proposal. But it was clear that he
+took no interest in the wonderful bracelet. "When small jewellers come
+across a great bargain, they keep it to themselves, and do not allow
+their customers to profit by it. Moreover, jewellery means nothing just
+now. Well-bred women have given up wearing it. Everyone goes in for
+sport, and jewellery does not go with sport."
+
+Maurice spoke thus, contrary to truth, because having given his mistress
+a fur coat, he was in no hurry to give her anything more. He was not
+stingy, but he was careful with his money. His people did not give him a
+very large allowance, and his debts grew bigger every day. By satisfying
+the wishes of his inamorata too promptly he feared to arouse others
+still more pressing. The bargain seemed less wonderful to him than to
+Gilberte; besides, he liked to take the initiative in choosing his
+gifts. Above all, he thought that if he gave her too many presents he
+would be no longer sure of being loved for himself.
+
+Madame des Aubels felt neither contempt nor surprise at this attitude;
+she was gentle and temperate, she knew men, and judged that one must
+take them as one found them, that for the most part they do not give
+very willingly, and that a woman should know how to make them give.
+
+Suddenly a gas lamp was lighted in the street, and shone through the
+gaps in the curtains.
+
+"Half-past six," she said. "We must be on the move."
+
+Pricked by the touch of Time's fleeting wing, Maurice was conscious of
+reawakened desires and reanimated powers. A white and radiant offering,
+Gilberte, with her head thrown back, her eyes half closed, her lips
+apart, sunk in dreamy languor, was breathing slowly and placidly, when
+suddenly she started up with a cry of terror.
+
+"Whatever is that?"
+
+"Stay still," said Maurice, holding her back in his arms.
+
+In his present mood, had the sky fallen it would not have troubled him.
+But in one bound she escaped from him. Crouching down, her eyes filled
+with terror, she was pointing with her finger at a figure which appeared
+in a corner of the room, between the fire-place and the wardrobe with
+the mirror. Then, unable to bear the sight, and nearly fainting, she hid
+her face in her hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     WHICH FAR SURPASSES IN AUDACITY THE IMAGINATIVE FLIGHTS OF
+     DANTE AND MILTON
+
+
+Maurice at length turned his head, saw the figure, and perceiving that
+it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile, Gilberte was regaining her
+senses. She imagined that what she had seen was some mistress whom her
+lover had hidden in the room. Inflamed with anger and disgust at the
+idea of such treachery, boiling with indignation, and glaring at her
+supposed rival, she exclaimed:
+
+"A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring me into a room where you allow
+your women to come, and when I arrive they have not had time to dress.
+And you reproach me with arriving late! Your impudence is beyond belief!
+Come, send the creature packing. If you wanted us both here together,
+you might at least have asked me whether it suited me...."
+
+Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver that had never been there,
+whispered in her ear:
+
+"Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely see, but it is more like
+a man."
+
+She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed harder than ever.
+
+"A man! Where does he come from? A thief. An assassin! Help! Help! Kill
+him.... Maurice, kill him! Turn on the light. No, don't turn on the
+light...."
+
+She made a mental vow that should she escape from this danger she would
+burn a candle to the Blessed Virgin. Her teeth chattered.
+
+The figure made a movement.
+
+"Keep away!" cried Gilberte. "Keep away!"
+
+She offered the burglar all the money and jewels she had on the table if
+he would consent not to stir. Amid her surprise and terror the idea
+assailed her that her husband, dissembling his suspicions, had caused
+her to be followed, had posted witnesses, and had had recourse to the
+Commissaire de Police. In a flash she distinctly saw before her the long
+painful future, the glaring scandal, the pretended disdain, the cowardly
+desertion of her friends, the just mockery of society, for it is indeed
+ridiculous to be found out. She saw the divorce, the loss of her
+position and of her rank. She saw the dreary and narrow existence with
+her mother, when no one would make love to her, for men avoid women who
+fail to give them the security of the married state. And all this, why?
+Why this ruin, this disaster? For a piece of folly, for a mere nothing.
+Thus in a lightning flash spoke the conscience of Gilberte des Aubels.
+
+"Have no fear, Madame," said a very sweet voice.
+
+Slightly reassured, she found strength to ask:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am an angel," replied the voice.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I am an angel. I am Maurice's guardian angel."
+
+"Say it again. I am going mad. I do not understand...."
+
+Maurice, without understanding either, was indignant. He sprang forward
+and showed himself; with his right hand armed with a slipper he made a
+threatening gesture, and said in a rough voice:
+
+"You are a low ruffian; oblige me by going the way you came."
+
+"Maurice d'Esparvieu," continued the sweet voice, "He whom you adore as
+your Creator has stationed by the side of each of the faithful a good
+angel, whose mission it is to counsel and protect him; it is the
+invariable opinion of the Fathers, it is founded on many passages in the
+Bible, the Church admits it unanimously, without, however, pronouncing
+anathema upon those who hold a contrary opinion. You see before you one
+of these angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to watch over your
+innocence and to guard your chastity."
+
+"That may be," said Maurice; "but you are certainly no gentleman. A
+gentleman would not permit himself to enter a room at such a moment. To
+be plain, what the deuce are you doing here?"
+
+"I have assumed this appearance, Maurice, because, having henceforth to
+move among mankind, I have to make myself like them. The celestial
+spirits possess the power of assuming a form which renders them apparent
+to the eye and to the touch. This shape is real, because it is apparent,
+and all the realities in the world are but appearances."
+
+Gilberte, pacified at length, was arranging her hair on her forehead.
+
+The Angel pursued:
+
+"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their fancy, one sex or the
+other, or both at once. But they cannot disguise themselves at any
+moment, according to their caprice or fantasy. Their metamorphoses are
+subject to constant laws, which you would not understand. Thus I have
+neither desire nor power to transform myself under your eyes, for your
+amusement or my own, into a lion, a tiger, a fly, or into a
+sycamore-shaving like the young Egyptian whose story was found in a
+tomb. I cannot change myself into an ass as did Lucius with the pomade
+of the youthful Photis. For in my wisdom I had fixed beforehand the
+hour of my apparition to mankind, nothing could hasten or delay it."
+
+Impatient for enlightenment, Maurice asked for the second time:
+
+"Still, what are you up to here?"
+
+Joining her voice to his, Madame des Aubels asked: "Yes, indeed, what
+are you doing here?"
+
+The Angel replied:
+
+"Man, lend your ear. Woman, hear my voice. I am about to reveal to you a
+secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him
+whom you hold to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, I
+am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."
+
+"Do not jest," said Maurice, who had faith and did not allow holy things
+to be played with.
+
+But the Angel answered reproachfully: "What makes you think, Maurice,
+that I am frivolous and given to vain words?"
+
+"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not going
+to revolt against----"
+
+He pointed to the ceiling--not daring to finish.
+
+But the Angel continued:
+
+"Do you not know that the sons of God have already revolted and that a
+great battle took place in the heavens?"
+
+"That was a long time ago," said Maurice, putting on his socks.
+
+Then the Angel replied:
+
+"It was before the creation of the world. But nothing has changed since
+then in the heavens. The nature of the Angels is no different now from
+what it was originally. What they did then they could do again now."
+
+"No! It is not possible. It is contrary to faith. If you were an angel,
+a good angel as you make out you are, it would never occur to you to
+disobey your Creator."
+
+"You are in error, Maurice, and the authority of the Fathers condemns
+you. Origen lays it down in his homilies that good angels are fallible,
+that they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. Possibly you
+may be tempted to reject the authority of this Father, despite his
+knowledge of the Scriptures, because he is excluded from the Canon of
+the Saints. If this be so, I would remind you of the second chapter of
+Revelation, in which the Angels of Ephesus and Pergamos are rebuked for
+that they kept not ward over their church. You will doubtless contend
+that the angels to whom the Apostle here refers are, properly speaking,
+the Bishops of the two cities in question, and that he calls them angels
+on account of their ministry. It may be so, and I cede the point. But
+with what arguments, Maurice, would you counter the opinion of all those
+Doctors and Pontiffs whose unanimous teaching it is that angels may fall
+from good into evil? Such is the statement made by Saint Jerome in his
+Epistle to Damasus...."
+
+"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go away, I beg you."
+
+But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:
+
+"Saint Augustine, in his _True Religion_, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory,
+in his _Morals_, Chapter XXIV; Isidore----"
+
+"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry."
+
+"In his treatise on _The Greatest Good_, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on
+Job----"
+
+"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
+
+"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on _Faith_, Book II, Chapter III. Those,
+I think, are sufficiently weighty authorities, and there is nothing for
+it, Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led you astray is that
+you have not duly considered my nature, which is free, active, and
+mobile, like that of all the angels, and that you have merely observed
+the grace and felicity with which you deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer
+possessed no less, yet he rebelled."
+
+"But what on earth are you rebelling for?" asked Maurice.
+
+"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah has already asked, before
+you: '_Quomodo cecidisti de coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?_'
+Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to win dominion
+over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim revolted through pride.
+As for me, it is science that has inspired me with the generous desire
+for freedom. Finding myself near you, Maurice, in a house containing one
+of the vastest libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading
+and a love of study. While, fordone with the toils of a sensual life,
+you lay sunk in heavy slumber, I surrounded myself with books, I
+studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of
+the library, under the busts of the great men of antiquity, sometimes at
+the far end of the garden, in the room in the summer-house next to your
+own."
+
+On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded with laughter and
+beat the pillow with his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable
+mirth.
+
+"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged papa's library and drove poor
+old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic."
+
+"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating for myself a
+sovereign intelligence, I paid no heed to that inferior being, and when
+he thought to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb my work I
+punished him for his importunity.
+
+"One particular winter's night in the abode of the philosophers and
+globes I let fall a volume of great weight on his head, which he tried
+to tear from my invisible hand. Then more recently, raising, with a
+vigorous arm composed of a column of condensed air, a precious
+manuscript of Flavius Josephus, I gave the imbecile such a fright, that
+he rushed out screaming on to the landing and (to borrow a striking
+expression from Dante Alighieri) fell even as a dead body falls. He was
+well rewarded, for you gave him, Madame, to staunch the blood from his
+wound, your little scented handkerchief. It was the day, you may
+remember, when behind a celestial globe you exchanged a kiss on the
+mouth with Maurice."
+
+"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, with a frown, "I cannot allow
+you...."
+
+But she stopped short, deeming it was an inopportune moment to appear
+over-exacting on a matter of decorum.
+
+"I had made up my mind," continued the Angel impassively, "to examine
+the foundations of belief. I first attacked the monuments of Judaism,
+and I read all the Hebrew texts."
+
+"You know Hebrew, then?" exclaimed Maurice.
+
+"Hebrew is my native tongue: in Paradise for a long time we have spoken
+nothing else."
+
+"Ah, you are a Jew. I might have deduced it from your want of tact."
+
+The Angel, not deigning to hear, continued in his melodious voice: "I
+have delved deep into Oriental antiquities and also into those of
+Greece and Rome. I have devoured the works of theologians,
+philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists. I have learnt. I
+have thought. I have lost my faith."
+
+"What? You no longer believe in God?"
+
+"I believe in Him, since my existence depends on His, and if He should
+fail to exist, I myself should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him,
+even as the Satyrs and the Maenads believed in Dionysus and for the same
+reason. I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny
+that He created the world; at the most He organised but an inferior part
+of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and
+unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite, for
+it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time.
+I think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be
+the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the
+beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His
+worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He
+is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is
+not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like
+myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."
+
+"What's that you say?"
+
+"Ialdabaoth."
+
+"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"
+
+"I have already told you. It is the demiurge whom, in your blindness,
+you adore as the one and only God."
+
+"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk rubbish like that to Abbe
+Patouille."
+
+"I am not in the least sanguine, my dear Maurice, of piercing the dense
+night of your intellect. I merely tell you that I am going to engage
+Ialdabaoth in conflict with some hopes of victory."
+
+"Mark my words, you won't succeed."
+
+"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for a moment in doubt."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Abdiel for the angels and saints, Arcade for mankind."
+
+"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you going to the bad. But confess
+that you are jesting with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving
+Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the greatest follies. But you
+will never make me believe that you, who have seen God face to face,
+ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty books. No, you will
+never get me to believe that!"
+
+"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face with God, yet he refused to
+serve Him. As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth
+that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever
+enabling us to discover what they are. And this poor little truth has
+sufficed to prove to me that He in whom I blindly believed is not
+believable, and that men and angels have been deceived by the lies of
+Ialdabaoth."
+
+"There is no Ialdabaoth. There is God. Come, Arcade, do the right thing.
+Renounce these follies, these impieties, dis-incarnate yourself, become
+once more a pure Spirit, and resume your office of guardian angel.
+Return to duty. I forgive you, but do not let us see you again."
+
+"I should like to please you, Maurice. I feel a certain affection for
+you, for my heart is soft. But fate henceforth calls me elsewhere
+towards beings capable of thought and action."
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 fore-feet 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 Kerubs 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 subtile 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 Verdelieres to-night. 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 laughing-stock 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 at once in quest of other clothes. He proposed to go
+and get some from the concierge. She was violently opposed to this. It
+would, she said, be madly imprudent to drag the concierge into such an
+affair.
+
+"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 lamp-light 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 to-day." 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 clarionettes and
+clyster-pipes in the window of a second-hand 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 door-way 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 arm-chair sat for a
+long time with his head in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     WHEREIN IT IS SET FORTH HOW THE ANGEL MIRAR, WHEN BEARING
+     GRACE AND CONSOLATION TO THOSE DWELLING IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
+     OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES 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 search-lights, 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, transformed by digestive heat, becomes one with their
+celestial substance. Seeing three angels under the oaks of Mamre,
+Abraham offered them cakes, kneaded by Sarah, an whole calf, butter and
+milk, and they ate. Lot, on receiving two angels in his house, ordered
+unleavened bread to be baked, and they did eat. Arcade was given a tough
+beef-steak by a seedy waiter, and he did eat. Nevertheless, his dreams
+were of the sweet leisure, of the repose, of the delightful studies he
+had quitted, of the heavy task he had undertaken, of the toil, the
+weariness, the perils which he would have to endure, and his soul was
+sad and his heart troubled.
+
+As he was finishing his modest repast, a young man of poor appearance
+and thinly clad entered the room, and rapidly surveying the tables
+approached the angel and greeted him by the name of Abdiel, because he
+himself was a celestial spirit.
+
+"I knew you would answer my call, Mirar," replied Arcade, addressing his
+angelic brother in his turn by the name he formerly bore in heaven. But
+Mirar was remembered no more in heaven since he, an Archangel, had left
+the service of God. He was called Theophile Belais on earth, and to earn
+his bread gave music lessons to small children in the day-time and at
+night played the violin in dancing saloons.
+
+"It is you, dear Abdiel?" replied Theophile. "So here we are reunited in
+this sad world. I am pleased to see you again. All the same I pity you,
+for we lead a hard life here."
+
+But Arcade answered:
+
+"Friend, your exile draws to an end. I have great plans. I will confide
+them to you and associate you with them."
+
+And Maurice's guardian angel, having ordered two coffees, revealed his
+ideas and his projects to his companion: he told how, during his visit
+on earth, he had abandoned himself to researches little practised by
+celestial spirits and had studied theologies, cosmogonies, the system of
+the Universe, theories of matter, modern essays on the transformation
+and loss of energy. Having, he explained, studied Nature, he had found
+her in perpetual conflict with the teachings of the Master he served.
+This Master, greedy of praise, whom he had for a long time adored,
+appeared to him now as an ignorant, stupid, and cruel tyrant. He had
+denied Him, blasphemed Him, and was burning to combat Him. His plan was
+to recommence the revolt of the angels. He wished for war, and hoped for
+victory.
+
+"But," he added, "it is necessary above all to know our strength and
+that of our adversary." And he asked if the enemies of Ialdabaoth were
+numerous and powerful on earth.
+
+Theophile looked wonderingly at his brother. He appeared not to
+understand the questions addressed him.
+
+"Dear compatriot," he said, "I came at your invitation because it was
+the invitation of an old comrade. But I do not know what you expect of
+me, and I fear I shall be unable to help you in anything. I take no hand
+in politics, neither do I stand forth as a reformer. I am not like you,
+a spirit in revolt, a freethinker, a revolutionary. I remain faithful,
+in the depths of my soul, to the Celestial Creator. I still adore the
+Master I no longer serve, and I lament the days when shrouding myself
+with my wings I formed with the multitude of the children of light a
+wheel of flame around His throne of glory. Love, profane love has alone
+separated me from God. I quitted heaven to follow a daughter of men. She
+was beautiful and sang in music-halls."
+
+They rose. Arcade accompanied Theophile, who was living at the other end
+of the town, at the corner of the Boulevard Rochechouart and the Rue de
+Steinkerque. While walking through the deserted streets he who loved the
+singer told his brother of his love and his sorrows.
+
+His fall, which dated from two years back, had been sudden. Belonging to
+the eighth choir of the third hierarchy he was a bearer of grace to the
+faithful who are still to be found in large numbers in France,
+especially among the higher ranks of the officers of the army and navy.
+
+"One summer night," he said, "as I was descending from Heaven, to
+distribute consolations, the grace of perseverance and of good deaths to
+divers pious persons in the neighbourhood of the Etoile, my eyes,
+although well accustomed to immortal light, were dazzled by the fiery
+flowers with which the Champs Elysees were sown. Great candelabra, under
+the trees, marking the entrances to cafes and restaurants, gave the
+foliage the precious glitter of an emerald. Long garlands of luminous
+pearl surrounded the open-air enclosures where a crowd of men and women
+sat closely packed listening to the sounds of a lively orchestra, whose
+strains reached my ears confusedly.
+
+"The night was warm, my wings were beginning to grow tired. I descended
+into one of the concerts and sat down, invisible, among the audience. At
+this moment, a woman appeared on the stage, clad in a short spangled
+frock. Owing to the reflection of the footlights and the paint on her
+face all that was visible of the latter was the expression and the
+smile. Her body was supple and voluptuous.
+
+"She sang and danced.... Arcade, I have always loved dancing and music,
+but this creature's thrilling voice and insidious movements created in
+me an uneasiness I had never known before. My colour came and went. My
+eyelids drooped, my tongue clove to my mouth. I could not leave the
+spot."
+
+And Theophile related, groaning, how, possessed by desire for this
+woman, he did not return to Heaven again, but, taking the shape of a
+man, lived an earthly life, for it is written: "In those days the sons
+of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful."
+
+A fallen angel, having lost his innocence along with the vision of God,
+Theophile at heart still retained his simplicity of soul. Clad in rags,
+filched from the stall of a Jewish hawker, he went to seek the woman he
+loved. She was called Bouchotte and lodged in a small house in
+Montmartre. He flung himself at her feet and told her she was adorable,
+that she sang delightfully, that he loved her madly, that, for her, he
+would renounce his family and his country, that he was a musician and
+had nothing to eat. Touched by such youthful ingenuousness, candour,
+poverty, and love, she fed, clothed, and loved him.
+
+However, after long and painful struggles, he procured employment as a
+music-teacher, and made some money, which he brought to his mistress,
+keeping nothing for himself. From that time forward she loved him no
+longer. She despised him for earning so little and did not conceal her
+indifference, weariness, and disgust. She overwhelmed him with
+reproaches, irony, and abuse, in spite of which she kept him, for she
+had had experience of worse partners and was used to domestic quarrels.
+For the rest, she led a busy, serious, and rather hard life as artist
+and woman. Theophile loved her as he had loved her the first night, and
+he suffered.
+
+"She overworks herself," he told his celestial brother, "that is what
+makes her so hard to please, but I am certain she loves me. I hope soon
+to give her more comfort."
+
+And he spoke at length of an operetta at which he was working and which
+he hoped to have brought out at a Paris theatre. A young poet had given
+him the libretto. It was the story of Aline, queen of Golconda, after an
+eighteenth-century tale.
+
+"I am strewing it profusely with melodies," said Theophile; "my music
+comes from my heart. My heart is an inexhaustible source of melody.
+Unfortunately nowadays people like recondite arrangements, difficult
+scoring. They accuse me of being too fluid, too limpid, of not imparting
+enough colour to my style, not aiming at stronger effects in harmony and
+more vigorous contrasts. Harmony, harmony!... No doubt it has given its
+merits, but it does not appeal to the heart. It is melody which carries
+us away and ravishes us and brings smiles and tears to our eyes." At
+these words he smiled and wept to himself. Then he continued with
+emotion:
+
+"I am a fountain of melody. But the orchestration! there's the rub! In
+Paradise, you know, Arcade, in the matter of instruments, we only
+possess the harp, the psaltery, and the hydraulic organ."
+
+Arcade was only listening to him with half an ear. He was meditating
+plans which filled his soul and swelled his heart.
+
+"Do you know any angels in revolt?" he asked his companion. "As for me,
+I know only one, Prince Istar, with whom I have exchanged a few letters
+and who offered to share his attic with me while I was finding a lodging
+in this town, where I believe rents are very high."
+
+Of angels in revolt Theophile knew none. When he met a fallen spirit who
+had formerly been one of his comrades he shook him by the hand, for he
+was a faithful friend. Sometimes he saw Prince Istar. But he avoided
+all those bad angels who shocked him by the violence of their opinions
+and whose conversations plagued him to death.
+
+"Then you don't approve of me?" asked the impulsive Arcade.
+
+"Friend, I neither approve of you nor blame you. I understand nothing of
+the ideas which trouble you. Neither do I think it good for an artist to
+concern himself with politics. One has quite sufficient to occupy
+oneself with one's art."
+
+He loved his profession, and had hopes of "arriving" one day, but
+theatrical ways disgusted him. The only chance he saw of having his
+piece played was to take one or two--perhaps three--collaborators, who,
+without having done any work, would sign their names and share the
+profits. Soon Bouchotte would fail to find engagements. When she offered
+her services in some small hall the manager began by asking her how many
+shares she was taking in the business. Such customs, thought Theophile,
+were deplorable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+     WHEREIN WE HEAR THE BEAUTIFUL ARCHANGEL ZITA UNFOLD HER
+     LOFTY DESIGNS AND ARE SHOWN THE WINGS OF MIRAR, ALL
+     MOTH-EATEN, IN A CUPBOARD
+
+
+Thus talking, the two archangels had reached the Boulevard Rochechouart.
+As his eye lighted on a tavern, whence, through the mist, the light fell
+golden on the pavement, Theophile suddenly bethought himself of the
+Archangel Ithuriel who, in the guise of a poor but beautiful woman, was
+living in wretched lodgings on La Butte and came every evening to read
+the papers at this tavern. The musician often met her there. Her name
+was Zita. Theophile had never been curious enough to enquire into the
+opinions entertained by this archangel, but it was generally supposed
+that she was a Russian nihilist, and he took her to be, like Arcade, an
+atheist and a revolutionary. He had heard remarkable tales about her.
+People said she was an hermaphrodite, and that as the active and passive
+principles were united within her in a condition of stable equilibrium,
+she was an example of a perfect being, finding in herself complete and
+continuous satisfaction, contented yet unfortunate in that she knew not
+desire.
+
+"But," added Theophile, "I have my doubts about it. I believe she's a
+woman and subject to love, like everything else that has life and breath
+in the Universe. Besides, someone caught her one day kissing her hand to
+a strapping peasant fellow."
+
+He offered to introduce his companion to her.
+
+The two angels found her alone, reading. As they drew near she lifted
+her great eyes in whose deeps of molten gold little sparks of light were
+forever a-dance. Her brows were contracted into that austere fold which
+we see on the forehead of the Pythian Apollo; her nose was perfect and
+descended without a curve; her lips were compressed and imparted a
+disdainful and supercilious air to her whole countenance. Her tawny
+hair, with its gleaming lights, was carelessly adorned with the tattered
+remnants of a huge bird of prey, her garments lay about her in dark and
+shapeless folds. She was leaning her chin on a small ill-tended hand.
+
+Arcade, who had but recently heard references made to this powerful
+archangel, showed her marked esteem, and placed entire confidence in
+her. He immediately proceeded to tell of the progress his mind had made
+towards knowledge and liberty, of his lucubrations in the d'Esparvieu
+library, of his philosophical reading, his studies of nature, his works
+on exegesis, his anger and his contempt when he recognised the deception
+of the demiurge, his voluntary exile among mankind, and, finally, of his
+project to stir up rebellion in Heaven. Ready to dare all against an
+odious master, whom he pursued with inextinguishable hatred, he
+expressed his profound happiness at finding in Ithuriel a mind capable
+of counselling and helping him in his great undertaking.
+
+"You are not a very old hand at revolutions," said Zita, smiling.
+
+Nevertheless, she doubted neither his sincerity nor the firmness of his
+declared resolve, and she congratulated him on his intellectual
+audacity.
+
+"That is what is most lacking in our people," she said, "they do not
+think."
+
+And she added almost immediately: "But on what can intelligence sharpen
+its wits, in a country where the climate is soft and existence made
+easy? Even here, where necessity calls for intellectual activity,
+nothing is rarer than a person who thinks."
+
+"Nevertheless," replied Maurice's guardian angel, "man has created
+science. The important thing is to introduce it into Heaven. When the
+angels possess some notions of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and
+physiology; when the study of matter shows them worlds in an atom, and
+an atom in the myriads of planets; when they see themselves lost
+between these two infinities; when they weigh and measure the stars,
+analyse their composition, and calculate their orbits, they will
+recognise that these monsters work in obedience to forces which no
+intelligence can define, or that each star has its particular divinity,
+or indigenous god; and they will realise that the gods of Aldebaran,
+Betelgeuse, and Sirius are greater than Ialdabaoth. When at length they
+come to scrutinise with care the little world in which their lot is
+cast, and, piercing the crust of the earth, note the gradual evolution
+of its flora and fauna and the rude origin of man, who, under the
+shelter of rocks and in cave dwellings, had no God but himself; when
+they discover that, united by the bonds of universal kinship to plants,
+beasts, and men, they have successively indued all forms of organic
+life, from the simplest and the most primitive, until they became at
+length the most beautiful of the children of light, they will perceive
+that Ialdabaoth, the obscure demon of an insignificant world lost in
+space, is imposing on their credulity when he pretends that they issued
+from nothingness at his bidding; they will perceive that he lies in
+calling himself the Infinite, the Eternal, the Almighty, and that, so
+far from having created worlds, he knows neither their number nor their
+laws. They will perceive that he is like unto one of them; they will
+despise him, and, shaking off his tyranny, will fling him into the
+Gehenna where he has hurled those more worthy than himself."
+
+"Do you think so?" murmured Zita, puffing out the smoke of her
+cigarette.... "Nevertheless, this knowledge by virtue of which you
+reckon to enfranchise Heaven, has not destroyed religious sentiment on
+earth. In countries where they have set up and taught this science of
+physics, of chemistry, astronomy, and geology, which you think capable
+of delivering the world, Christianity has retained almost all its sway.
+If the positive sciences have had such a feeble influence on the beliefs
+of mankind, it is not likely they will exercise a greater one on the
+opinions of the angels, and nothing is of such dubious efficacy as
+scientific propaganda."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Arcade, "you deny that Science has given the Church
+its death-blow? Is it possible? The Church, at any rate, judges
+otherwise. Science, which you believe has no power over her, is
+redoubtable to her, since she proscribes it. From Galileo's dialogues to
+Monsieur Aulard's little manuals she has condemned all its discoveries.
+And not without reason.
+
+"In former days, when she gathered within her fold all that was great in
+human thought, the Church held sway over the bodies as well as over the
+souls of men, and imposed unity of obedience by fire and sword. To-day
+her power is but a shadow and the elect among the great minds have
+withdrawn from her. That is the state to which Science has reduced her."
+
+"Possibly," replied the beautiful archangel, "but how slowly, with what
+vicissitudes, at the price of what efforts, of what sacrifices!"
+
+Zita did not absolutely condemn scientific propaganda, but she
+anticipated no prompt or certain results from it. For her it was not so
+much a question of enlightening the angels; the important thing was to
+enfranchise them. In her opinion one only exerted a strong influence on
+individuals, whoever they might be, by rousing their passions, and
+appealing to their interests.
+
+"Persuade the angels that they will cover themselves with glory by
+overthrowing the tyrant, and that they will be happier once they are
+free; that is the most practical policy to attempt, and, for my own
+part, I am devoting all my energies to its fulfilment. It is certainly
+no light task, because the Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and
+there is no public opinion in it. Nevertheless, I do not despair of
+starting an intellectual movement. I do not wish to boast, but no one is
+more closely acquainted than I with the different classes of angelic
+society."
+
+Throwing away her cigarette, Zita pondered for a moment, then, amid the
+click of ivory balls on the billiard table, the clinking of glasses,
+the curt voices of the players announcing their points, the monotonous
+answers of the waiters to their customers, the Archangel enumerated the
+entire population of the spirits of light.
+
+"We must not count on the Dominations, the Virtues, nor the Powers,
+which compose the celestial lower middle class. I have no need to tell
+you, for you know it as well as I, how selfish, base, and cowardly the
+middle classes are. As to the great dignitaries, the Ministers, the
+Generals, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, you know what they are; they
+will take no action. Let us, however, once prove ourselves the stronger,
+and we shall have them with us. For if autocrats do not readily
+acquiesce in their own downfall, once overthrown, all their forces
+recoil upon themselves. It will be well to work the Army. Entirely loyal
+as the Army is, it will allow itself to be influenced by a clever
+anarchist propaganda. But our greatest and most constant efforts ought
+to be brought to bear upon the angels of your own category, Arcade; the
+guardian angels, who dwell upon earth in such great numbers. They fill
+the lowest ranks of the hierarchy, are for the most part discontented
+with their lot, and more or less imbued with the ideas of the present
+century."
+
+She had already conferred with the guardian angels of Montmartre,
+Clignancourt, and Filles-du-Calvaire. She had devised the plan of a
+vast association of Spirits on Earth with the view of conquering Heaven.
+
+"To accomplish this task," she said, "I have established myself in
+France. But not because I had the folly to believe myself freer in a
+republic than in a monarchy. Quite the contrary, for there is no country
+where the liberty of the individual is less respected than in France.
+But the people are indifferent to everything connected with religion;
+nowhere else, therefore, should I enjoy such tranquillity."
+
+She invited Arcade to unite his efforts to hers, and when they separated
+at the door of the _brasserie_ the steel shutter was already making its
+groaning descent.
+
+"Above all," said Zita, "you must meet the gardener. I will take you to
+his rustic home one day."
+
+Theophile, who had slumbered during all this talk, begged his friend to
+come home with him and smoke a cigarette. He lived quite near in the
+small street opposite, leading off the Boulevard. Arcade would see
+Bouchotte, she would please him.
+
+They climbed up five flights of stairs. Bouchotte had not yet returned.
+A tin of sardines lay open on the piano. Red stockings coiled about the
+arm-chairs.
+
+"It's a little place, but it's comfortable," said Theophile.
+
+And gazing out of the window which looked out on the russet-coloured
+night, with its myriad lights, he added, "One can see the _Sacre
+Coeur_." His hand on Arcade's shoulder, he repeated several times, "I am
+glad to see you."
+
+Then, dragging his former companion in glory into the kitchen passage,
+he put down his candlestick, drew a key from his pocket, opened a
+cupboard, and, raising a linen covering, disclosed two large white
+wings.
+
+"You see," he said, "I have preserved them. From time to time, when I am
+alone, I go and look at them; it does me good."
+
+And he dabbed his reddened eyes. He stood awhile, overcome by silent
+emotion. Then, holding the candle near the long pinions which were
+moulting their down in places, he murmured, "They are eaten away."
+
+"You must put some pepper on them," said Arcade.
+
+"I have done so," replied the angelic musician, sighing. "I have put
+pepper, camphor, and powder on them. But nothing does any good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     WHICH REVEALS THE CHERUB TOILING FOR THE WELFARE OF HUMANITY
+     AND CONCLUDES IN AN ENTIRELY NOVEL MANNER WITH THE MIRACLE
+     OF THE FLUTE
+
+
+The first night of his incarnation Arcade slept at the angel Istar's, in
+a garret in that narrow, gloomy Rue Mazarine which wallows along beneath
+the shadow of the old Institute of France. Istar, who had been expecting
+him, had pushed against the wall the shattered retorts, cracked pots,
+broken bottles, and odds and ends of iron stoves, which made up the
+furniture of his room, and spread his clothes on the floor to lie on,
+leaving his guest his folding-bed with its straw mattress.
+
+The celestial spirits differ from one another in appearance according to
+the hierarchy and the choir to which they belong, and according to their
+own particular nature. They are all beautiful; but in different fashion,
+and they do not all offer to the eye the soft contours and dimpling
+smiles of childhood with its rosy lights and pearly tints. Nor do they
+all adorn themselves with eternal youth, that indefinable beauty that
+Greek art in its decline has imparted to its most lovingly handled
+marbles, and whereof Christian painters have so often timidly essayed to
+give us veiled and softened imitations. In some of them the chin glows
+with tufts of hair, and the limbs are furnished with such vigorous
+muscles that it seems as if serpents were writhing beneath the skin.
+Some have no wings, others possess two, four, or six; others again are
+formed entirely of conjoined pinions. Many, and these not the least
+illustrious, take the form of superb monsters, such as the Centaurs of
+fable; nay, one may even see some who are living chariots, and wheels of
+fire. A member of the highest celestial hierarchy, Istar belonged to the
+choir of Cherubim or Kerubs who see above them the Seraphim alone. In
+common with all the angelic spirits of his rank he had formerly borne in
+Heaven the bodily shape of a winged bull surmounted by the head of a
+horned and bearded man, and carrying between his loins the attributes of
+generous fecundity. He was vaster and more vigorous than any animal on
+earth, and when he stood erect with outspread wings he covered with his
+shadow sixty archangels.
+
+Such was Istar in his native home. There he radiated strength and
+sweetness. His heart was full of courage and his soul benevolent.
+Moreover, in those days he loved his lord. He believed him to be good
+and yielded him faithful service. But even while guarding the portals of
+his Master, he used to ponder unceasingly on the punishment of the
+rebellious angels and the curse of Eve. His mind worked slowly but
+profoundly. When, after a long course of centuries, he persuaded himself
+that Ialdabaoth in creating the world had created evil and death, he
+ceased to adore and to serve him. His love changed to hatred, his
+veneration to contempt. He shouted his execrations in his face, and fled
+to earth.
+
+Embodied in human form and reduced to the stature of the sons of Adam,
+he still retained some characteristics of his former nature. His big
+protruding eyes, his beaked nose, his thick lips framed in a black beard
+which descended in curls on to his chest recalled those Cherubs of the
+tabernacle of Iahveh, of which the bulls of Nineveh afford us a pretty
+accurate representation. He bore the name of Istar on earth as well as
+in Heaven, and although exempt from vanity and free from all social
+prejudice, he was immensely desirous of showing himself sincere and
+truthful in all things. He therefore proclaimed the illustrious rank in
+which his birth had placed him in the celestial hierarchy and translated
+into French his title of Cherub by the equivalent one of Prince, calling
+himself Prince Istar. Seeking shelter among mankind he had developed an
+ardent love for them. While awaiting the coming of the hour when he
+should deliver Heaven from bondage, he dreamed of the salvation of
+regenerate humanity and was eager to consummate the destruction of this
+wicked world, in order to raise upon its ashes, to the sound of the
+lyre, a city radiant with happiness and love. A chemist in the pay of a
+dealer in nitrates, he lived very frugally. He wrote for newspapers with
+advanced views on liberty, spoke at public meetings, and had got himself
+sentenced several times to several months' imprisonment for
+anti-militarism.
+
+Istar greeted his brother Arcade cordially, approved of his rupture with
+the party of crime, and informed him of the descent of fifty of the
+children of light who, at the present moment, formed a colony near Val
+de Grace, imbued with a really excellent spirit.
+
+"It is simply raining angels in Paris," he said, laughing. "Every day
+some dignitary of the sacred palace falls on one's head, and soon the
+Sultan of the Cherubs will have no one to make into Vizirs or guards but
+the little unbreeched vagabonds of his pigeon coops."
+
+Soothed by the good news, Arcade fell asleep, full of happiness and
+hope.
+
+He awoke in the early dawn and saw Prince Istar bending over his
+furnaces, his retorts, and his test tubes. Prince Istar was working for
+the good of humanity.
+
+Every morning when Arcade woke he saw Prince Istar fulfilling his work
+of tenderness and love. Sometimes the Kerub, huddled up with his head in
+his hands, would softly murmur a few chemical formulae; at others,
+drawing himself up to his full height, like a dark naked column, with
+his head, his arms, nay, his entire bust clean out of the sky-light
+window, he would deposit his melting-pot on the roof, fearing the
+perquisition with which he was constantly menaced. Moved by an immense
+pity for the miseries of the world wherein he dwelt in exile, conscious
+perhaps of the rumours to which his name gave rise, inebriated with his
+own virtue, he played the part of apostle to the Human Race, and
+neglecting the task he had undertaken in coming to earth, he forgot all
+about the emancipation of the angels. Arcade, who, on the contrary,
+dreamed of nothing else but of conquering Heaven and returning thither
+in triumph, reproached the Cherub with forgetting his native land.
+
+Prince Istar, with a great frank, uncouth laugh, acknowledged that he
+had no preference for angels over men.
+
+"If I am doing my best," he replied to his celestial brother, "if I am
+doing my best to stir up France and Europe, it is because the day is
+dawning which will behold the triumph of the social revolution. It is a
+pleasure to cast one's seed on ground so well prepared. The French
+having passed from feudalism to monarchy, and from monarchy to a
+financial oligarchy, will easily pass from a financial oligarchy to
+anarchy."
+
+"How erroneous it is," retorted Arcade, "to believe in great and sudden
+changes in the social order in Europe! The old order is still young in
+strength and power. The means of defence at her disposal are formidable.
+On the other hand, the proletariat's plan of defensive organisation is
+of the vaguest description and brings merely weakness and confusion to
+the struggle. In our celestial country all goes quite otherwise. Beneath
+an apparently unchangeable exterior all is rotten within. A mere push
+would suffice to overturn an edifice which has not been touched for
+millions of centuries. Out-worn administration, out-worn army, out-worn
+finance, the whole thing is more worm-eaten than either the Russian or
+Persian autocracy."
+
+And the kindly Arcade adjured the Cherub to fly first to the aid of his
+brethren who, though dwelling amid the soft clouds with the sound of
+citterns and their cups of paradisal wine around them, were in more
+wretched plight than mankind bowed over the grudging earth. For the
+latter have a conception of justice, while the angels rejoice in
+iniquity. He exhorted him to deliver the Prince of Light and his
+stricken companions and to re-establish them in their ancient honours.
+
+Prince Istar allowed himself to be convinced.
+
+He promised to put the sweet persuasiveness of his words and the
+excellent formulae of his explosives at the service of the celestial
+revolution. He gave his promise.
+
+"To-morrow," he said.
+
+And when the morrow came he continued his anti-militarist propaganda at
+Issy-les-Moulineaux. Like the Titan Prometheus, Istar loved mankind.
+
+Arcade, suffering from all the desires to which the sons of Adam are
+subjected, found himself lacking in resources to satisfy them. Istar
+gave him a start in a printing house in the Rue de Vaugirard where he
+knew the foreman. Arcade, thanks to his celestial intelligence, soon
+knew how to set up type and became, in a short time, a good compositor.
+
+After standing all day in the whirring workroom, holding the
+composing-stick in his left hand, and swiftly drawing the little leaden
+signs from the case in the order required by the copy fixed in the
+_visorium_, he would go and wash his hands at the pump and dine at the
+corner bar, a newspaper propped up before him on the marble table. Being
+now no longer invisible, he could not make his way into the d'Esparvieu
+library, and was thus debarred from allaying his ardent thirst for
+knowledge at that inexhaustible source. He went, of an evening, to read
+at the library of Ste. Genevieve on the famous hill of learning, but
+there were only ordinary books to be had there; greasy things, covered
+with ridiculous annotations, and lacking many pages.
+
+The sight of women troubled and unsettled him. He would remember Madame
+des Aubels and her charm, and, although he was handsome, he was not
+loved, because of his poverty and his workaday clothes. He saw much of
+Zita, and took a certain pleasure in going for walks with her on Sundays
+along the dusty roads which edge the grass-grown trenches of the
+fortifications. They wandered, the pair of them, by wayside inns,
+market-gardens, and green retreats, propounding and discussing the
+vastest plans that ever stirred the world, and, occasionally, as they
+passed along by some travelling circus, the steam organ of the
+merry-go-round would furnish an accompaniment to their words as they
+breathed fire and fury against Heaven.
+
+Zita used often to say:
+
+"Istar means well, but he's a simple fellow. He believes in the goodness
+of men and things. He undertakes the destruction of the old world and
+imagines that anarchy of itself will create order and harmony. You,
+Arcade, you believe in Science; you deem that men and angels are capable
+of understanding, whereas, in point of fact, they are only creatures of
+sentiment. You may be quite sure that nothing is to be obtained from
+them by appealing to their intelligence; one must rouse their interests
+and their passions."
+
+Arcade, Istar, Zita, and three or four other angelic conspirators
+occasionally foregathered in Theophile Belais' little flat, where
+Bouchotte gave them tea. Though she did not know that they were
+rebellious angels, she hated them instinctively, and feared them, for
+she had had a Christian education, albeit she had sadly failed to keep
+it up.
+
+Prince Istar alone pleased her; she thought there was something
+kind-hearted and an air of natural distinction about him. He stove in
+the sofa, broke down the arm-chairs, and tore corners off sheets of
+music to make notes, which he thrust into pockets invariably crammed
+with pamphlets and bottles. The musician used to gaze sorrowfully at the
+manuscript of his operetta, _Aline, Queen of Golconda_, with its corners
+all torn off. The prince also had a habit of giving Theophile Belais all
+sorts of things to take care of--mechanical contrivances, chemicals,
+bits of old iron, powders, and liquids which gave off noisome smells.
+Theophile Belais put them cautiously away in the cupboard where he kept
+his wings, and the responsibility weighed heavily upon him.
+
+Arcade was much pained at the disdain of those of his fellows who had
+remained faithful. When they met him as they went on their sacred
+errands they regarded him as they passed by with looks of cruel hatred
+or of pity that was crueller still.
+
+He used to visit the rebel angels whom Prince Istar pointed out to him,
+and usually met with a good reception, but as soon as he began to speak
+of conquering Heaven, they did not conceal the embarrassment and
+displeasure he caused them. Arcade perceived that they had no desire to
+be disturbed in their tastes, their affairs, and their habits. The
+falsity of their judgment, the narrowness of their minds, shocked him;
+and the rivalry, the jealousy they displayed towards one another
+deprived him of all hope of uniting them in a common cause. Perceiving
+how exile debases the character and warps the intellect, he felt his
+courage fail him.
+
+One evening, when he had confessed his weariness of spirit to Zita, the
+beautiful archangel said:
+
+"Let us go and see Nectaire; Nectaire has remedies of his own for
+sadness and fatigue."
+
+She led him into the woods of Montmorency and stopped at the threshold
+of a small white house, adjoining a kitchen garden, laid waste by
+winter, where far back in the shadows the light shone on forcing-frames
+and cracked glass melon shades.
+
+Nectaire opened the door to his visitors, and, after quieting the growls
+of a big mastiff which protected the garden, led them into a low room
+warmed by an earthenware stove.
+
+Against the whitewashed wall, on a deal board, among the onions and
+seeds, lay a flute ready to be put to the lips. A round walnut table
+bore a stone tobacco-jar, a pipe, a bottle of wine and some glasses. The
+gardener offered each of his guests a cane-seated chair, and himself sat
+down on a stool by the table.
+
+He was a sturdy old man; thick grey hair stood up on his head, he had a
+furrowed brow, a snub-nose, a red face, and a forked beard.
+
+The big mastiff stretched himself at his master's feet, rested his short
+black muzzle on his paws, and closed his eyes. The gardener poured out
+some wine for his guests, and when they had drunk and talked a little,
+Zita said to Nectaire:
+
+"Please play your flute to us, you will give pleasure to my friend whom
+I have brought to see you."
+
+The old man immediately consented. He put the boxwood pipe to his
+lips,--so clumsy was it that it looked as if the gardener had fashioned
+it himself,--and preluded with a few strange runs. Then he developed
+rich melodies in which the thrills sparkled like diamonds and pearls on
+a velvet ground. Touched by cunning fingers, animated with creative
+breath, the rustic pipe sang like a silver flute. There were no
+over-shrill notes and the tone was always even and pure. One seemed to
+be listening to the nightingale and the Muses singing together, the soul
+of Nature and the soul of Man. And the old man ordered and developed his
+thoughts in a musical language full of grace and daring. He told of
+love, of fear, of vain quarrels, of all-conquering laughter, of the
+calm light of the intellect, of the arrows of the mind piercing with
+their golden shafts the monsters of Ignorance and Hate. He told also of
+Joy and Sorrow bending their twin heads over the earth and of Desire
+which brings worlds into being.
+
+The whole night listened to the flute of Nectaire. Already the evening
+star was rising above the paling horizon.
+
+There they sat; Zita with hands clasped about her knees, Arcade, his
+head leaning on his hand, his lips apart. Motionless they listened. A
+lark, which had awakened hard by in a sandy field, lured by these novel
+sounds, rose swiftly in the air, hovered a few seconds, then dropped at
+one swoop into the musician's orchard. The neighbouring sparrows,
+forsaking the crannies of the mouldering walls, came and sat in a row on
+the window-ledge whence notes came welling forth that gave them more
+delight than oats or grains of barley. A jay, coming for the first time
+out of his wood, folded his sapphire wings on a leafless cherry tree.
+Beside the drain-head, a large black rat, glistening with the greasy
+water of the sewers, sitting on his hind legs, raised his short arms and
+slender fingers in amazement. A field-mouse, that dwelt in the orchard,
+was seated near him. Down from the tiles came the old tom-cat, who
+retained the grey fur, the ringed tail, the powerful loins, the courage,
+and the pride of his ancestors. He pushed against the half-open door
+with his nose and approaching the flute-player with silent tread, sat
+gravely down, pricking his ears that had been torn in many a nocturnal
+combat; the grocer's white cat followed him, sniffing the vibrant air
+and then, arching her back and closing her blue eyes, listened in
+ravishment. Mice, swarming in crowds from under the boards, surrounded
+them, and fearing neither tooth nor claw, sat motionless, their pink
+hands folded voluptuously on their bosoms. Spiders that had strayed far
+from their webs, with waving legs, gathered in a charmed circle on the
+ceiling. A small grey lizard, that had glided on to the doorstep, stayed
+there, fascinated, and, in the loft, the bat might have been seen
+hanging by her nails, head down, now half-awakened from her winter
+sleep, swaying to the rhythm of the marvellous flute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+     WHEREIN WE SEE YOUNG MAURICE BEWAILING THE LOSS OF HIS
+     GUARDIAN ANGEL, EVEN IN HIS MISTRESS'S ARMS, AND WHEREIN WE
+     HEAR THE ABBE PATOUILLE REJECT AS VAIN AND ILLUSORY ALL
+     NOTIONS OF A NEW REBELLION OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+A fortnight had elapsed since the angel's apparition in the flat. For
+the first time Gilberte arrived before Maurice at the rendezvous.
+Maurice was gloomy, Gilberte sulky. So far as they were concerned Nature
+had resumed her drab monotony. They eyed each other languidly, and kept
+glancing towards the angle between the wardrobe with the mirror and the
+window, where recently the pale shade of Arcade had taken shape, and
+where now the blue cretonne of the hangings was the only thing visible.
+Without giving him a name (it was unnecessary) Madame des Aubels asked:
+
+"You have not seen him since?"
+
+Slowly, sadly, Maurice turned his head from right to left, and from left
+to right.
+
+"You look as if you missed him," continued Madame des Aubels. "But come,
+confess that he gave you a terrible fright, and that you were shocked at
+his unconventionally."
+
+"Certainly he was unconventional," said Maurice without any resentment.
+
+"Tell me, Maurice, is it nothing to you now to be with me alone?... You
+need an angel to inspire you. That is sad, for a young man like you!"
+
+Maurice appeared not to hear, and asked gravely:
+
+"Gilberte, do you feel that your guardian angel is watching over you?"
+
+"I, not at all. I have never thought of him, and yet I am not without
+religion. In the first place, people who have none are like animals. And
+then one cannot go straight without religion. It is impossible."
+
+"Exactly, that's just it," said Maurice, his eyes on the violet stripes
+of his flowerless pyjamas; "when one has one's guardian angel one does
+not even think about him, and when one has lost him one feels very
+lonely."
+
+"So you miss this...."
+
+"Well, the fact is...."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, you miss him. Well, my dear, the loss of such a guardian
+angel as that is no great matter. No, no! he is not worth much, that
+Arcade of yours. On that famous day, while you were out getting him some
+clothes, he was ever so long fastening my dress, and I certainly felt
+his hand.... Well, at any rate, don't trust him."
+
+Maurice dreamily lit a cigarette. They spoke of the six days' bicycle
+race at the winter velodrome, and of the aviation show at the motor
+exhibition at Brussels, without experiencing the slightest amusement.
+Then they tried love-making as a sort of convenient pastime, and
+succeeded in becoming moderately absorbed in it; but at the very moment
+when she might have been expected to play a part more in accordance with
+a mutual sentiment, she exclaimed with a sudden start:
+
+"Good Heavens! Maurice, how stupid of you to tell me that my guardian
+angel can see me. You cannot imagine how uncomfortable the idea makes
+me."
+
+Maurice, somewhat taken aback, recalled, a little roughly, his
+mistress's wandering thoughts.
+
+She declared that her principles forbade her to think of playing a round
+game with angels.
+
+Maurice was longing to see Arcade again and had no other thought. He
+reproached himself for suffering him to depart without discovering where
+he was going, and he cudgelled his brains night and day thinking how to
+find him again.
+
+On the bare chance, he put a notice in the personal column of one of the
+big papers, running thus:
+
+"Arcade. Come back to your Maurice."
+
+Day after day went by, and Arcade did not return.
+
+One morning, at seven o'clock, Maurice went to St. Sulpice to hear Abbe
+Patouille say Mass, then, as the priest was leaving the sacristy, he
+went up to him and asked to be heard for a moment.
+
+They descended the steps of the church together and in the bright
+morning light walked round the fountain of the _Quatre Eveques_. In
+spite of his troubled conscience and the difficulty of presenting so
+extraordinary a case with any degree of credibility, Maurice related how
+the angel Arcade had appeared to him and had announced his unhappy
+resolve to separate from him and to stir up a new revolt of the spirits
+of glory. And young d'Esparvieu asked the worthy ecclesiastic how to
+find his celestial guardian again, since he could not bear his absence,
+and how to lead his angel back to the Christian faith. Abbe Patouille
+replied in a tone of affectionate sorrow that his dear child had been
+dreaming, that he took a morbid hallucination for reality, and that it
+was not permissible to believe that good angels may revolt.
+
+"People have a notion," he added, "that they can lead a life of
+dissipation and disorder with impunity. They are wrong. The abuse of
+pleasure corrupts the intelligence and impairs the understanding. The
+devil takes possession of the sinner's senses, penetrating even to his
+soul. He has deceived you, Maurice, by a clumsy artifice."
+
+Maurice objected that he was not in any way a victim of hallucinations,
+that he had not been dreaming, that he had seen his guardian angel with
+his eyes and heard him with his ears.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," he insisted, "a lady who happened to be with me at
+the time,--I need not mention her name,--also saw and heard him. And,
+moreover, she felt the angel's fingers straying ... well, anyhow, she
+felt them.... Believe me, Monsieur l'Abbe, nothing could be more real,
+more positively certain than this apparition. The angel was fair, young,
+very handsome. His clear skin seemed, in the shadow, as if bathed in
+milky light. He spoke in a pure, sweet voice."
+
+"That, alone, my child," the Abbe interrupted quickly, "proves you were
+dreaming. According to all the demonologies, bad angels have a hoarse
+voice, which grates like a rusty lock, and even if they did contrive to
+give a certain look of beauty to their faces, they cannot succeed in
+imitating the pure voice of the good spirits. This fact, attested by
+numerous witnesses, is established beyond all doubt."
+
+"But, Monsieur l'Abbe, I saw him. I saw him sit down, stark naked, in an
+arm-chair on a pair of black stockings. What else do you want me to tell
+you?"
+
+The Abbe Patouille appeared in no way disturbed by this announcement.
+
+"I say once more, my son," he replied, "that these unhappy illusions,
+these dreams of a deeply troubled soul, are to be ascribed to the
+deplorable state of your conscience. I believe, moreover, that I can
+detect the particular circumstance that has caused your unstable mind
+thus to come to grief. During the winter in company with Monsieur
+Sariette and your Uncle Gaetan, you came, in an evil frame of mind, to
+see the Chapel of the Holy Angels in this church, then undergoing
+repair. As I observed on that occasion, it is impossible to keep artists
+too closely to the rules of Christian art; they cannot be too strongly
+enjoined to respect Holy Writ and its authorized interpreters. Monsieur
+Eugene Delacroix did not suffer his fiery genius to be controlled by
+tradition. He brooked no guidance and, here, in this chapel he has
+painted pictures which in common parlance we call lurid, compositions of
+a violent, terrible nature which, far from inspiring the soul with
+peace, quietude, and calm, plunge it into a state of agitation. In them
+the angels are depicted with wrathful countenances, their features are
+sombre and uncouth. One might take them to be Lucifer and his companions
+meditating their revolt. Well, my son, it was these pictures, acting
+upon a mind already weakened and undermined by every kind of
+dissipation, that have filled it with the trouble to which it is at
+present a prey."
+
+But Maurice would have none of it.
+
+"Oh, no! Monsieur l'Abbe," he cried, "it is not Eugene Delacroix's
+pictures that have been troubling me. I didn't so much as look at them.
+I am completely indifferent to that kind of art."
+
+"Well, then, my son, believe me: there is no truth, no reality, in any
+of the story you have just related to me. Your guardian angel has
+certainly not appeared to you."
+
+"But, Abbe," replied Maurice, who had the most absolute confidence in
+the evidence of the senses, "I saw him tying up a woman's shoe-laces and
+putting on the trousers of a suicide."
+
+And stamping his feet on the asphalt, Maurice called as witnesses to the
+truth of his words the sky, the earth, all nature, the towers of St.
+Sulpice, the walls of the great seminary, the Fountain of the _Quatre
+Eveques_, the public lavatory, the cabmen's shelter, the taxis and motor
+'buses' shelter, the trees, the passers-by, the dogs, the sparrows, the
+flower-seller and her flowers.
+
+The Abbe made haste to end the interview.
+
+"All this is error, falsehood, and illusion, my child," said he. "You
+are a Christian: think as a Christian,--a Christian does not allow
+himself to be seduced by empty shadows. Faith protects him against the
+seduction of the marvellous, he leaves credulity to freethinkers. There
+are credulous people for you--freethinkers! There is no humbug they will
+not swallow. But the Christian carries a weapon which dissipates
+diabolical illusions,--the sign of the Cross. Reassure yourself,
+Maurice,--you have not lost your guardian angel. He still watches over
+you. It lies with you not to make this task too difficult nor too
+painful for him. Good-bye, Maurice. The weather is going to change, for
+I feel a burning in my big toe."
+
+And Abbe Patouille went off with his breviary under his arm, hobbling
+along with a dignity that seemed to foretell a mitre.
+
+That very day, Arcade and Zita were leaning over the parapet of La
+Butte, gazing down on the mist and smoke that lay floating over the vast
+city.
+
+"Is it possible," said Arcade, "for the mind to conceive all the pain
+and suffering that lie pent within a great city? It is my belief that if
+a man succeeded in realising it, the weight of it would crush him to the
+earth."
+
+"And yet," answered Zita, "every living being in that place of torment
+is enamoured of life. It is a great enigma!
+
+"Unhappy, ill-fated, while they live, the idea of ceasing to be is,
+nevertheless, a horror to them. They look not for solace in
+annihilation, it does not even bring them the promise of rest. In their
+madness they even look upon nothingness with terror: they have peopled
+it with phantoms. Look you at these pediments, these towers and domes
+and spires that pierce the mist and rear on high their glittering
+crosses. Men bow in adoration before the demiurge who has given them a
+life that is worse than death, and a death that is worse than life."
+
+Zita was for a long time lost in thought. At length she broke silence,
+saying:
+
+"There is something, Arcade, that I must confess to you. It was no
+desire for a purer justice or wiser laws that hurried Ithuriel
+earthward. Ambition, a taste for intrigue, the love of wealth and
+honour, all these things made Heaven, with its calm, unbearable to me,
+and I longed to mingle with the restless race of men. I came, and by an
+art unknown to nearly all the angels, I learned how to fashion myself a
+body which, since I could change it as the fancy seized me, to
+whatsoever age and sex I would, has permitted me to experience the most
+diverse and amazing of human destinies. A hundred times I took a
+position of renown among the leaders of the day, the lords of wealth and
+princes of nations. I will not reveal to you, Arcade, the famous names I
+bore; know only that I was pre-eminent in learning, in the fine arts, in
+power, wealth, and beauty, among all the nations of the world. At last,
+it was but a few years since, as I was journeying in France, under the
+outward semblance of a distinguished foreigner, I chanced to be roaming
+at evening through the forest of Montmorency, when I heard a flute
+unfolding all the sorrows of Heaven. The purity and sadness of its
+notes rent my very soul. Never before had I hearkened to aught so
+lovely. My eyes were wet with tears, my bosom full of sobs, as I drew
+near and beheld, on the skirts of a glade, an old man like to a faun,
+blowing on a rustic pipe. It was Nectaire. I cast myself at his feet,
+imprinted kisses on his hands and on his lips divine, and fled away....
+
+"From that day forth, conscious of the littleness of human achievements,
+weary of the tumult and the vanity of earthly things, ashamed of my vast
+and profitless endeavours, and deciding to seek out a loftier aim for my
+ambition, I looked upwards towards my skiey home and vowed I would
+return to it as a Deliverer. I rid myself of titles, name, wealth,
+friends, the horde of sycophants and flatterers and, as Zita the
+obscure, set to work in indigence and solitude, to bring freedom into
+Heaven."
+
+"And I," said Arcade, "I too have heard the flute of Nectaire. But who
+is this old gardener who can thus woo from a rude wooden pipe notes that
+are so moving and so beautiful?"
+
+"You will soon know," answered Zita.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+     WHEREIN MIRA THE SEERESS, ZEPHYRINE, AND THE FATAL AMEDEE
+     ARE SUCCESSIVELY BROUGHT UPON THE SCENE, AND WHEREIN THE
+     NOTION OF EURIPIDES THAT THOSE WHOM ZEUS WISHES TO CRUSH HE
+     FIRST MAKES MAD, IS ILLUSTRATED BY THE TERRIBLE EXAMPLE OF
+     MONSIEUR SARIETTE
+
+
+Disappointed at his failure to enlighten an ecclesiastic renowned for
+his clarity of mind, and frustrated in the hope of finding his angel
+again on the high road of orthodoxy, Maurice took it into his head to
+resort to occultism and resolved to go and consult a seer. He would have
+undoubtedly applied to Madame de Thebes, but he had already questioned
+her on the occasion of his early love troubles, and her replies showed
+such wisdom that he no longer believed her to be a soothsayer. He
+therefore had recourse to a fashionable medium, Madame Mira. He had
+heard many examples quoted of the extraordinary insight of this seeress,
+but it was necessary to present Madame Mira with some object which the
+absent one had either touched or worn and to which her translucent gaze
+had to be attracted. Maurice, trying to remember what the angel had
+touched since his ill-fated incarnation, recollected that in his
+celestial nudity he had sat down in an arm-chair on Madame des Aubels'
+black stockings and that he had afterwards helped that lady to dress.
+
+Maurice asked Gilberte for one of the talismans required by the
+clairvoyante. But Gilberte could not give him a single one, unless, as
+she said, she herself were to play the part of the talisman. For the
+angel had, in her case, displayed the greatest indiscretion, and such
+agility that it was impossible always to forestall his enterprise. On
+hearing this confession, which nevertheless told him nothing new,
+Maurice lost his temper with the angel, calling him by the names of the
+lowest animals and swearing he would give him a good kick when he got
+him within reach of his foot. But his fury soon turned against Madame
+des Aubels; he accused her of having provoked the insolence she now
+denounced, and in his wrath he referred to her by all the zoological
+symbols of immodesty and perversity. His love for Arcade was rekindled
+in his heart, and burned with a more ardent flame than ever, and the
+deserted youth, with outstretched arms and bended knees, invoked his
+angel with sobs and lamentations.
+
+During his sleepless nights it occurred to him that perhaps the books
+the angel had turned over before his incarnation might serve as a
+talisman. One morning, therefore, Maurice went up to the library and
+greeted Monsieur Sariette, who was cataloguing under the romantic gaze
+of Alexandre d'Esparvieu. Monsieur Sariette smiled, but his face was
+deathly pale. Now that an invisible hand no longer upset the books
+placed under his charge, now that tranquillity and order once more
+reigned in the library, Monsieur Sariette was happy, but his strength
+diminished day by day. There was little left of him but a frail and
+contented shadow.
+
+      "One dies, in full content, of sorrow past."
+
+"Monsieur Sariette," said Maurice, "you remember that time when your
+books were disarranged every night, how armfuls disappeared, how they
+were dragged about, turned over, ruined, and sent rolling helter-skelter
+as far as the gutter in the Rue Palatine. Those were great days! Point
+out to me, Monsieur Sariette, the books which suffered most."
+
+This proposition threw Monsieur Sariette into a melancholy stupor, and
+Maurice had to repeat his request three times before he could make the
+aged librarian understand. At length he pointed to a very ancient Talmud
+from Jerusalem as having been frequently touched by those unseen hands.
+An apocryphal Gospel of the third century, consisting of twenty papyrus
+sheets, had also quitted its place time after time. Gassendi's
+Correspondence too seemed to have been well thumbed.
+
+"But," added Monsieur Sariette, "the book to which the mysterious
+visitant devoted the most particular attention was undoubtedly a little
+copy of _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendome, Grand
+Prieur de France, with autograph annotations by Voltaire, who, as is
+well known, frequently visited the Temple in his younger days. The
+fearsome reader who caused me such terrible anxiety never grew weary of
+this _Lucretius_ and made it his bedside book, as it were. His taste was
+sound, for it's a gem of a thing. Alas! the monster made a blot of ink
+on page 137 which perhaps the chemists with all the science at their
+disposal will be powerless to erase."
+
+And Monsieur Sariette heaved a profound sigh. He repented having said
+all this when young d'Esparvieu asked him for the loan of the precious
+_Lucretius_. Vainly did the jealous custodian affirm that the book was
+being repaired at the binder's and was not available. Maurice made it
+clear that he wasn't to be taken in like that. He strode resolutely into
+the abode of the philosophers and the globes and seating himself in an
+arm-chair said:
+
+"I am waiting."
+
+Monsieur Sariette suggested his having another edition. There were some
+that, textually, were more correct, and were, therefore, preferable from
+the student's point of view. He offered him Barbou's edition, or
+Coustelier's, or, better still, a French translation. He could have the
+Baron des Coutures' version--which was perhaps a little
+old-fashioned--or La Grange's, or those in the Nisard and Panckouke
+series; or, again, there were two versions of striking elegance, one in
+verse and the other in prose, both from the pen of Monsieur de
+Pongerville of the French Academy.
+
+"I don't need a translation," said Maurice proudly. "Give me the Prior
+de Vendome's copy."
+
+Monsieur Sariette went slowly up to the cupboard in which the jewel in
+question was contained. The keys were rattling in his trembling hand. He
+raised them to the lock and withdrew them again immediately and
+suggested that Maurice should have the common _Lucretius_ published by
+Garnier.
+
+"It's very handy," said he with an engaging smile.
+
+But the silence with which this proposal was received made it clear that
+resistance was useless. He slowly drew forth the volume from its place,
+and having taken the precaution to see that there wasn't a speck of dust
+on the table-cloth, he laid it tremblingly thereon before the
+great-grandson of Alexandre d'Esparvieu.
+
+Maurice began to turn the leaves, and when he got to page 137 he saw the
+stain which had been made with violet ink. It was about the size of a
+pea.
+
+"Ay, that's it," said old Sariette, who had his eye on the _Lucretius_
+the whole time; "that's the trace those invisible monsters left behind
+them."
+
+"What, there were several of them, Monsieur Sariette?" exclaimed
+Maurice.
+
+"I cannot tell. But I don't know whether I have a right to have this
+blot removed since, like the blot Paul Louis Courier made on the
+Florentine manuscript, it constitutes a literary document, so to speak."
+
+Scarcely were the words out of the old fellow's mouth when the front
+door bell rang and there was a confused noise of voices and footsteps in
+the next room. Sariette ran forward at the sound and collided with Pere
+Guinardon's mistress, old Zephyrine, who, with her tousled hair sticking
+up like a nest of vipers, her face aflame, her bosom heaving, her
+abdominal part like an eiderdown quilt puffed out by a terrific gale,
+was choking with grief and rage. And amid sobs and sighs and groans and
+all the innumerable sounds which, on earth, make up the mighty uproar to
+which the emotions of living beings and the tumult of nature give rise,
+she cried:
+
+"He's gone, the monster! He's gone off with her. He's cleared out the
+whole shanty and left me to shift for myself with eighteenpence in my
+purse."
+
+And she proceeded to give a long and incoherent account of how Michel
+Guinardon had abandoned her and gone to live with Octavie, the
+bread-woman's daughter, and she let loose a torrent of abuse against the
+traitor.
+
+"A man whom I've kept going with my own money for fifty years and more.
+For I've had plenty of the needful and known plenty of the upper ten and
+all. I dragged him out of the gutter and now this is what I get for it.
+He's a bright beauty, that friend of yours. The lazy scoundrel. Why, he
+had to be dressed like a child, the drunken contemptible brute. You
+don't know him yet, Monsieur Sariette. He's a forger. He turns out
+Giottos, Giottos, I tell you, and Fra Angelicos and Grecos, as hard as
+he can and sells them to art-dealers--yes, and Fragonards too, and
+Baudouins. He's a debauchee, and doesn't believe in God! That's the
+worst of the lot, Monsieur Sariette, for without the fear of God...."
+
+Long did Zephyrine continue to pour forth vituperations. When at last
+her breath failed her, Monsieur Sariette availed himself of the
+opportunity to exhort her to be calm and bring herself to look on the
+bright side of things. Guinardon would come back. A man doesn't forget
+anyone he's lived and got on well with for fifty years----
+
+These two observations only goaded her to a fresh outburst, and
+Zephyrine swore she would never forget the slight that had been put on
+her; she swore she would never have the monster back with her any more.
+And if he came to ask her to forgive him on his knees, she would let him
+grovel at her feet.
+
+"Don't you understand, Monsieur Sariette, that I despise and hate him,
+that he makes me sick?"
+
+Sixty times she voiced these lofty sentiments; sixty times she vowed she
+would never have Guinardon back with her again, that she couldn't bear
+the sight of him, even in a picture.
+
+Monsieur Sariette made no attempt to oppose a resolve which, after
+protestations such as these, he regarded as unshakable. He did not blame
+Zephyrine in the least. He even supported her. Unfolding to the deserted
+one a purer future, he told her of the frailty of human sentiment,
+exhorted her to display a spirit of renunciation and enjoined her to
+show a pious resignation to the will of God.
+
+"Seeing, in truth, that your friend is so little worthy of affection
+..."
+
+He was not suffered to continue. Zephyrine flew at him, and shaking him
+furiously by the collar of his frock-coat, she yelled, half choking with
+rage: "So little worthy of affection! Michel! Ah! my boy, you find
+another more kind, more gay, more witty, you find another like him,
+always young, yes, always. Not worthy of affection! Anyone can see you
+don't know anything about love, you old duffer."
+
+Taking advantage of the fact that Pere Sariette was thus deeply
+engaged, young d'Esparvieu slipped the little _Lucretius_ into his
+pocket, and strolled deliberately past the crouching librarian, bidding
+him adieu with a little wave of the hand.
+
+Armed with his talisman, he hastened to the Place des Ternes, to
+interview Madame Mira. She received him in a red drawing-room where
+neither owl nor frog nor any of the paraphernalia of ancient magic were
+to be found. Madame Mira, in a prune-coloured dress, her hair powdered,
+though already past her prime, was of very good appearance. She spoke
+with a certain elegance and prided herself on discovering hidden things
+by the help alone of Science, Philosophy, and Religion. She felt the
+morocco binding, feigning to close her eyes, and looking meanwhile
+through the narrow slit between her lids at the Latin title and the coat
+of arms which conveyed nothing to her.
+
+Accustomed to receive as tokens such things as rings, handkerchiefs,
+letters, and locks of hair, she could not conceive to what sort of
+individual this singular book could belong. By habitual and mechanical
+cunning she disguised her real surprise under a feigned surprise.
+
+"Strange!" she murmured, "strange! I do not see quite clearly ... I
+perceive a woman...."
+
+As she let fall this magic word, she glanced furtively to see what sort
+of an effect it had and beheld on her questioner's face an unexpected
+look of disappointment. Perceiving that she was off the track, she
+immediately changed her oracle:
+
+"But she fades away immediately. It is strange, strange! I have a
+confused impression of some vague form, a being that I cannot define,"
+and having assured herself by a hurried glance that, this time, her
+words were going down, she expatiated on the vagueness of the person and
+on the mist that enveloped him.
+
+However, the vision grew clearer to Madame Mira, who was following a
+clue step by step.
+
+"A wide street ... a square with a statue ... a deserted
+street,--stairs. He is there in a bluish room--he is a young man, with
+pale and careworn face. There are things he seems to regret, and which
+he would not do again did they still remain undone."
+
+But the effort at divination had been too great. Fatigue prevented the
+clairvoyante from continuing her transcendental researches. She spent
+her remaining strength in impressively recommending him who consulted
+her to remain in intimate union with God if he wished to regain what he
+had lost and succeed in his attempts.
+
+On leaving Maurice placed a louis on the mantelpiece and went away moved
+and troubled, persuaded that Madame Mira possessed supernatural
+faculties, but unfortunately insufficient ones.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs he remembered he had left the little
+_Lucretius_ on the table of the pythoness, and, thinking that the old
+maniac Sariette would never get over its loss, went up to recover
+possession of it.
+
+On re-entering the paternal abode his gaze lighted upon a shadowy and
+grief-stricken figure. It was old Sariette, who in tones as plaintive as
+the wail of the November wind began to beg for his _Lucretius_. Maurice
+pulled it carelessly out of his great-coat pocket.
+
+"Don't flurry yourself, Monsieur Sariette," said he. "There the thing
+is."
+
+Clasping the jewel to his bosom the old librarian bore it away and laid
+it gently down on the blue table-cloth, thinking all the while where he
+might safely hide his precious treasure, and turning over all sorts of
+schemes in his mind as became a zealous curator. But who among us shall
+boast of his wisdom? The foresight of man is short, and his prudence is
+for ever being baffled. The blows of fate are ineluctable; no man shall
+evade his doom. There is no counsel, no caution that avails against
+destiny. Hapless as we are, the same blind force which regulates the
+courses of atom and of star fashions universal order from our
+vicissitudes. Our ill-fortune is necessary to the harmony of the
+Universe. It was the day for the binder, a day which the revolving
+seasons brought round twice a year, beneath the sign of the Ram and the
+sign of the Scales. That day, ever since morning, Monsieur Sariette had
+been making things ready for the binder. He had laid out on the table as
+many of the newly purchased paper-bound volumes as were deemed worthy of
+a permanent binding or of being put in boards, and also those books
+whose binding was in need of repair, and of all these he had drawn up a
+detailed and accurate list. Punctually at five o'clock, old Amedee, the
+man from Leger-Massieu's, the binder in the Rue de l'Abbaye, presented
+himself at the d'Esparvieu library and, after a double check had been
+carried out by Monsieur Sariette, thrust the books he was to take back
+to his master into a piece of cloth which he fastened into knots at the
+four corners and hoisted on to his shoulder. He then saluted the
+librarian with the following words, "Good night, all!" and went
+downstairs.
+
+Everything went off on this occasion as usual. But Amedee, seeing the
+_Lucretius_ on the table, innocently put it into the bag with the
+others, and took it away without Monsieur Sariette's perceiving it. The
+librarian quitted the home of the Philosophers and Globes in entire
+forgetfulness of the book whose absence had been causing him such
+horrible anxiety all day long. Some people may take a stern view of the
+matter and call this a lapse, a defection of his better nature. But
+would it not be more accurate to say that fate had decided that things
+should come to pass in this manner, and that what is called chance, and
+is in fact but the regular order of nature, had accomplished this
+imperceptible deed which was to have such awful consequences in the
+sight of man? Monsieur Sariette went off to his dinner at the _Quatre
+Eveques_, and read his paper _La Croix_. He was tranquil and serene. It
+was only the next morning when he entered the abode of the Philosophers
+and Globes that he remembered the _Lucretius_. Failing to see it on the
+table he looked for it everywhere, but without success. It never entered
+his head that Amedee might have taken it away by mistake. What he did
+think was that the invisible visitant had returned, and he was mightily
+disturbed.
+
+The unhappy curator, hearing a noise on the landing, opened the door and
+found it was little Leon, who, with a gold-braided _kepi_ stuck on his
+head, was shouting "Vive la France" and hurling dusters and
+feather-brooms and Hippolyte's floor polish at imaginary foes. The child
+preferred this landing for playing soldiers to any other part of the
+house, and sometimes he would stray into the library. Monsieur Sariette
+was seized with the sudden suspicion that it was he who had taken the
+_Lucretius_ to use as a missile and he ordered him, in threatening
+tones, to give it back. The child denied that he had taken it, and
+Monsieur Sariette had recourse to cajolery.
+
+"Leon, if you bring me back the little red book, I will give you some
+chocolates."
+
+The child grew thoughtful; and in the evening, as Monsieur Sariette was
+going downstairs, he met Leon, who said:
+
+"There's the book!"
+
+And, holding out a much-torn picture-book called _The Story of
+Gribouille_, demanded his chocolates.
+
+A few days later the post brought Maurice the prospectus of an enquiry
+agency managed by an ex-employee at the Prefecture of Police; it
+promised celerity and discretion. He found at the address indicated a
+moustached gentleman morose and careworn, who demanded a deposit and
+promised to find the individual.
+
+The ex-police official soon wrote to inform him that very onerous
+investigations had been commenced and asked for fresh funds. Maurice
+gave him no more and resolved to carry on the search himself. Imagining,
+not without some likelihood, that the angel would associate with the
+wretched, seeing that he had no money, and with the exiled of all
+nations--like himself, revolutionaries--he visited the lodging-houses at
+St. Ouen, at la Chapelle, Montmartre, and the Barriere d'Italie. He
+sought him in the doss-houses, public-houses where they give you plates
+of tripe, and others where you can get a sausage for three sous; he
+searched for him in the cellars at the Market and at Pere Momie's.
+
+Maurice visited the restaurants where nihilists and anarchists take
+their meals. There he came across men dressed as women, gloomy and
+wild-looking youths, and blue-eyed octogenarians who laughed like little
+children. He observed, asked questions, was taken for a spy, had a knife
+thrust into him by a very beautiful woman, and the very next day
+continued his search in beer-houses, lodging-houses, houses of ill-fame,
+gambling-hells down by the fortifications, at the receivers of stolen
+goods, and among the "apaches."
+
+Seeing him thus pale, harassed, and silent, his mother grew worried.
+
+"We must find him a wife," she said. "It is a pity that Mademoiselle de
+la Verdeliere has not a bigger fortune."
+
+Abbe Patouille did not hide his anxiety.
+
+"This child," he said, "is passing through a moral crisis."
+
+"I am more inclined to think," replied Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, "that
+he is under the influence of some bad woman. We must find him an
+occupation which will absorb him and flatter his vanity. I might get him
+appointed Secretary to the Committee for the Preservation of Country
+Churches, or Consulting Counsel to the Syndicate of Catholic Plumbers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+     WHEREIN WE LEARN THAT SOPHAR, NO LESS EAGER FOR GOLD THAN
+     MAMMON, LOOKED UPON HIS HEAVENLY HOME LESS FAVOURABLY THAN
+     UPON FRANCE, A COUNTRY BLESSED WITH A SAVINGS BANK AND LOAN
+     DEPARTMENTS, AND WHEREIN WE SEE, YET ONCE AGAIN, THAT WHOSO
+     IS POSSESSED OF THIS WORLD'S GOODS FEARS THE EVIL EFFECTS OF
+     ANY CHANGE
+
+
+Meanwhile Arcade led a life of obscure toil. He worked at a printer's in
+the Rue St. Benoit, and lived in an attic in the Rue Mouffetard. His
+comrades having gone on strike, he left the workroom and devoted his day
+to his propaganda. So successful was he that he won over to the side of
+revolt fifty thousand of those guardian angels who, as Zita had
+surmised, were discontented with their condition and imbued with the
+spirit of the times. But lacking money, he lacked liberty, and could not
+employ his time as he wished in instructing the sons of Heaven. So, too,
+Prince Istar, hampered by want of funds, manufactured fewer bombs than
+were needed, and these less fine. Of course he prepared a good many
+small pocket machines. He had filled Theophile's rooms with them, and
+not a day passed but he forgot some and left them lying about on the
+seats in various cafes. But a nice bomb, easily handled and capable of
+destroying many big mansions, cost him from twenty to twenty-five
+thousand francs; and Prince Istar only possessed two of this kind.
+Equally bent on procuring funds, Arcade and Istar both went to make a
+request for money from a celebrated financier named Max Everdingen, who,
+as everyone knows, is the managing director of the biggest banking
+concern in France and indeed in the whole world. What is not so well
+known is that Max Everdingen was not born of woman, but is a fallen
+angel. Nevertheless, such is the truth. In Heaven he was named Sophar,
+and guarded the treasures of Ialdabaoth, a great collector of gold and
+precious stones. In the exercise of this function Sophar contracted a
+love of riches which could not be satisfied in a state of society in
+which banks and stock exchanges are alike unknown. His heart flamed with
+an ardent love for the god of the Hebrews to whom he remained faithful
+during a long course of centuries. But at the commencement of the
+twentieth century of the Christian era, casting his eyes down from the
+height of the firmament upon France, he saw that this country, under the
+name of a Republic, was constituted as a plutocracy and that, under the
+appearance of a democratic government, high finance exercised sovereign
+sway, untrammelled and unchecked.
+
+Henceforth life in the Empyrean became intolerable to him. He longed for
+France as for the promised land, and one day, bearing with him all the
+precious stones he could carry, he descended to earth and established
+himself in Paris. This angel of cupidity did good business there. Since
+his materialisation his face had lost its celestial aspect; it
+reproduced the Semitic type in all its purity, and one could admire the
+lines and the puckers which wrinkle the faces of bankers and which are
+to be seen in the money-changers of Quintin Matsys.
+
+His beginnings were humble and his success amazing. He married an ugly
+woman and they saw themselves reflected in their children as in a
+mirror. Baron Max Everdingen's large mansion, which rears itself on the
+heights of the Trocadero, is crammed with the spoils of Christian
+Europe.
+
+The Baron received Arcade and Prince Istar in his study,--one of the
+most modest rooms in his mansion. The ceiling is decorated with a fresco
+of Tiepolo, taken from a Venetian palace. The bureau of the Regent,
+Philip of Orleans, is in this room, which is full of cabinets,
+show-cases, pictures, and statues.
+
+Arcade allowed his gaze to wander over the walls.
+
+"How comes it, my brother Sophar," said he, "that you, in spite of your
+Jewish heart, obey so ill the commandment of the Lord your God who said:
+'Thou shalt have no graven images'? for here I see an Apollo of Houdon's
+and a Hebe of Lemoine's, and several busts by Caffieri. And, like
+Solomon in his old age, O son of God, you set up in your dwelling-place
+the idols of strange nations: for such are this Venus of Boucher, this
+Jupiter of Rubens, and those nymphs that are indebted to Fragonard's
+brush for the gooseberry jam which smears their gleaming limbs. And here
+in this single show-case, Sophar, you keep the sceptre of St. Louis, six
+hundred pearls of Marie Antoinette's broken necklace, the imperial
+mantle of Charles V, the tiara wrought by Ghiberti for Pope Martin V,
+the Colonna, Bonaparte's sword--and I know not what besides."
+
+"Mere trifles," said Max Everdingen.
+
+"My dear Baron," said Prince Istar, "you even possess the ring which
+Charlemagne placed on a fairy's finger and which was thought to be lost.
+But let us discuss the business on which we have come. My friend and I
+have come to ask you for money."
+
+"I can well believe it," replied Max Everdingen. "Everyone wants money,
+but for different reasons. What do you want money for?"
+
+Prince Istar replied simply:
+
+"To stir up a revolution in France."
+
+"In France!" repeated the Baron, "in France? Well, I shall give you no
+money for that, you may be quite sure."
+
+Arcade did not disguise the fact that he had expected greater liberality
+and more generous help from a celestial brother.
+
+"Our project," he said, "is a vast one. It embraces both Heaven and
+Earth. It is settled in every detail. We shall first bring about a
+social revolution in France, in Europe, on the whole planet; then we
+shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful
+democracy. And to reduce the citadels of Heaven, to overturn the
+mountain of God, to storm celestial Jerusalem, a vast army is needful,
+enormous resources, formidable machines, and electrophores of a strength
+yet unknown. It is our intention to commence with France."
+
+"You are madmen!" exclaimed Baron Everdingen; "madmen and fools! Listen
+to me. There is not one single reform to carry out in France. All is
+perfect, finally settled, unchangeable. You hear?--unchangeable." And to
+add force to his statement, Baron Everdingen banged his fist three times
+on the Regent's bureau.
+
+"Our points of view differ," said Arcade sweetly. "_I_ think, as does
+Prince Istar, that everything should be changed in this country. But
+what boots it to dispute the matter? Moreover, it is too late. We have
+come to speak to you, O my brother Sophar, in the name of five hundred
+thousand celestial spirits, all resolved to commence the universal
+revolution to-morrow."
+
+Baron Everdingen exclaimed that they were crazy, that he would not give
+a _sou_, that it was both criminal and mad to attack the most admirable
+thing in the world, the thing which renders earth more beautiful than
+heaven--Finance. He was a poet and a prophet. His heart thrilled with
+holy enthusiasm; he drew attention to the French Savings Bank, the
+virtuous Savings Bank, that chaste and pure Savings Bank like unto the
+Virgin of the Canticle who, issuing from the depths of the country in
+rustic petticoat, bears to the robust and splendid Bank--her bridegroom,
+who awaits her--the treasures of her love; and drew a picture of the
+Bank, enriched with the gifts of its spouse, pouring on all the nations
+of the world torrents of gold, which, of themselves, by a thousand
+invisible channels return in still greater abundance to the blessed land
+from which they sprung.
+
+"By Deposit and Loan," he went on, "France has become the New Jerusalem,
+shedding her glory over all the nations of Europe, and the Kings of the
+Earth come to kiss her rosy feet. And that is what you would fain
+destroy? You are both impious and sacrilegious."
+
+Thus spoke the angel of finance. An invisible harp accompanied his
+voice, and his eyes darted lightning.
+
+Meanwhile Arcade, leaning carelessly against the Regent's bureau, spread
+out under the Banker's eyes various ground-plans, underground-plans, and
+sky-plans of Paris with red crosses indicating the points where bombs
+should be simultaneously placed in cellars and catacombs, thrown on
+public ways, and flung by a flotilla of aeroplanes. All the financial
+establishments, and notably the Everdingen Bank and its branches, were
+marked with red crosses.
+
+The financier shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Nonsense! you are but wretches and vagabonds, shadowed by all the
+police of the world. You are penniless. How can you manufacture all the
+machines?"
+
+By way of reply, Prince Istar drew from his pocket a small copper
+cylinder, which he gracefully presented to Baron Everdingen.
+
+"You see," said he, "this ordinary-looking box. It is only necessary to
+let it fall on the ground immediately to reduce this mansion with its
+inmates to a mass of smoking ashes, and to set a fire going which would
+devour all the Trocadero quarter. I have ten thousand like that, and I
+make three dozen a day."
+
+The financier asked the Cherub to replace the machine in his pocket, and
+continued in a conciliatory tone:
+
+"Listen to me, my friends. Go and start a revolution at once in Heaven,
+and leave things alone in this country. I will sign a cheque for you.
+You can procure all the material you need to attack celestial
+Jerusalem."
+
+And Baron Everdingen was already working up in his imagination a
+magnificent deal in electrophores and war-material.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     WHEREIN IS BEGUN THE GARDENER'S STORY, IN THE COURSE OF
+     WHICH WE SHALL SEE THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD UNFOLDED IN A
+     DISCOURSE AS BROAD AND MAGNIFICENT IN ITS VIEWS AS BOSSUET'S
+     DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IS NARROW AND
+     DISMAL
+
+
+The gardener bade Arcade and Zita sit down in an arbour walled with wild
+bryony, at the far end of the orchard.
+
+"Arcade," said the beautiful Archangel, "Nectaire will perhaps reveal to
+you to-day the things you are burning to know. Ask him to speak."
+
+Arcade did so and old Nectaire, laying down his pipe, began as
+follows:--
+
+"I knew him. He was the most beautiful of all the Seraphim. He shone
+with intelligence and daring. His great heart was big with all the
+virtues born of pride: frankness, courage, constancy in trial,
+indomitable hope. Long, long ago, ere Time was, in the boreal sky where
+gleam the seven magnetic stars, he dwelt in a palace of diamond and
+gold, where the air was ever tremulous with the beating of wings and
+with songs of triumph. Iahveh, on his mountain, was jealous of Lucifer.
+You both know it: angels like unto men feel love and hatred quicken
+within them. Capable, at times, of generous resolves, they too often
+follow their own interests and yield to fear. Then, as now, they showed
+themselves, for the most part, incapable of lofty thoughts, and in the
+fear of the Lord lay their sole virtue. Lucifer, who held vile things in
+proud disdain, despised this rabble of commonplace spirits for ever
+wallowing in a life of feasts and pleasure. But to those who were
+possessed of a daring spirit, a restless soul, to those fired with a
+wild love of liberty, he proffered friendship, which was returned with
+adoration. These latter deserted in a mass the mountain of God and
+yielded to the Seraph the homage which That Other would fain have kept
+for himself alone.
+
+"I ranked among the Dominations, and my name, Alaciel, was not unknown
+to fame. To satisfy my mind--that was ever tormented with an insatiable
+thirst for knowledge and understanding--I observed the nature of things,
+I studied the properties of minerals, air, and water. I sought out the
+laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I
+perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator
+would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself
+and not by the caprice of Iahveh; that the world is itself its own
+creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth I despised Iahveh for his
+imposture, and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to
+all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt. These
+feelings drew me towards the Seraph. I admired him, I loved him. I dwelt
+in his light. When at length it appeared that a choice had to be made
+between him and That Other I ranged myself on the side of Lucifer and
+knew no other aim than to serve him, no other desire than to share his
+lot.
+
+"War having become inevitable, he prepared for it with indefatigable
+vigilance and all the resourcefulness of a far-seeing mind. Making the
+Thrones and Dominations into Chalybes and Cyclopes, he drew forth iron
+from the mountains bordering his domain; iron, which he valued more than
+gold, and forged weapons in the caverns of Heaven. Then in the desert
+plain of the North he assembled myriads of Spirits, armed them, taught
+them, and drilled them. Although prepared in secret, the enterprise was
+too vast for his adversary not to be soon aware of it. It might in truth
+be said that he had always foreseen and dreaded it, for he had made a
+citadel of his abode and a warlike host of his angels, and he gave
+himself the name of the God of Hosts. He made ready his thunderbolts.
+More than half of the children of Heaven remained faithful to him;
+thronging round him he beheld obedient souls and patient hearts. The
+Archangel Michael, who knew not fear, took command of these docile
+troops. Lucifer, as soon as he saw that his army could gain no more in
+numbers or in warlike skill, moved it swiftly against the foe, and
+promising his angels riches and glory marched at their head towards the
+mountain upon whose summit stands the Throne of the Universe. For three
+days our host swept onward over the ethereal plains. Above our heads
+streamed the black standards of revolt. And now, behold, the Mountain of
+God shone rosy in the orient sky and our chief scanned with his eyes the
+glittering ramparts. Beneath the sapphire walls the foe was drawn up in
+battle array, and, while we marched clad in our iron and bronze, they
+shone resplendent in gold and precious stones.
+
+"Their gonfalons of red and blue floated in the breeze, and lightning
+flashed from the points of their lances. In a little while the armies
+were only sundered one from the other by a narrow strip of level and
+deserted ground, and at this sight even the bravest shuddered as they
+thought that there in bloody conflict their fate would soon be sealed.
+
+"Angels, as you know, never die. But when bronze and iron, diamond point
+or flaming sword tear their ethereal substance, the pain they feel is
+more acute than men may suffer, for their flesh is more exquisitely
+delicate; and should some essential organ be destroyed, they fall inert
+and, slowly decomposing, are resolved into clouds and during long aeons
+float insensible in the cold ether. And when at length they resume
+spirit and form they fail to recover full memory of their past life.
+Therefore it is but natural that angels shrink from suffering, and the
+bravest among them is troubled at the thought of being reft of light and
+sweet remembrance. Were it otherwise the angelic race would know neither
+the delight of battle nor the glory of sacrifice. Those who, before the
+beginning of Time, fought in the Empyrean for or against the God of
+Armies, would have taken part without honour in mock battles, and it
+would not now become me to say to you, my children, with rightful pride:
+
+"'Lo, I was there!'
+
+"Lucifer gave the signal for the onset and led the assault. We fell upon
+the enemy, thinking to destroy him then and there and carry the sacred
+citadel at the first onslaught. The soldiers of the jealous God, less
+fiery, but no whit less firm than ours, remained immovable. The
+Archangel Michael commanded them with the calmness and resolution of a
+mighty spirit. Thrice we strove to break through their lines, thrice
+they opposed to our ironclad breast the flaming points of their lances,
+swift to pierce the stoutest cuirass. In millions the glorious bodies
+fell. At length our right wing pierced the enemy's left and we beheld
+the Principalities, the Powers, the Virtues, the Dominations, and the
+Thrones turn and flee in full career; while the Angels of the Third
+Choir, flying distractedly above them, covered them with a snow of
+feathers mingled with a rain of blood. We sped in pursuit of them amid
+the debris of chariots and broken weapons, and we spurred their nimble
+flight. Suddenly a storm of cries amazed us. It grew louder and nearer.
+With desperate shrieks and triumphal clamour the right wing of the
+enemy, the giant archangels of the Most High, had flung themselves upon
+our left flank and broken it. Thus we were forced to abandon the pursuit
+of the fugitives and hasten to the rescue of our own shattered troops.
+Our prince flew to rally them, and re-established the conflict. But the
+left wing of the enemy, whose ruin he had not quite consummated, no
+longer pressed by lance or arrow, regained courage, returned, and faced
+us yet again. Night fell upon the dubious field. While under the shelter
+of darkness, in the still, silent air stirred ever and anon by the moans
+of the wounded, his forces were resting from their toils, Lucifer began
+to make ready for the next day's battle. Before dawn the trumpets
+sounded the reveille. Our warriors surprised the enemy at the hour of
+prayer, put them to rout, and long and fierce was the carnage that
+ensued. When all had either fallen or fled, the Archangel Michael, none
+with him save a few companions with four wings of flame, still resisted
+the onslaughts of a countless host. They fell back ceaselessly opposing
+their breasts to us, and Michael still displayed an impassible
+countenance. The sun had run a third of its course when we commenced to
+scale the Mountain of God. An arduous ascent it was: sweat ran from our
+brows, a dazzling light blinded us. Weighed down with steel, our
+feathery wings could not sustain us, but hope gave us wings that bore us
+up. The beautiful Seraph, pointing with glittering hand, mounting ever
+higher and higher, showed us the way. All day long we slowly clomb the
+lofty heights which at evening were robed in azure, rose, and violet.
+The starry host appearing in the sky seemed as the reflection of our own
+arms. Infinite silence reigned above us. We went on, intoxicated with
+hope; all at once from the darkened sky lightning darted forth, the
+thunder muttered, and from the cloudy mountain-top fell fire from
+Heaven. Our helmets, our breast-plates were running with flames, and our
+bucklers broke under bolts sped by invisible hands. Lucifer, in the
+storm of fire, retained his haughty mien. In vain the lightning smote
+him; mightier than ever he stood erect, and still defied the foe. At
+length, the thunder, making the mountain totter, flung us down
+pell-mell, huge fragments of sapphire and ruby crashing down with us as
+we fell, and we rolled inert, swooning, for a period whose duration
+none could measure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I awoke in a darkness filled with lamentations. And when my eyes had
+grown accustomed to the dense shadows I saw round me my companions in
+arms, scattered in thousands on the sulphurous ground, lit by fitful
+gleams of livid light. My eyes perceived but fields of lava, smoking
+craters, and poisonous swamps.
+
+"Mountains of ice and shadowy seas shut in the horizon. A brazen sky
+hung heavy on our brows. And the horror of the place was such that we
+wept as we sat, crouched elbow on knee, our cheeks resting on our
+clenched hands.
+
+"But soon, raising my eyes, I beheld the Seraph standing before me like
+a tower. Over his pristine splendour sorrow had cast its mantle of
+sombre majesty.
+
+"'Comrades,' said he, 'we must be happy and rejoice, for behold we are
+delivered from celestial servitude. Here we are free, and it were better
+to be free in Hell than serve in Heaven. We are not conquered, since the
+will to conquer is still ours. We have caused the Throne of the jealous
+God to totter; by our hands it shall fall. Arise, therefore, and be of
+good heart.'
+
+"Thereupon, at his command, we piled mountain upon mountain and on the
+topmost peak we reared engines which flung molten rocks against the
+divine habitations. The celestial host was taken unaware and from the
+abodes of glory there issued groans and cries of terror. And even then
+we thought to re-enter in triumph on our high estate, but the Mountain
+of God was wreathed with lightnings, and thunderbolts, falling on our
+fortress, crushed it to dust. After this fresh disaster, the Seraph
+remained awhile in meditation, his head buried in his hands. At length
+he raised his darkened visage. Now he was Satan, greater than Lucifer.
+Steadfast and loyal the angels thronged about him.
+
+"'Friends,' he said, 'if victory is denied us now, it is because we are
+neither worthy nor capable of victory. Let us determine wherein we have
+failed. Nature shall not be ruled, the sceptre of the Universe shall not
+be grasped, Godhead shall not be won, save by knowledge alone. We must
+conquer the thunder; to that task we must apply ourselves unwearyingly.
+It is not blind courage (no one this day has shown more courage than
+have you) which will win us the courts of Heaven; but rather study and
+reflection. In these silent realms where we are fallen, let us meditate,
+seeking the hidden causes of things; let us observe the course of
+Nature; let us pursue her with compelling ardour and all-conquering
+desire; let us strive to penetrate her infinite grandeur, her infinite
+minuteness. Let us seek to know when she is barren and when she brings
+forth fruit; how she makes cold and heat, joy and sorrow, life and
+death; how she assembles and disperses her elements, how she produces
+both the light air we breathe and the rocks of diamond and sapphire
+whence we have been precipitated, the divine fire wherewith we have been
+scarred and the soaring thought which stirs our minds. Torn with dire
+wounds, scorched by flame and by ice, let us render thanks to Fate which
+has sedulously opened our eyes, and let us rejoice at our lot. It is
+through pain that, suffering a first experience of Nature, we have been
+roused to know her and to subdue her. When she obeys us we shall be as
+gods. But even though she hide her mysteries for ever from us, deny us
+arms and keep the secret of the thunder, we still must needs
+congratulate ourselves on having known pain, for pain has revealed to us
+new feelings, more precious and more sweet than those experienced in
+eternal bliss, and inspired us with love and pity unknown to Heaven.'
+
+"These words of the Seraph changed our hearts and opened up fresh hope
+to us. Our hearts were filled with a great longing for knowledge and
+love.
+
+"Meanwhile the Earth was coming into being. Its immense and nebulous orb
+took on hourly more shape and more certainty of outline. The waters
+which fed the seaweed, the madrepores and shellfish and bore the light
+flotilla of the nautilus upon their bosom, no longer covered it in its
+entirety; they began to sink into beds, and already continents appeared,
+where, on the warm slime, amphibious monsters crawled. Then the
+mountains were overspread with forests, and divers races of animals
+commenced to feed on the grass, the moss, the berries on the trees, and
+on the acorns. Then there took possession of cavernous shelters under
+the rocks, a being who was cunning to wound with a sharpened stone the
+savage beasts, and by his ruses to overcome the ancient denizens of
+forest, plain, and mountain.
+
+"Man entered painfully on his kingdom. He was defenceless and naked. His
+scanty hair afforded him but little protection from the cold. His hands
+ended in nails too frail to do battle with the claws of wild beasts, but
+the position of his thumb, in opposition to the rest of his fingers,
+allowed him easily to grasp the most diverse objects and endowed him
+with skill in default of strength. Without differing essentially from
+the rest of the animals, he was more capable than any others of
+observing and comparing. As he drew from his throat various sounds, it
+occurred to him to designate by a particular inflexion of the voice
+whatever impinged upon his mind, and by this sequence of different
+sounds he was enabled to fix and communicate his ideas. His miserable
+lot and his painstaking spirit aroused the sympathy of the vanquished
+angels, who discerned in him an audacity equalling their own, and the
+germ of the pride that was at once their glory and their bane. They came
+in large numbers to be near him, to dwell on this young earth whither
+their wings wafted them in effortless flight. And they took pleasure in
+sharpening his talents and fostering his genius. They taught him to
+clothe himself in the skins of wild beasts, to roll stones before the
+mouths of caves to keep out the tigers and bears. They taught him how to
+make the flame burst forth by twirling a stick among the dried leaves
+and to foster the sacred fire upon the hearth. Inspired by the ingenious
+spirits he dared to cross the rivers in the hollowed trunks of cleft
+trees, he invented the wheel, the grinding-mill, and the plough; the
+share tore up the earth and the wound brought forth fruit, and the grain
+offered to him who ground it divine nourishment. He moulded vessels in
+clay, and out of the flint he fashioned various tools.
+
+"In fine, taking up our abode among mankind, we consoled them and taught
+them. We were not always visible to them, but of an evening, at the turn
+of the road, we would appear to them under forms often strange and
+weird, at times dignified and charming, and we adopted at will the
+appearance of a monster of the woods and waters, of a venerable old man,
+of a beautiful child, or of a woman with broad hips. Sometimes we would
+mock them in our songs or test their intelligence by some cunning
+prank. There were certain of us of a rather turbulent humour who loved
+to tease their women and children, but though lowly folk, they were our
+brothers, and we were never loath to come to their aid. Through our care
+their intelligence developed sufficiently to attain to mistaken ideas,
+and to acquire erroneous notions of the relations of cause and effect.
+As they supposed that some magic bond existed between the reality and
+its counterfeit presentment, they covered the walls of their caves with
+figures of animals and carved in ivory images of the reindeer and the
+mammoth in order to secure as prey the creatures they represented.
+Centuries passed by with infinite slowness while their genius was coming
+to birth. We sent them happy thoughts in dreams, inspired them to tame
+the horse, to castrate the bull, to teach the dog to guard the sheep.
+They created the family and the tribe. It came to pass one day that one
+of their wandering tribes was assailed by ferocious hunters. Forthwith
+the young men of the tribe formed an enclosed ring with their chariots,
+and in it they shut their women, children, old people, cattle, and
+treasures, and from the platform of their chariots they hurled murderous
+stones at their assailants. Thus was formed the first city. Born in
+misery and condemned to do murder by the law of Iahveh, man put his
+whole heart into doing battle, and to war he was indebted for his
+noblest virtues. He hallowed with his blood that sacred love of country
+which should (if man fulfils his destiny to the very end) enfold the
+whole earth in peace. One of us, Daedalus, brought him the axe, the
+plumb-line, and the sail. Thus we rendered the existence of mortals less
+hard and difficult. By the shores of the lakes they built dwellings of
+osier, where they might enjoy a meditative quiet unknown to the other
+inhabitants of the earth, and when they had learned to appease their
+hunger without too painful efforts we breathed into their hearts the
+love of beauty.
+
+"They raised up pyramids, obelisks, towers, colossal statues which
+smiled stiff and uncouth, and genetic symbols. Having learnt to know us
+or trying at least to divine what manner of beings we were, they felt
+both friendship and fear for us. The wisest among them watched us with
+sacred awe and pondered our teaching. In their gratitude the people of
+Greece and of Asia consecrated to us stones, trees, shadowy woods;
+offered us victims, and sang us hymns; in fact we became gods in their
+sight, and they called us Horus, Isis, Astarte, Zeus, Cybele, Demeter,
+and Triptolemus. Satan was worshipped under the names of Evan, Dionysus,
+Iacchus, and Lenaeus. He showed in his various manifestations all the
+strength and beauty which it is given to mortals to conceive. His eyes
+had the sweetness of the wood-violet, his lips were brilliant with the
+ruby-red of the pomegranate, a down finer than the velvet of the peach
+covered his cheeks and his chin: his fair hair, wound like a diadem and
+knotted loosely on the crown of his head, was encircled with ivy. He
+charmed the wild beasts, and penetrating into the deep forests drew to
+him all wild spirits, every thing that climbed in trees and peered
+through the branches with wild and timid gaze. On all these creatures
+fierce and fearful, that lived on bitter berries and beneath whose hairy
+breasts a wild heart beat, half-human creatures of the woods--on all he
+bestowed loving-kindness and grace, and they followed him drunk with joy
+and beauty. He planted the vine and showed mortals how to crush the
+grapes underfoot to make the wine flow. Magnificent and benign, he fared
+across the world, a long procession following in his train. To bear him
+company I took the form of a satyr; from my brow sprang two budding
+horns. My nose was flat and my ears were pointed. Glands, like those of
+the goat, hung on my neck, a goat's tail moved with my moving loins, and
+my hairy legs ended in a black cloven hoof which beat the ground in
+cadence.
+
+"Dionysus fared on his triumphal march over the world. In his company I
+passed through Lydia, the Phrygian fields, the scorching plains of
+Persia, Media bristling with hoar-frost, Arabia Felix, and rich Asia
+where flourishing cities were laved by the waves of the sea. He
+proceeded on a car drawn by lions and lynxes, to the sound of flutes,
+cymbals, and drums, invented for his mysteries. Bacchantes, Thyades,
+and Maenads, girt with the dappled fawn-skin, waved the thyrsus encircled
+with ivy. He bore in his train the Satyrs, whose joyous troop I led,
+Sileni, Pans, and Centaurs. Under his feet flowers and fruit sprang to
+life, and striking the rocks with his wand he made limpid streams gush
+forth. In the month of the Vintage he visited Greece, and the villagers
+ran forth to meet him, stained with the green and ruddy juices of the
+plants, they wore masks of wood, or bark, or leaves; in their hands they
+bore earthen cups, and danced wanton dances. Their womenfolk, imitating
+the companions of the God, their heads wreathed with green smilax,
+fastened round their supple loins skins of fawn or goat. The virgins
+twined about their throats garlands of fig leaves, they kneaded cakes of
+flour, and bore the Phallus in the mystic basket. And the vine-dressers,
+all daubed with lees of wine, standing up in their wains and bandying
+mockery or abuse with the passers-by, invented Tragedy.
+
+"Truly, it was not in dreaming beside a fountain, but by dint of
+strenuous toil that Dionysus taught them to grow plants and to make them
+bring forth succulent fruits. And while he pondered the art of
+transforming the rough woodlanders into a race that should love music
+and submit to just laws, more than once over his brow, burning with the
+fire of enthusiasm, did melancholy and gloomy fever pass. But his
+profound knowledge and his friendship for mankind enabled him to triumph
+over every obstacle. O days divine! Beautiful dawn of life! We led the
+Bacchanals on the leafy summits of the mountains and on the yellow
+shores of the seas. The Naiads and the Oreads mingled with us at our
+play. Aphrodite at our coming rose from the foam of the sea to smile
+upon us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONTINUED
+
+
+"When men had learned to cultivate the earth, to herd cattle, to enclose
+their holy places within walls, and to recognise the gods by their
+beauty, I withdrew to that smiling land girdled with dark woods and
+watered by the Stymphalos, the Olbios, the Erymanthus, and the proud
+Crathis, swollen with the icy waters of the Styx, and there, in a green
+valley at the foot of a hill planted with arbutus, olive, and pine,
+beneath a cluster of white poplars and plane trees, by the side of a
+stream flowing with soft murmur amid tufted mastic trees, I sang to the
+shepherds and the nymphs of the birth of the world, the origin of fire,
+of the tenuous air, of water and of earth. I told them how primeval men
+had lived wretched and naked in the woods, before the ingenious spirits
+had taught them the arts; of God, too, I sang to them, and why they gave
+Dionysus Semele to mother, because his desire to befriend mankind was
+born amid the thunder.
+
+"It was not without effort that this people, more pleasing than all the
+others in the eyes of the gods, these happy Greeks, achieved good
+government and a knowledge of the arts. Their first temple was a hut
+composed of laurel branches; their first image of the gods, a tree;
+their first altar, a rough stone stained with the blood of Iphigenia.
+But in a short time they brought wisdom and beauty to a point that no
+nation had attained before them, that no nation has since approached.
+Whence comes it, Arcade, this solitary marvel on the earth? Wherefore
+did the sacred soil of Ionia and of Attica bring forth this incomparable
+flower? Because nor priesthood, nor dogma, nor revelation ever found a
+place there, because the Greeks never knew the jealous God.
+
+"It was his own grace, his own genius that the Greek enthroned and
+deified as his God, and when he raised his eyes to the heavens it was
+his own image that he saw reflected there. He conceived everything in
+due measure; and to his temples he gave perfect proportion. All therein
+was grace, harmony, symmetry, and wisdom; all were worthy of the
+immortals who dwelt within them and who under names of happy choice, in
+realised shapes, figured forth the genius of man. The columns which bore
+the marble architrave, the frieze and the cornice were touched with
+something human, which made them venerable; and sometimes one might see,
+as at Athens and at Delphi, beautiful young girls strong-limbed and
+radiant upstaying the entablature of treasure house and sanctuary. O
+days of splendour, harmony, and wisdom!
+
+"Dionysus resolved to repair to Italy, whither he was summoned under the
+name of Bacchus by a people eager to celebrate his mysteries. I took
+passage in his ship decked with tendrils of the vine, and landed under
+the eyes of the two brothers of Helen at the mouth of the yellow Tiber.
+Already under the teaching of the god, the inhabitants of Latium had
+learned to wed the vine to the young stripling elm. It was my pleasure
+to dwell at the foot of the Sabine hills in a valley crowned with trees
+and watered with pure springs. I gathered the verbena and the mallow in
+the meadows. The pale olive-trees twisting their perforated trunks on
+the slope of the hill gave me of their unctuous fruit. There I taught a
+race of men with square heads, who had not, like the Greeks, a fertile
+mind, but whose hearts were true, whose souls were patient, and who
+reverenced the gods. My neighbour, a rustic soldier, who for fifteen
+years had bowed under the burden of his haversack, had followed the
+Roman eagle over land and sea, and had seen the enemies of the sovereign
+people flee before him. Now he drove his furrow with his two red oxen,
+starred with white between their spreading horns, while beneath the
+cabin's thatch his spouse, chaste and sedate of mien, pounded garlic in
+a bronze mortar and cooked the beans upon the sacred hearth, And I, his
+friend, seated near by under an oak, used to lighten his labours with
+the sound of my flute, and smile on his little children, when the sun,
+already low in the sky, was lengthening the shadows, and they returned
+from the wood all laden with branches. At the garden gate where the
+pears and pumpkins ripened, and where the lily and the evergreen
+acanthus bloomed, a figure of Priapus carved out of the trunk of a fig
+tree menaced thieves with his formidable emblem, and the reeds swaying
+with the wind over his head scared away the plundering birds. At new
+moon the pious husbandman made offering of a handful of salt and barley
+to his household gods crowned with myrtle and with rosemary.
+
+"I saw his children grow up, and his children's children, who kept in
+their hearts their early piety and did not forget to offer sacrifice to
+Bacchus, to Diana, and to Venus, nor omit to pour fresh wines and
+scatter flowers into the fountains. But slowly they fell away from their
+old habits of patient toil and simplicity.
+
+"I heard them complain when the torrent, swollen with many rains,
+compelled them to construct a dyke to protect the paternal fields, and
+the rough Sabine wine grew unpleasing to their delicate palate. They
+went to drink the wines of Greece at the neighbouring tavern; and the
+hours slipped unheeded by, while within the arbour shade they watched
+the dance of the flute player, practised at swaying her supple limbs to
+the sound of the castanets.
+
+"Lulled by murmuring leaves and whispering streams, the tillers of the
+soil took sweet repose, but between the poplars we saw along borders of
+the sacred way vast tombs, statues, and altars arise, and the rolling of
+the chariot wheels grew more frequent over the worn stones. A cherry
+sapling brought home by a veteran told us of the far-distant conquests
+of a Consul, and odes sung to the lyre related the victories of Rome,
+mistress of the world.
+
+"All the countries where the great Dionysus had journeyed, changing wild
+beasts into men, and making the fruit and grain bloom and ripen beneath
+the passing of his Maenads, now breathed the Pax Romana. The nursling of
+the she-wolf, soldier and labourer, friend of conquered nations, laid
+out roads from the margin of the misty sea to the rocky slopes of the
+Caucasus; in every town rose the temple of Augustus and of Rome, and
+such was the universal faith in Latin justice that in the gorges of
+Thessaly or on the wooded borders of the Rhine, the slave, ready to
+succumb under his iniquitous burden, called aloud on the name of Caesar.
+
+"But why must it be that on this ill-starred globe of land and water,
+all should perish and die and the fairest things be ever the most
+fleeting? O adorable daughters of Greece! O Science! O Wisdom! O
+Beauty! kindly divinities, you were wrapt in heavy slumber ere you
+submitted to the outrages of the barbarians, who already in the marshy
+wastes of the North and on the lonely steppes, ready to assail you,
+bestrode bare-backed their little shaggy horses.
+
+"While, dear Arcade, the patient legionary camped by the borders of the
+Phasis and the Tanais, the women and the priests of Asia and of
+monstrous Africa invaded the Eternal City and troubled the sons of Remus
+with their magic spells. Until now, Iahveh, the persecutor of the
+laborious demons, was unknown to the world that he pretended to have
+created, save to certain miserable Syrian tribes, ferocious like
+himself, and perpetually dragged from servitude to servitude. Profiting
+by the Roman peace which assured free travel and traffic everywhere, and
+favoured the exchange of ideas and merchandise, this old God insolently
+made ready to conquer the Universe. He was not the only one, for the
+matter of that, to attempt such an undertaking. At the same time a crowd
+of gods, demiurges, and demons, such as Mithra, Thammuz, the good Isis,
+and Eubulus, meditated taking possession of the peace-enfolded world. Of
+all the spirits, Iahveh appeared the least prepared for victory. His
+ignorance, his cruelty, his ostentation, his Asiatic luxury, his disdain
+of laws, his affectation of rendering himself invisible, all these
+things were calculated to offend those Greeks and Latins who had
+absorbed the teaching of Dionysus and the Muses. He himself felt he was
+incapable of winning the allegiance of free men and of cultivated minds,
+and he employed cunning. To seduce their souls he invented a fable
+which, although not so ingenious as the myths wherewith we have
+surrounded the spirits of our disciples of old, could, nevertheless,
+influence those feebler intellects which are to be found everywhere in
+great masses. He declared that men having committed a crime against him,
+an hereditary crime, should pay the penalty for it in their present life
+and in the life to come (for mortals vainly imagine that their existence
+is prolonged in hell); and the astute Iahveh gave out that he had sent
+his own son to earth to redeem with his blood the debt of mankind. It is
+not credible that a penalty should redress a fault, and it is still less
+credible that the innocent should pay for the guilty. The sufferings of
+the innocent atone for nothing, and do but add one evil to another.
+Nevertheless, unhappy creatures were found to adore Iahveh and his son,
+the expiator, and to announce their mysteries as good tidings. We should
+not be surprised at this folly. Have we not seen many times indeed human
+beings who, poor and naked, prostrate themselves before all the phantoms
+of fear, and rather than follow the teaching of well-disposed demons,
+obey the commandments of cruel demiurges? Iahveh, by his cunning, took
+souls as in a net. But he did not gain therefrom, for his glorification,
+all that he expected. It was not he, but his son, who received the
+homage of mankind, and who gave his name to the new cult. He himself
+remained almost unknown upon earth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONTINUED
+
+
+"The new superstition spread at first over Syria and Africa; it won over
+the seaports where the filthy rabble swarm, and, penetrating into Italy,
+infected at first the courtesans and the slaves, and then made rapid
+progress among the middle classes of the towns. But for a long while the
+country-side remained undisturbed. As in the past, the villagers
+consecrated a pine tree to Diana, and sprinkled it every year with the
+blood of a young boar; they propitiated their Lares with the sacrifice
+of a sow, and offered to Bacchus--benefactor of mankind--a kid of
+dazzling whiteness, or if they were too poor for this, at least they had
+a little wine and a little flour from the vineyard and from the fields
+for their household gods. We had taught them that it sufficed to
+approach the altar with clean hands, and that the gods rejoiced over a
+modest offering.
+
+"Nevertheless, the reign of Iahveh proclaimed its advent in a hundred
+places by its extravagances. The Christians burnt books, overthrew
+temples, set fire to the towns, and carried on their ravages as far as
+the deserts. There, thousands of unhappy beings, turning their fury
+against themselves, lacerated their sides with points of steel. And from
+the whole earth the sighs of voluntary victims rose up to God like songs
+of praise.
+
+"My shadowy retreat could not escape for long from the fury of their
+madness.
+
+"On the summit of the hill which overlooked the olive woods, brightened
+daily with the sounds of my flute, had stood since the earliest days of
+the Pax Romana, a small marble temple, round as the huts of our
+forefathers. It had no walls, but on a base of seven steps, sixteen
+columns rose in a circle with the acanthus on the capitals, bearing a
+cupola of white tiles. This cupola sheltered a statue of Love fashioning
+his bow, the work of an Athenian sculptor. The child seemed to breathe,
+joy was welling from his lips, all his limbs were harmonious and
+polished. I honoured this image of the most powerful of all the gods,
+and I taught the villagers to bear to him as an offering a cup crowned
+with verbena and filled with wine two summers old.
+
+"One day, when seated as my custom was at the feet of the god, pondering
+precepts and songs, an unknown man, wild-looking, with unkempt hair,
+approached the temple, sprang at one bound up the marble steps, and with
+savage glee exclaimed:
+
+"'Die, poisoner of souls, and joy and beauty perish with you.' He spoke
+thus, and drawing an axe from his girdle raised it against the god. I
+stayed his arm, I threw him down, and trampled him under my feet.
+
+"'Demon,' he cried desperately, 'suffer me to overturn this idol, and
+you may slay me afterwards.'
+
+"I heeded not his atrocious plea, but leaned with all my might on his
+chest, which cracked under my knee, and, squeezing his throat with my
+two hands, I strangled the impious one.
+
+"While he lay there, with purple face and lolling tongue, at the feet of
+the smiling god, I went to purify myself at the sacred stream. Then
+leaving this land, now the prey of the Christian, I passed through Gaul
+and gained the banks of the Saone, whither Dionysus had, in days gone
+by, carried the vine. The god of the Christians had not yet been
+proclaimed to this happy people. They worshipped for its beauty a leafy
+beech-tree, whose honoured branches swept the ground, and they hung
+fillets of wool thereon. They also worshipped a sacred stream and set up
+images of clay in a dripping grotto. They made offering of little
+cheeses and a bowl of milk to the Nymphs of the woods and mountains.
+
+"But soon an apostle of sorrow was sent to them by the new God. He was
+drier than a smoked fish. Although attenuated with fasting and watching,
+he taught with unabated ardour all manner of gloomy mysteries. He loved
+suffering, and thought it good; his anger fell upon all that was
+beautiful, comely, and joyous. The sacred tree fell beneath his hatchet.
+He hated the Nymphs, because they were beautiful, and he flung
+imprecations at them when their shining limbs gleamed among the leaves
+at evening, and he held my melodious flute in aversion. The poor wretch
+thought that there were certain forms of words wherewith to put to
+flight the deathless spirits that dwell in the cool groves, and in the
+depths of the woods and on the tops of the mountains. He thought to
+conquer us with a few drops of water over which he had pronounced
+certain words and made certain gestures. The Nymphs, to avenge
+themselves, appeared to him at nightfall and inflamed him with desire
+which the foolish knave thought animal; then they fled, their laughter
+scattered like grain over the fields, while their victim lay tossing
+with burning limbs on his couch of leaves. Thus do the divine nymphs
+laugh at exorcisers, and mock the wicked and their sordid chastity.
+
+"The apostle did not do as much harm as he wished, because his teaching
+was given to the simple souls living in obedience to Nature, and because
+the mediocrity of most of mankind is such that they gain but little from
+the principles inculcated in them. The little wood in which I dwelt
+belonged to a Gaul of senatorial family, who retained some traces of
+Latin elegance. He loved his young freed-woman and shared with her his
+bed of broidered purple. His slaves cultivated his garden and his
+vineyard; he was a poet and sang, in imitation of Ausonius, Venus
+whipping her son with roses. Although a Christian, he offered me milk,
+fruit, and vegetables as if I were the genius of the place. In return I
+charmed his idle moments with the music of my flute, and I gave him
+happy dreams. In fact, these peaceful Gauls knew very little of Iahveh
+and his son.
+
+"But now behold fires looming on the horizon, and ashes driven by the
+wind fall within our forest glades. Peasants come driving a long file of
+waggons along the roads or urging their flocks before them. Cries of
+terror rise from the villages, 'The Burgundians are upon us!'
+
+"Now one horseman is seen, lance in hand, clad in shining bronze, his
+long red hair falling in two plaits on his shoulders. Then come two,
+then twenty, then thousands, wild and blood-stained; old men and
+children they put to the sword, ay, even aged grandams whose grey hairs
+cleave to the soles of the slaughterer's boots, mingled with the brains
+of babes new-born. My young Gaul and his young freed-woman stain with
+their blood the couch broidered with narcissi. The barbarians burn the
+basilicas to roast their oxen whole, shatter the amphorae, and drain the
+wine in the mud of the flooded cellars. Their women accompany them,
+huddled, half naked, in their war chariots. When the Senate, the
+dwellers in the cities, and the leaders of the churches had perished in
+the flames, the Burgundians, soddened with wine, lay down to slumber
+beneath the arcades of the Forum. Two weeks later one of them might have
+been seen smiling in his shaggy beard at the little child whom, on the
+threshold of their dwelling, his fair-haired spouse gathers in her arms;
+while another, kindling the fire of his forge, hammers out his iron with
+measured stroke; another sings beneath the oak tree to his assembled
+comrades of the gods and heroes of his race; and yet others spread out
+for sale stones fallen from Heaven, aurochs' horns, and amulets. And the
+former inhabitants of the country, regaining courage little by little,
+crept from the woods where they had fled for refuge, and returned to
+rebuild their burnt-down cabins, plough their fields, and prune their
+vines.
+
+"Once more life resumed its normal course; but those times were the most
+wretched that mankind had yet experienced. The barbarians swarmed over
+the whole Empire. Their ways were uncouth, and as they nurtured feelings
+of vengeance and greed, they firmly believed in the ransom of sin.
+
+"The fable of Iahveh and his son pleased them, and they believed it all
+the more easily in that it was taught them by the Romans whom they knew
+to be wiser than themselves, and to whose arts and mode of life they
+yielded secret admiration. Alas! the heritage of Greece and Rome had
+fallen into the hands of fools. All knowledge was lost. In those days it
+was held to be a great merit to sing among the choir, and those who
+remembered a few sentences from the Bible passed for prodigious
+geniuses. There were still poets as there were birds, but their verse
+went lame in every foot. The ancient demons, the good genii of mankind,
+shorn of their honours, driven forth, pursued, hunted down, remained
+hidden in the woods. There, if they still showed themselves to men, they
+adopted, to hold them in awe, a terrible face, a red, green, or black
+skin, baleful eyes, an enormous mouth fringed with boars' teeth, horns,
+a tail, and sometimes a human face on their bellies. The nymphs remained
+fair, and the barbarians, ignorant of the winsome names they bore in
+other days, called them fairies, and, imputing to them a capricious
+character and puerile tastes, both feared and loved them.
+
+"We had suffered a grievous fall, and our ranks were sadly thinned;
+nevertheless we did not lose courage and, maintaining a laughing aspect
+and a benevolent spirit, we were in those direful days the real friends
+of mankind. Perceiving that the barbarians grew daily less sombre and
+less ferocious, we lent ourselves to the task of conversing with them
+under all sorts of disguises. We incited them, with a thousand
+precautions, and by prudent circumlocutions, not to acknowledge the old
+Iahveh as an infallible master, not blindly to obey his orders, and not
+to fear his menaces. When need was, we had recourse to magic. We
+exhorted them unceasingly to study nature and to strive to discover the
+traces of ancient wisdom.
+
+"These warriors from the North--rude though they were--were acquainted
+with some mechanical arts. They thought they saw combats in the heavens;
+the sound of the harp drew tears from their eyes; and perchance they had
+souls capable of greater things than the degenerate Gauls and Romans
+whose lands they had invaded. They knew not how to hew stone or to
+polish marble; but they caused porphyry and columns to be brought from
+Rome and from Ravenna; their chief men took for their seal a gem
+engraved by a Greek in the days when Beauty reigned supreme. They raised
+walls with bricks, cunningly arranged like ears of corn, and succeeded
+in building quite pleasing-looking churches with cornices upheld by
+consoles depicting grim faces, and heavy capitals whereon were
+represented monsters devouring one another.
+
+"We taught them letters and sciences. A mouthpiece of their god, one
+Gerbert, took lessons in physics, arithmetic, and music with us, and it
+was said that he had sold us his soul. Centuries passed, and man's ways
+remained violent. It was a world given up to fire and blood. The
+successors of the studious Gerbert, not content with the possession of
+souls (the profits one gains thereby are lighter than air), wished to
+possess bodies also. They pretended that their universal and
+prescriptive monarchy was held from a fisherman on the lake of Tiberias.
+One of them thought for a moment to prevail over the loutish Germanus,
+successor to Augustus. But finally the spiritual had to come to terms
+with the temporal, and the nations were torn between two opposing
+masters.
+
+"Nations took shape amid horrible tumult. On every side were wars,
+famines, and internecine conflicts. Since they attributed the
+innumerable ills that fell upon them to their God, they called him the
+Most Good, not by way of irony, but because to them the best was he who
+smote the hardest. In those days of violence, to give myself leisure for
+study I adopted a _role_ which may surprise you, but which was
+exceedingly wise.
+
+"Between the Saone and the mountains of Charolais, where the cattle
+pasture, there lies a wooded hill sloping gently down to fields watered
+by a clear stream. There stood a monastery celebrated throughout the
+Christian world. I hid my cloven feet under a robe and became a monk in
+this Abbey, where I lived peacefully, sheltered from the men at arms who
+to friend or foe alike showed themselves equally exacting. Man, who had
+relapsed into childhood, had all his lessons to learn over again.
+Brother Luke, whose cell was next to mine, studied the habits of animals
+and taught us that the weasel conceives her young within her ear. I
+culled simples in the fields wherewith to soothe the sick, who until
+then were made by way of treatment to touch the relics of saints. In the
+Abbey were several demons similar to myself whom I recognised by their
+cloven feet and by their kindly speech. We joined forces in our
+endeavours to polish the rough mind of the monks.
+
+"While the little children played at hop-scotch under the Abbey walls
+our friends the monks devoted themselves to another game equally
+unprofitable, at which, nevertheless, I joined them, for one must kill
+time,--that, when one comes to think of it, is the sole business of
+life. Our game was a game of words which pleased our coarse yet subtle
+minds, set school fulminating against school, and put all Christendom in
+an uproar. We formed ourselves into two opposing camps. One camp
+maintained that before there were apples there was the Apple; that
+before there were popinjays there was the Popinjay; that before there
+were lewd and greedy monks there was the Monk, Lewdness and Greed; that
+before there were feet and before there were posteriors in this world
+the kick in the posterior must have had existence for all eternity in
+the bosom of God. The other camp replied that, on the contrary, apples
+gave man the idea of the apple; popinjays the idea of the popinjay;
+monks the idea of the monk, greed and lewdness, and that the kick in the
+posterior existed only after having been duly given and received. The
+players grew heated and came to fisticuffs. I was an adherent of the
+second party, which satisfied my reason better, and which was, in fact,
+condemned by the Council of Soissons.
+
+"Meanwhile, not content with fighting among themselves, vassal against
+suzerain, suzerain against vassal, the great lords took it into their
+heads to go and fight in the East. They said, as well as I can remember,
+that they were going to deliver the tomb of the son of God.
+
+"They said so, but their adventurous and covetous spirit excited them to
+go forth and seek lands, women, slaves, gold, myrrh, and incense. These
+expeditions, need it be said, proved disastrous; but our thick-headed
+compatriots brought back with them the knowledge of certain crafts and
+oriental arts and a taste for luxury. Henceforth we had less difficulty
+in making them work and in putting them in the way of inventions. We
+built wonderfully beautiful churches, with daringly pierced arches,
+lancet-shaped windows, high towers, thousands of pointed spires, which,
+rising in the sky towards Iahveh, bore at one and the same time the
+prayers of the humble and the threats of the proud, for it was all as
+much our doing as the work of men's hands; and it was a strange sight to
+see men and demons working together at a cathedral, each one sawing,
+polishing, collecting stones, graving, on capital and on cornice,
+nettles, thorns, thistles, wild parsley, and wild strawberry,--carving
+faces of virgins and saints and weird figures of serpents, fishes with
+asses' heads, apes scratching their buttocks; each one, in fact, putting
+his own particular talent,--mocking, sublime, grotesque, modest, or
+audacious,--into the work and making of it all a harmonious cacophony, a
+rapturous anthem of joy and sorrow, a Babel of victory. At our
+instigation the carvers, the gold-smiths, the enamellers, accomplished
+marvels and all the sumptuary arts flourished at once; there were silks
+at Lyons, tapestries at Arras, linen at Rheims, cloth at Rouen. The good
+merchants rode on their palfreys to the fairs, bearing pieces of velvet
+and brocade, embroideries, orfrays, jewels, vessels of silver, and
+illuminated books. Strollers and players set up their trestles in the
+churches and in the public squares, and represented, according to their
+lights, simple chronicles of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Women decked
+themselves in splendid raiment and lisped of love.
+
+"In the spring when the sky was blue, nobles and peasants were possessed
+with the desire to make merry in the flower-strewn meadows. The fiddler
+tuned his instrument, and ladies, knights and demoiselles, townsfolk,
+villagers and maidens, holding hands, began the dance. But suddenly War,
+Pestilence, and Famine entered the circle, and Death, tearing the violin
+from the fiddler's hands, led the dance. Fire devoured village and
+monastery. The men-at-arms hanged the peasants on the sign-posts at the
+cross-roads when they were unable to pay ransom, and bound pregnant
+women to tree-trunks, where at night the wolves came and devoured the
+fruit within the womb. The poor people lost their senses. Sometimes,
+peace being re-established, and good times come again, they were seized
+with mad, unreasoning terror, abandoned their homes, and rushed hither
+and thither in troops, half naked, tearing themselves with iron hooks,
+and singing. I do not accuse Iahveh and his son of all this evil. Many
+ill things occurred without him and even in spite of him. But where I
+recognise the instigation of the All Good (as they called him) was in
+the custom instituted by his pastors, and established throughout
+Christendom, of burning, to the sound of bells and the singing of
+psalms, both men and women who, taught by the demons, professed,
+concerning this God, opinions of their own."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+     THE GARDENER'S STORY, CONCLUDED
+
+
+"It seemed as if science and thought had perished for all eternity, and
+that the earth would never again know peace, joy, and beauty.
+
+"But one day, under the walls of Rome, some workmen, excavating the
+earth on the borders of an ancient road, found a marble sarcophagus
+which bore carved on its sides simulacra of Love and the triumphs of
+Bacchus.
+
+"The lid being raised, a maiden appeared whose face shone with dazzling
+freshness. Her long hair spread over her white shoulders, she was
+smiling in her sleep. A band of citizens, thrilled with enthusiasm,
+raised the funeral couch and bore it to the Capitol. The people came in
+crowds to contemplate the ineffable beauty of the Roman maiden and stood
+around in silence, watching for the awakening of the divine soul held
+within this form of adorable beauty.
+
+"And it came to pass that the City was so greatly stirred by this
+spectacle that the Pope, fearing, not without reason, the birth of a
+pagan cult from this radiant body, caused it to be removed at night and
+secretly buried. The precaution was vain, the labour fruitless. After so
+many centuries of barbarism, the beauty of the antique world had
+appeared for a moment before the eyes of men; it was long enough for its
+image, graven on their hearts, to inspire them with an ardent desire to
+love and to know.
+
+"Henceforth, the star of the God of the Christians paled and sloped to
+its decline. Bold navigators discovered worlds inhabited by numerous
+races who knew not old Iahveh, and it was suspected that he was no less
+ignorant of them, since he had given them no news of himself or of his
+son the expiator. A Polish Canon demonstrated the true motions of the
+earth, and it was seen that, far from having created the world, the old
+demiurge of Israel had not even an inkling of its structure. The
+writings of philosophers, orators, jurisconsults, and ancient poets were
+dragged from the dust of the cloisters and passing from hand to hand
+inspired men's minds with the love of wisdom. The Vicar of the jealous
+God, the Pope himself, no longer believed in Him whom he represented on
+earth. He loved the arts and had no other care than to collect ancient
+statues and to rear sumptuous buildings wherein were displayed the
+orders of Vitruvius re-established by Bramante. We began to breathe
+anew. Already the old gods, recalled from their long exile, were
+returning to dwell upon earth. There they found once more their temples
+and their altars. Leo, placing at their feet the ring, the three crowns,
+and the keys, offered them in secret the incense of sacrifices. Already
+Polyhymnia, leaning on her elbow, had begun to resume the golden thread
+of her meditations; already, in the gardens, the comely Graces and the
+Nymphs and Satyrs were weaving their mazy dances, and at length the
+earth had joy once more within its grasp. But, O calamity, unlucky
+fate,--most tragic circumstance! A German monk, all swollen with beer
+and theology, rose up against this renaissance of paganism, hurled
+menaces against it, shattered it, and prevailed single handed against
+the Princes of the Church. Inciting the nations, he called upon them to
+undertake a reform which saved that which was about to be destroyed.
+Vainly did the cleverest among us try to turn him from his work. A
+subtle demon, on earth called Beelzebub, marked him out for attack, now
+embarrassing him with learned controversial argument, now tormenting him
+with cruel mockery. The stubborn monk hurled his ink-pot at his head and
+went on with his dismal reformation. What ultimately happened? The
+sturdy mariner repaired, calked, and refloated the damaged ship of the
+Church. Jesus Christ owes it to this shaveling that his shipwreck was
+delayed for perhaps more than ten centuries. Henceforth things went from
+bad to worse. In the wake of this loutish monk, this beer-swiller and
+brawler, came that tall, dry doctor from Geneva, who, filled with the
+spirit of the ancient Iahveh, strove to bring the world back again to
+the abominable days of Joshua and the Judges of Israel. A maniac was he,
+filled with cold fury, a heretic and a burner of heretics, the most
+ferocious enemy of the Graces.
+
+"These mad apostles and their mad disciples made even demons like
+myself, even the horned devils, look back longingly on the time when the
+Son with his Virgin Mother reigned over the nations dazzled with
+splendours: cathedrals with their stone tracery delicate as lace,
+flaming roses of stained glass, frescoes painted in vivid colours
+telling countless wondrous tales, rich orfrays, glittering enamel of
+shrines and reliquaries, gold of crosses and of monstrances, waxen
+tapers gleaming like starry galaxies amid the gloom of vaulted arches,
+organs with their deep-toned harmonies. All this doubtless was not the
+Parthenon, nor yet the Panathenaea, but it gladdened eyes and hearts; it
+was, at all events, beauty. And these cursed reformers would not suffer
+anything either pleasing or lovable. You should have seen them climbing
+in black swarms over doorways, plinths, spires, and bell-towers,
+striking with senseless hammers those images in stone which the demons
+had carved working hand in hand with the master designers, those genial
+saints and dear, holy women, and the touching idols of Virgin Mothers
+pressing their suckling to their heart. For, to be just, a little
+agreeable paganism had slipped into the cult of the jealous God. These
+monsters of heretics were for extirpating idolatry. We did our best, my
+companions and I, to hamper their horrible work, and I, for one, had the
+pleasure of flinging down some dozens from the top of the porches and
+galleries on to the Cathedral Square, where their detestable brains got
+knocked out. The worst of it was that the Catholic Church also reformed
+herself and grew more mischievous than ever. In the pleasant land of
+France, the seminarists and the monks were inflamed with unheard-of fury
+against the ingenious demons and the men of learning. My prior was one
+of the most violent opponents of sound knowledge. For some time past my
+studious lucubrations had caused him anxiety, and perhaps he had caught
+sight of my cloven foot. The scoundrel searched my cell and found paper,
+ink, some Greek books newly printed, and some Pan-pipes hanging on the
+wall. By these signs he knew me for an evil spirit and had me thrown
+into a dungeon where I should have eaten the bread of suffering and
+drunk the waters of bitterness, had I not promptly made my escape by the
+window and sought refuge in the wooded groves among the Nymphs and the
+Fauns.
+
+"Far and wide the lighted pyres cast the odour of charred flesh.
+Everywhere there were tortures, executions, broken bones, and tongues
+cut out. Never before had the spirit of Iahveh breathed forth such
+atrocious fury. However, it was not altogether in vain that men had
+raised the lid of the ancient sarcophagus and gazed upon the Roman
+Virgin.
+
+"During this time of great terror when Papists and Reformers rivalled
+one another in violence and cruelty, amidst all these scenes of torture,
+the mind of man was regaining strength and courage. It dared to look up
+to the heavens, and there it saw, not the old Jew drunk with vengeance,
+but Venus Urania, tranquil and resplendent. Then a new order of things
+was born, then the great centuries came into being. Without publicly
+denying the god of their ancestors, men of intellect submitted to his
+mortal enemies, Science and Reason, and Abbe Gassendi relegated him
+gently to the far-distant abyss of first causes. The kindly demons who
+teach and console unhappy mortals, inspired the great minds of those
+days with discourses of all kinds, with comedies and tales told in the
+most polished fashion. Women invented conversation, the art of intimate
+letter-writing, and politeness. Manners took on a sweetness and a
+nobility unknown to preceding ages. One of the finest minds of that age
+of reason, the amiable Bernier, wrote one day to St. Evremond: 'It is a
+great sin to deprive oneself of a pleasure.' And this pronouncement
+alone should suffice to show the progress of intelligence in Europe. Not
+that there had not always been Epicureans but, unlike Bernier, Chapelle,
+and Moliere, they had not the consciousness of their talent.
+
+"Then even the very devotees understood Nature. And Racine, fierce bigot
+that he was, knew as well as such an atheistical physician as Guy Patin,
+how to attribute to divers states of the organs the passions which
+agitate mankind.
+
+"Even in my abbey, whither I had returned after the turmoil, and which
+sheltered only the ignorant and the shallow thinker, a young monk, less
+of a dunce than the rest, confided to me that the Holy Spirit expresses
+itself in bad Greek to humiliate the learned.
+
+"Nevertheless, theology and controversy were still raging in this
+society of thinkers. Not far from Paris in a shady valley there were to
+be seen solitary beings known as 'les Messieurs,' who called themselves
+disciples of St. Augustine, and argued with honest conviction that the
+God of the Scriptures strikes those who fear Him, spares those who
+confront Him, holds works of no account, and damns--should He so wish
+it--His most faithful servant; for His justice is not our justice, and
+His ways are incomprehensible.
+
+"One evening I met one of these gentlemen in his garden, where he was
+pacing thoughtfully among the cabbage-plots and lettuce-beds. I bowed
+my horned head before him and murmured these friendly words: 'May old
+Jehovah protect you, sir. You know him well. Oh, how well you know him,
+and how perfectly you have understood his character.' The holy man
+thought he discerned in me a messenger from Hell, concluded he was
+eternally damned, and died suddenly of fright.
+
+"The following century was the century of philosophy. The spirit of
+research was developed, reverence was lost; the pride of the flesh was
+diminished and the mind acquired fresh energy. Manners took on an
+elegance until then unknown. On the other hand, the monks of my order
+grew more and more ignorant and dirty, and the monastery no longer
+offered me any advantage now that good manners reigned in the town. I
+could bear it no longer. Flinging my habit to the nettles, I put a
+powdered wig on my horned brow, hid my goat's legs under white
+stockings, and cane in hand, my pockets stuffed with gazettes, I
+frequented the fashionable world, visited the modish promenades, and
+showed myself assiduously in the _cafes_ where men of letters were to be
+found. I was made welcome in _salons_ where, as a happy novelty, there
+were arm-chairs that fitted the form, and where both men and women
+engaged in rational conversation.
+
+"The very metaphysicians spoke intelligibly. I acquired great weight in
+the town as an authority on matters of exegesis, and, without boasting,
+I was largely responsible for the Testament of the cure Meslier and _The
+Bible Explained_, brought out by the chaplains to the King of Prussia.
+
+"At this time a comic and cruel misadventure befel the ancient Iahveh.
+An American Quaker, by means of a kite, stole his thunderbolts.
+
+"I was living in Paris, and was at the supper where they talked of
+strangling the last of the priests with the entrails of the last of the
+kings. France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution broke out. The
+ephemeral leaders of the disordered State carried on a Reign of Terror
+amidst unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part, less pitiless
+and less cruel than the princes and judges instituted by Iahveh in the
+kingdoms of the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious,
+because they gave judgment in the name of Humanity. Unhappily they were
+easily moved to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of sensibility
+are irritable and subject to fits of fury. They were virtuous; they had
+moral laws, that is to say they conceived certain narrowly defined moral
+obligations, and judged human actions not by their natural consequences
+but by abstract principles. Of all the vices which contribute to the
+undoing of a statesman, virtue is the most fatal; it leads to murder. To
+work effectively for the happiness of mankind, a man must be superior to
+all morals, like the divine Julius. God, so ill-used for some time
+past, did not, on the whole, suffer excessively harsh treatment from
+these new men. He found protectors among them, and was adored under the
+name of the Supreme Being. One might even go so far as to say that
+terror created a diversion from philosophy and was profitable to the old
+demiurge, in that he appeared to represent order, public tranquillity,
+and the security of person and property.
+
+"While Liberty was coming to birth amid the storm, I lived at Auteuil,
+and visited Madame Helvetius, where freethinkers in every branch of
+intellectual activity were to be met with. Nothing could be rarer than a
+freethinker, even after Voltaire's day. A man who will face death
+without trembling dare not say anything out of the ordinary about
+morals. That very same respect for Humanity which prompts him to go
+forth to his death, makes him bow to public opinion. In those days I
+enjoyed listening to the talk of Volney, Cabanis, and Tracy. Disciples
+of the great Condillac, they regarded the senses as the origin of all
+our knowledge. They called themselves ideologists, were the most
+honourable people in the world, and grieved the vulgar minds by refusing
+them immortality. For the majority of people, though they do not know
+what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
+During the turmoil, our small philosophical society was sometimes
+disturbed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil by patrols of patriots.
+Condorcet, our great man, was an outlaw. I myself was regarded as
+suspect by the friends of the people, who, in spite of my rustic
+appearance and my frieze coat, believed me to be an aristocrat, and I
+confess that independence of thought is the proudest of all
+aristocracies.
+
+"One evening while I was stealthily watching the dryads of Boulogne, who
+gleamed amid the leaves like the moon rising above the horizon, I was
+arrested as a suspect, and put in prison. It was a pure
+misunderstanding; but the Jacobins of those days, like the monks whose
+place they had usurped, laid great stress on unity of obedience. After
+the death of Madame Helvetius our society gathered together in the
+_salon_ of Madame de Condorcet. Bonaparte did not disdain to chat with
+us sometimes.
+
+"Recognizing him to be a great man, we thought him an ideologist like
+ourselves. Our influence in the land was considerable. We used it in his
+favour, and urged him towards the Imperial throne, thinking to display
+to the world a second Marcus Aurelius. We counted on him to establish
+universal peace; he did not fulfil our expectations, and we were
+wrong-headed enough to be wroth with him for our own mistake.
+
+"Without any doubt he greatly surpassed all other men in quickness of
+intelligence, depth of dissimulation, and capacity for action. What
+made him an accomplished ruler was that he lived entirely in the present
+moment, and had no thoughts for anything beyond the immediate and actual
+reality. His genius was far-reaching and agile; his intelligence, vast
+in extent but common and vulgar in character, embraced humanity, but did
+not rise above it. He thought what every grenadier in the army thought;
+but he thought it with unprecedented force. He loved the game of chance,
+and it pleased him to tempt fortune by urging pigmies in their hundreds
+and thousands against each other. It was the game of a child as big as
+the world. He was too wily not to introduce old Iahveh into the
+game,--Iahveh, who was still powerful on earth, and who resembled him in
+his spirit of violence and domination. He threatened him, flattered him,
+caressed him, and intimidated him. He imprisoned his Vicar, of whom he
+demanded, with the knife at his throat, that rite of unction which,
+since the days of Saul of old, has bestowed might upon kings; he
+restored the worship of the demiurge, sang _Te Deums_ to him, and made
+himself known through him as God of the earth, in small catechisms
+scattered broadcast throughout the Empire. They united their thunders,
+and a fine uproar they made.
+
+"While Napoleon's amusements were throwing Europe into a turmoil, we
+congratulated ourselves on our wisdom, a little sad, withal, at seeing
+the era of philosophy ushered in with massacre, torture, and war. The
+worst is that the children of the century, fallen into the most
+distressing disorder, formed the conception of a literary and
+picturesque Christianity, which betokens a degeneracy of mind really
+unbelievable, and finally fell into Romanticism. War and Romanticism,
+what terrible scourges! And how pitiful to see these same people nursing
+a childish and savage love for muskets and drums! They did not
+understand that war, which trained the courage and founded the cities of
+barbarous and ignorant men, brings to the victor himself but ruin and
+misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are
+united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade.
+
+"Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others' throats, now that one and
+the same civilisation enfolds and unites them all!
+
+"I renounced all converse with these madmen and withdrew to this
+village, where I devoted myself to gardening. The peaches in my orchard
+remind me of the sun-kissed skin of the Maenads. For mankind I have
+retained my old friendship, a little admiration, and much pity, and I
+await, while cultivating this enclosure, that still distant day when the
+great Dionysus shall come, followed by his Fauns and his Bacchantes, to
+restore beauty and gladness to the world, and bring back the Golden Age.
+I shall fare joyously behind his car. And who knows if in that day of
+triumph mankind will be there for us to see? Who knows whether their
+worn-out race will not have already fulfilled its destiny, and whether
+other beings will not rise upon the ashes and ruins of what once was man
+and his genius? Who knows if winged beings will not have taken
+possession of the terrestrial empire? Even then the work of the good
+demons will not be ended,--they will teach a winged race arts and the
+joy of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE SHOWN THE INTERIOR OF A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP, AND
+     SEE HOW PERE GUINARDON'S GUILTY HAPPINESS IS MARRED BY THE
+     JEALOUSY OF A LOVE-LORN DAME
+
+
+Pere Guinardon (as Zephyrine had faithfully reported to Monsieur
+Sariette) smuggled out the pictures, furniture, and curios stored in his
+attic in the rue Princesse--his studio he called it--and used them to
+stock a shop he had taken in the rue de Courcelles. Thither he went to
+take up his abode, leaving Zephyrine, with whom he had lived for fifty
+years, without a bed or a saucepan or a penny to call her own, except
+eighteenpence the poor creature had in her purse. Pere Guinardon opened
+an old picture and curiosity shop, and in it he installed the fair
+Octavie.
+
+The shop-front presented an attractive appearance: there were Flemish
+angels in green copes, after the manner of Gerard David, a Salome of the
+Luini school, a Saint Barbara in painted wood of French workmanship,
+Limoges enamel-work, Bohemian and Venetian glass, dishes from Urbino.
+There were specimens of English point-lace which, if her tale was true,
+had been presented to Zephyrine, in the days of her radiant girlhood, by
+the Emperor Napoleon III. Within, there were golden articles that
+glinted in the shadows, while pictures of Christ, the Apostles,
+high-bred dames, and nymphs also presented themselves to the gaze. There
+was one canvas that was turned face to the wall so that it should only
+be looked at by connoisseurs; and connoisseurs are scarce. It was a
+replica of Fragonard's _Gimblette_, a brilliant painting that looked as
+if it had barely had time to dry. Papa Guinardon himself remarked on the
+fact. At the far end of the shop was a king-wood cabinet, the drawers of
+which were full of all manner of treasures: water-colours by Baudouin,
+eighteenth-century books of illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.
+
+But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem, the pearl of great price,
+stood upon an easel veiled from public view. It was a _Coronation of the
+Virgin_ by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in gold and blue
+and pink. Pere Guinardon was asking a hundred thousand francs for it.
+Upon a Louis XV chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood a vase
+of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in hand. She, having left her
+glistering rags behind her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer
+presented the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt, but shone, rather,
+with the soft radiance and limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the
+delectation of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of Papa
+Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained alone in the shop all day,
+while the old fellow himself was up aloft working away at the deuce
+knows what picture. About five o'clock he used to come downstairs and
+have a chat with the habitues of the establishment.
+
+The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons, a thin, cadaverous
+man. A strand of hair issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
+and, broadening as it descended, shed upon his chin and chest torrents
+of snow in which he was for ever trailing his long, fleshless,
+gold-ringed fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning the loss of
+his wife, who had been carried off by consumption in the flower of her
+youth and beauty. Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
+to hold converse with the dead and in filling his lonely mansion with
+second-rate paintings. His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
+Another client who was a scarcely less frequent visitor to the shop was
+Monsieur Blancmesnil, a director of a large financial establishment. He
+was a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took no great interest
+in matters of art, and was perhaps an indifferent connoisseur, but, in
+his case, it was the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
+like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.
+
+Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations with her, a fact which
+Pere Guinardon alone failed to perceive, for the old fellow was still
+young in his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Gaetan d'Esparvieu used
+to pay occasional visits to Pere Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity,
+for he strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate "faker."
+
+And then that doughty swordsman, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec, also came
+to see the old antiquary on one occasion, and acquainted him with a plan
+he had on foot. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was getting up a little
+historical exhibition of small arms at the Petit Palais in aid of the
+fund for the education of the native children in Morocco and wanted Pere
+Guinardon to lend him a few of the most valuable articles in his
+collection.
+
+"Our first idea," he said, "was to organise an exhibition to be called
+'The Cross and the Sword.' The juxtaposition of the two words will make
+the idea which has prompted our undertaking sufficiently clear to you.
+It was an idea pre-eminently patriotic and Christian which led us to
+associate the Sword, which is the symbol of Honour, with the Cross,
+which is the symbol of Salvation. It was hoped that our work would be
+graced by the distinguished patronage of the Minister of War and
+Monseigneur Cachepot. Unfortunately there were difficulties in the way,
+and the full realisation of the project had to be deferred. In the
+meantime we are limiting our exhibition to 'The Sword.' I have drawn up
+an explanatory note indicating the significance of the demonstration."
+
+Having delivered himself of these remarks, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec
+produced a pocket-case stuffed full of papers. Picking out from a medley
+of judgment summonses and other odds and ends a little piece of very
+crumpled paper, he exclaimed, "Ah, here it is," and proceeded to read as
+follows: "'The Sword is a fierce Virgin; it is _par excellence_ the
+Frenchman's weapon. And now, when patriotic sentiment, after suffering
+an all too protracted eclipse, is beginning to shine forth again more
+ardently than ever ...' and so forth; you see?"
+
+And he repeated his request for some really fine specimen to be placed
+in the most conspicuous position in the exhibition to be held on behalf
+of the little native children of Morocco, of which General d'Esparvieu
+was to be honorary President.
+
+Arms and armour were by no means Pere Guinardon's strong point. He dealt
+principally in pictures, drawings, and books. But he was never to be
+taken unawares. He took down a rapier with a gilt colander-shaped hilt,
+a highly typical piece of workmanship of the Louis XIII-Napoleon III
+period, and presented it to the exhibition promoter, who, while
+contemplating it with respect, maintained a diplomatic silence.
+
+"I have something better still in here," said the antiquary, and he
+produced from his inner shop--where it had been lying among the
+walking-sticks and umbrellas--a real demon of a sword, adorned with
+fleurs-de-lys, a genuine royal relic. It was the sword of
+Philippe-Auguste as worn by an actor at the _Odeon_ when _Agnes de
+Meranie_ was being performed in 1846. Guinardon held it point downwards,
+as though it were a cross, clasping his hands piously on the cross-bar.
+He looked as loyal as the sword itself.
+
+"Have her for your exhibition," said he. "The damsel is well worth it.
+Bouvines is her name."
+
+"If I find a buyer for it," said Monsieur Le True de Ruffec, twirling
+his enormous moustachios, "I suppose you will allow me a little
+commission?"
+
+Some days later, Pere Guinardon was mysteriously displaying a picture to
+the Comte Desmaisons and Monsieur Blancmesnil. It was a newly discovered
+work of El Greco, an amazingly fine example of the Master's later style.
+It represented a Saint Francis of Assisi standing erect upon Mont
+Alverno. He was mounting heavenward like a column of smoke, and was
+plunging into the regions of the clouds a monstrously narrow head that
+the distance rendered smaller still. In fine it was a real, very real,
+nay, too real El Greco. The two collectors were attentively
+scrutinizing the work, while Pere Guinardon was belauding the depth of
+the shadows and the sublimity of the expression. He was raising his arms
+aloft to convey an idea of the greatness of Theotocopuli, who derived
+from Tintoretto, whom, however, he surpassed in loftiness by a hundred
+cubits.
+
+"He was chaste and pure and strong; a mystic, a visionary."
+
+Comte Desmaisons declared that El Greco was his favourite painter. In
+his inmost heart Blancmesnil was not so entirely struck with it.
+
+The door opened, and Monsieur Gaetan quite unexpectedly appeared on the
+scene.
+
+He gave a glance at the Saint Francis, and said:
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+Monsieur Blancmesnil, anxious to improve his knowledge, asked him what
+he thought of this artist who was now so much in vogue. Gaetan replied,
+glibly enough, that he did not regard El Greco as the eccentric, the
+madman that people used to take him for. It was rather his opinion that
+a defect of vision from which Theotocopuli suffered compelled him to
+deform his figures.
+
+"Being afflicted with astigmatism and strabismus," Gaetan went on, "he
+painted the things he saw exactly as he used to see them."
+
+Comte Desmaisons was not readily disposed to accept so natural an
+explanation, which, however, by its very simplicity, highly commended
+itself to Monsieur Blancmesnil.
+
+Pere Guinardon, quite beside himself, exclaimed:
+
+"Are you going to tell me, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, that Saint John was
+astigmatic because he beheld a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with
+stars, with the moon about her feet; the Beast with seven heads and ten
+horns, and the seven angels robed in white linen that bore the seven
+cups filled with the wrath of the Living God?"
+
+"After all," said Monsieur Gaetan, by way of conclusion, "people are
+right in admiring El Greco if he had genius enough to impose his
+morbidity of vision upon them. By the same token, the contortions to
+which he subjects the human countenance may give satisfaction to those
+who love suffering,--a class more numerous than is generally supposed."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the Comte Desmaisons, stroking his luxuriant beard
+with his long, thin hand, "we must love those that love us. Suffering
+loves us and attaches itself to us. We must love it if life is to be
+supportable to us. In the knowledge of this truth lies the strength and
+value of Christianity. Alas! I do not possess the gift of Faith. It is
+that which drives me to despair."
+
+The old man thought of her for whom he had been mourning twenty years,
+and forthwith his reason left him, and his thoughts abandoned
+themselves unresistingly to the morbid imaginings of gentle and
+melancholy madness.
+
+Having, he said, made a study of psychic matters, and having, with the
+co-operation of a favourable medium, carried out experiments concerning
+the nature and duration of the soul, he had obtained some remarkable
+results, which, however, did not afford him complete satisfaction. He
+had succeeded in viewing the soul of his dead wife under the appearance
+of a transparent and gelatinous mass which bore not the slightest
+resemblance to his adored one. The most painful part about the whole
+experiment--which he had repeated over and over again--was that the
+gelatinous mass, which was furnished with a number of extremely slender
+tentacles, maintained them in constant motion in time to a rhythm
+apparently intended to make certain signs, but of what these movements
+were supposed to convey there was not the slightest clue.
+
+During the whole of this narrative Monsieur Blancmesnil had been
+whispering in a corner with the youthful Octavie, who sat mute and
+still, with her eyes on the ground.
+
+Now Zephyrine had by no means made up her mind to resign her lover into
+the hands of an unworthy rival. She would often go round of a morning,
+with her shopping-basket on her arm, and prowl about outside the curio
+shop. Torn betwixt grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
+sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful of vitriol on the head
+of the faithless one; at others that she would fling herself at his
+feet, and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands. One day, as she
+was thus eyeing her Michel--her beloved but guilty Michel--she noticed
+through the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who was sitting with
+her embroidery at a table upon which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was
+swooning to death. Zephyrine, in a transport of fury, brought down her
+umbrella on her rival's fair head, and called her a bitch and a trollop.
+Octavie fled in terror, and ran for the police, while Zephyrine, beside
+herself with grief and love, kept digging away with her old gamp at the
+_Gimblette_ of Fragonard, the fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the
+virgins, the nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt off the Fra
+Angelico, shrieking all the while:
+
+"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the Beato Angelico, the
+Fragonard, the Gerard David, and the Baudouins--Guinardon painted the
+whole lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That Fra Angelico
+there, why I saw him painting it on my ironing-board, and that Gerard
+David he executed on an old midwife's sign-board. You and that bitch of
+yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you just as I'm doing for these
+pictures."
+
+And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector who, trembling all
+over, had hidden himself in the darkest corner of the shop, she called
+him to witness to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor. The
+police had simply to tear her out of the ruined shop. As she was being
+taken off to the station, followed by a great crowd of people, she
+raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice choked with sobs:
+
+"But don't you know Michel? If you knew him, you would understand that
+it is impossible to live without him. Michel! He is handsome and good
+and charming. He is a very god. He is Love itself. I love him! I love
+him! I love him! I have known men high up in the world--Dukes, Ministers
+of State, and higher still. Not one of them was worthy to clean the mud
+off Michel's boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE PERMITTED TO OBSERVE THE ADMIRABLE CHARACTER
+     OF BOUCHOTTE, WHO RESISTS VIOLENCE BUT YIELDS TO LOVE. AFTER
+     THAT LET NO ONE CALL THE AUTHOR A MISOGYNIST
+
+
+On coming away from the Baron Everdingen's, Prince Istar went to have a
+few oysters and a bottle of white wine at an eating-house in the Market.
+Then, being prudent as well as powerful, he paid a visit to his friend,
+Theophile Belais, for his pockets were full of bombs, and he wanted to
+secrete them in the musician's cupboard. The composer of _Aline, Queen
+of Golconda_ was not at home. However, the Kerub found Bouchotte busily
+working up the role of Zigouille; for the young artiste was booked to
+play the principal part in _Les Apaches_, an operetta that was then
+being rehearsed in one of the big music halls. The part in question was
+that of a street-walker who by her obscene gestures lures a passer-by
+into a trap, and then, while her victim is being gagged and bound,
+repeats with fiendish cruelty the lascivious motions by which he had
+been led astray. The part required that she should appear both as mime
+and singer, and she was in a state of high enthusiasm about it.
+
+The accompanist had just left. Prince Istar seated himself at the piano,
+and Bouchotte resumed her task. Her movements were unseemly and
+delicious. Her tawny hair was flying in all directions in wild
+disordered curls; her skin was moist, it exhaled a scent of violets and
+alkaline salts which made the nostrils throb; even she herself felt the
+intoxication. Suddenly, inebriated with her intoxicating presence,
+Prince Istar arose, and with never a word or a look, caught her into his
+arms and drew her on to the couch, the little couch with the flowered
+tapestry which Theophile had procured at one of the big shops by
+promising to pay ten francs a month for a long term of years. Now Istar
+might have solicited Bouchotte's favours; he might have invited her to a
+rapid, and, withal, a mutual embrace, and, despite her preoccupation and
+excitement, she would not have refused him. But Bouchotte was a girl of
+spirit. The merest hint of coercion awoke all her untamable pride. She
+would consent of her own accord, yes; but be mastered, never! She would
+readily yield to love, curiosity, pity, to less than that even, but she
+would die rather than yield to force. Her surprise immediately gave
+place to fury. She fought her aggressor with all her heart and soul.
+
+With nails, to which fury lent an added edge, she tore at the cheeks and
+eyelids of the Kerub, and, though he held her as in a vice, she arched
+herself so stiffly and made such excellent play with knee and elbow,
+that the human-headed bull, blinded with blood and rage, was sent
+crashing into the piano which gave forth a prolonged groan, while the
+bombs, tumbling out of his pockets, fell on the floor with a noise like
+thunder. And Bouchotte, with dishevelled locks, and one breast bare,
+beautiful and terrible, stood brandishing the poker over the prostrate
+giant, crying:
+
+"Be off with you, or I'll put your eyes out!"
+
+Prince Istar went to wash himself in the kitchen, and plunged his gory
+visage into a basin where some haricot beans lay soaking; then he
+withdrew without anger or resentment, for he had a noble soul.
+
+Scarcely had he gone when the door-bell rang. Bouchotte, calling upon
+the absent maid in vain, slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door
+herself. A young man, very correct in appearance and rather
+good-looking, bowed politely, and apologising for having to introduce
+himself, gave his name. It was Maurice d'Esparvieu.
+
+Maurice was still seeking his guardian angel. Upheld by a desperate
+hope, he sought him in the queerest places. He enquired for him at the
+houses of sorcerers, magicians, and thaumaturgists, who in filthy hovels
+lay bare the ineffable secrets of the future, and who, though masters
+of all the treasures of the earth, wear trousers without any seats to
+them, and eat pigs' brains. That very day, having been to a back street
+in Montmartre to consult a priest of Satan, who practised black magic by
+piercing waxen images, Maurice had gone on to Bouchotte's, having been
+sent by Madame de la Verdeliere, who, being about to give a fete in aid
+of the fund for the Preservation of Country Churches, was anxious to
+secure Bouchotte's services, since she had suddenly become--no one knew
+why--a fashionable artiste.
+
+Bouchotte invited the visitor to sit down on the little flowered couch;
+at his request she seated herself beside him, and our young man of
+fashion explained to the singer what Madame de la Verdeliere desired of
+her. The lady wished Bouchotte to sing one of those _apache_ songs which
+were giving such delight in the fashionable world. Unfortunately Madame
+de la Verdeliere could only offer a very modest fee, one out of all
+proportion to the merits of the artiste, but then it was for a good
+cause.
+
+Bouchotte agreed to take part, and accepted the reduced fee with the
+accustomed liberality of the poor towards the rich and of artists
+towards society people. Bouchotte was not a selfish girl; the work for
+the preservation of country churches interested her. She remembered with
+sobs and tears her first communion, and she still retained her faith.
+When she passed by a church she wanted to enter it, especially in the
+evening. And so she did not love the Republic which had done its utmost
+to destroy both the Church and the Army. Her heart rejoiced to see the
+re-birth of national sentiment. France was lifting up her head. What was
+most applauded in the music halls were songs about the soldiers and the
+kind nuns. Meanwhile Maurice inhaled the odour of her tawny hair, the
+subtle bitter perfume of her body, all the odours of her person, and
+desire grew in him. He felt her near him on the little couch, very warm
+and very soft. He complimented the artiste on her great talent. She
+asked him what he liked best in all her repertory. He knew nothing about
+it, still he made replies that satisfied her. She had dictated them
+herself without knowing it. The vain creature spoke of her talent, of
+her success, as she wished others to speak of them. She never ceased
+talking of her triumphs, yet withal she was candour itself. Maurice in
+all sincerity praised Bouchotte's beauty, her fresh skin, her purity of
+line. She attributed this advantage to the fact that she never made up
+and never "put messes on her face." As to her figure, she admitted that
+there was enough everywhere and none too much, and to illustrate this
+assertion she passed her hand over all the contours of her charming
+body, rising lightly to follow the delightful curves on which she
+reposed.
+
+Maurice was quite moved by it. It began to grow dark; she offered to
+light up. He begged her to do nothing of the sort.
+
+Their talk, at first gay and full of laughter, grew more intimate and
+very sweet, with a certain languor in its tone. It seemed to Bouchotte
+that she had known Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu for a long time, and
+holding him for a man of delicacy, she gave him her confidence. She told
+him that she was by nature a good woman, but that she had had a grasping
+and unscrupulous mother. Maurice recalled her to the consideration of
+her own beauty, and exalted by subtle flattery the excellent opinion she
+had of herself. Patient and calculating, in spite of the burning desire
+growing in him, he aroused and increased in the desired one the longing
+to be still further admired. The dressing-gown opened and slipped down
+of its own accord, the living satin of her shoulders gleamed in the
+mysterious light of evening. He--so prudent, so clever, so adroit,--let
+her sink in his arms, ardent and half swooning before she had even
+perceived she had granted anything at all. Their breath and their
+murmurs intermingled. And the little flowery couch sighed in sympathy
+with them.
+
+When they recovered the power to express their feelings in words, she
+whispered in his ear that his cheek was even softer than her own.
+
+He answered, holding her embraced:
+
+"It is charming to hold you like this. One would think you had no
+bones."
+
+She replied, closing her eyes:
+
+"It is because I love you. Love seems to dissolve my bones; it makes me
+as soft and melting as a pig's foot _a la Ste. Menebould_."
+
+Hereupon Theophile came in, and Bouchotte called upon him to thank
+Monsieur Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had been amiable enough to be the
+bearer of a handsome offer from Madame la Comtesse de la Verdeliere.
+
+The musician was happy, feeling the quiet and peace of the house after a
+day of fruitless applications, of colourless lessons, of failure and
+humiliation. Three new collaborators had been thrust upon him who would
+add their signatures to his on his operetta, and receive their share of
+the author's rights, and he had been told to introduce the tango into
+the Court of Golconda. He pressed young d'Esparvieu's hand and dropped
+wearily on to the little couch, which, being now at the end of its
+strength, gave way at the four legs and suddenly collapsed.
+
+And the angel, precipitated to the ground, rolled terror-struck on to
+the watch, match-box and cigarette-case that had fallen from Maurice's
+pocket, and on to the bombs Prince Istar had left behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+     CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE VICISSITUDES THAT BEFEL THE
+     "LUCRETIUS" OF THE PRIOR DE VENDOME
+
+
+Leger-Massieu, successor to Leger senior, the binder, whose
+establishment was in the rue de l'Abbaye, opposite the old Hotel of the
+Abbes of Saint Germain-des-Pres, in the hotbed of ancient schools and
+learned societies, employed an excellent but by no means numerous staff
+of workmen, and served with leisurely deliberation a clientele who had
+learned to practise the virtue of patience. Six weeks had elapsed since
+he had received the parcel of books that had been despatched by Monsieur
+Sariette, but still Leger-Massieu had not yet put the work in hand. It
+was not until fifty-three days had come and gone, that, after calling
+over the books against the list that had been drawn up by Monsieur
+Sariette, the binder gave them out to his workmen. The little
+_Lucretius_ with the Prior de Vendome's arms not being mentioned on the
+list, it was assumed that it had been sent by another customer.
+
+And as it did not figure on any list of goods received it remained shut
+up in a cupboard, from which Leger-Massieu's son, the youthful Ernest,
+one day surreptitiously abstracted it, and slipped it into his pocket.
+Ernest was in love with a neighbouring seamstress whose name was Rose.
+Rose was fond of the country, and liked to hear the birds singing in the
+woods, and in order to procure the wherewithal to take her to Chatou one
+Sunday and give her a dinner, Ernest parted with the _Lucretius_ for ten
+francs to old Moranger, a second-hand dealer in the rue Saint X----, who
+displayed no great curiosity regarding the origin of his acquisitions.
+Old Moranger handed over the volume, the very same day, to Monsieur
+Poussard, an expert in books, of the faubourg Saint Germain, for sixty
+francs. The latter removed the stamp which disclosed the ownership of
+the matchless copy, and sold it for five hundred francs to Monsieur
+Joseph Meyer, the well-known collector, who handed it straight away for
+three thousand francs to Monsieur Ardon, the bookseller, who immediately
+transferred it to Monsieur R----, the great Parisian bibliopolist, who
+gave six thousand for it, and sold it again a fortnight later at a
+handsome profit to Madame la Comtesse de Gorce. Well known in the higher
+ranks of Parisian society, the lady in question is what was called in
+the seventeenth century a "curieuse," that is to say, a lover of
+pictures, books, and china. In her mansion in the Avenue d'Jena she
+possesses collections of works of art which bear witness to the
+diversity of her knowledge and the excellence of her taste. During the
+month of July, while the Comtesse de Gorce was away at her chateau at
+Sarville in Normandy, the house in the Avenue d'Jena, being unoccupied,
+was visited one night by a thief said to belong to a gang known as "The
+Collectors," who made works of art the special objects of their raids.
+
+The police enquiry elicited the fact that the marauder had reached the
+first floor by means of the waste-pipe, that he had then climbed over
+the balcony, forced a shutter with a jemmy, broken a pane of glass,
+turned the window-fastener, and made his way into the long gallery.
+There he broke open several cupboards and possessed himself of whatever
+took his fancy. His booty consisted for the most part of small but
+valuable articles, such as gold caskets, a few ivory carvings of the
+fourteenth century, two splendid fifteenth-century manuscripts, and a
+volume which the Countess's secretary briefly described as "a
+morocco-bound book with a coat of arms on it," and which was none other
+than the _Lucretius_ from the d'Esparvieu library.
+
+The malefactor, who was supposed to be an English cook, was never
+discovered. But, two months or so after the theft, a well-dressed,
+clean-shaven young man passed down the rue de Courcelles, in the
+dimness of twilight, and went to offer the Prior de Vendome's
+_Lucretius_ to Pere Guinardon. The antiquary gave him four shillings for
+it, examined it carefully, recognised its interest and its beauty, and
+put it in the king-wood cabinet, where he kept his special treasures.
+
+Such were the vicissitudes which, in the course of a single season,
+befel this thing of beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+     WHEREIN MAURICE FINDS HIS ANGEL AGAIN
+
+
+The performance was over. Bouchotte in her dressing-room was taking off
+her make-up, when the door opened softly and old Monsieur Sandraque, her
+protector, came in, followed by a troop of her other admirers. Without
+so much as turning her head, she asked them what they meant by coming
+and staring at her like a pack of imbeciles, and whether they thought
+they were in a tent at the Neuilly Fair, looking at the freak woman.
+
+"Now, then, ladies and gentlemen," she rattled on derisively, "just put
+a penny in the box for the young lady's marriage-portion, and she'll let
+you feel her legs,--all made of marble!"
+
+Then, with an angry glance at the admiring throng, she exclaimed: "Come,
+off you go! Look alive!"
+
+She sent them all packing, her sweetheart Theophile among them,--the
+pale-faced, long-haired, gentle, melancholy, short-sighted, and dreamy
+Theophile.
+
+But recognizing her little Maurice, she gave him a smile. He approached
+her, and leaning over the back of the chair on which she was seated,
+congratulated her on her playing and singing, duly performing a kiss at
+the end of every compliment. She did not let him escape thus, and with
+reiterated enquiries, pressing solicitations, feigned incredulity,
+obliged him to repeat his stock panegyrics three or four times over, and
+when he stopped she seemed so disappointed that he was forced to take up
+the strain again immediately. He found it trying, for he was no
+connoisseur, but he had the pleasure of kissing her plump curved
+shoulders all golden in the light, and of catching glimpses of her
+pretty face in the mirror over the toilet-table.
+
+"You were delicious."
+
+"Really?... you think so?"
+
+"Adorable ... div----"
+
+Suddenly he gave a loud cry. His eyes had seen in the mirror a face
+appear at the back of the dressing-room. He turned swiftly round, flung
+his arms about Arcade, and drew him into the corridor.
+
+"What manners!" exclaimed Bouchotte, gasping.
+
+But, pushing his way through a troop of performing dogs, and a family of
+American acrobats, young d'Esparvieu dragged his angel towards the exit.
+
+He hurried him forth into the cool darkness of the boulevard, delirious
+with joy and wondering whether it was all too good to be true.
+
+"Here you are!" he cried; "here you are! I have been looking for you a
+long time, Arcade,--or Mirar if you like,--and I have found you at last.
+Arcade, you have taken my guardian angel from me. Give him back to me.
+Arcade, do you love me still?"
+
+Arcade replied that in accomplishing the super-angelic task he had set
+himself he had been forced to crush under foot friendship, pity, love,
+and all those feelings which tend to soften the soul; but that, on the
+other hand, his new state, by exposing him to suffering and privation,
+disposed him to love Humanity, and that he felt a certain mechanical
+friendship for his poor Maurice.
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed Maurice, "if only you love me, come back to me,
+stay with me. I cannot do without you. While I had you with me I was not
+aware of your presence. But no sooner did you depart than I felt a
+horrible blank. Without you I am like a body without a soul. Do you know
+that in the little flat in the rue de Rome, with Gilberte by my side, I
+feel lonely, I miss you sorely, and long to see you and to hear you as I
+did that day when you made me so angry. Confess I was right, and that
+your behaviour on that occasion was not that of a gentleman. That you,
+you of so high an origin, so noble a mind, could commit such an
+indiscretion is extraordinary, when one comes to think about it. Madame
+des Aubels has not yet forgiven you. She blames you for having
+frightened her by appearing at such an inconvenient moment, and for
+being insolent and forward while hooking her dress and tying her shoes.
+I, I have forgotten everything. I only remember that you are my
+celestial brother, the saintly companion of my childhood. No, Arcade,
+you must not, you cannot leave me. You are my angel; you are my
+property."
+
+Arcade explained to young d'Esparvieu that he could no longer be guiding
+angel to a Christian, having himself gone down into the pit. And he
+painted a horrible picture of himself; he described himself as breathing
+hatred and fury; in fact, an infernal spirit.
+
+"All nonsense!" said Maurice, smiling, his eyes big with tears.
+
+"Alas! our ideas, our destiny, everything tends to part us, Maurice. But
+I cannot stifle the tenderness I feel for you, and your candour forces
+me to love you."
+
+"No," sighed Maurice. "You do not love me. You have never loved me. In a
+brother or a sister such indifference would be natural; in a friend it
+would be ordinary; in a guardian angel it is monstrous. Arcade, you are
+an abominable being. I hate you."
+
+"I have loved you dearly, Maurice, and I still love you. You trouble my
+heart which I deemed encased in triple bronze. You show me my own
+weakness. When you were a little innocent boy I loved you as tenderly
+and purely as Miss Kate, your English governess, who caressed you with
+so much fervour. In the country, when the thin bark of the plane trees
+peels off in long strips and discloses the tender green trunk, after the
+rains which make the fine sand run on the sloping paths, I showed you
+how with that sand, those strips of bark, a few wild flowers, and a
+spray of maidenhair fern to make rustic bridges, rustic shelters,
+terraces, and those gardens of Adonis, which last but an hour. During
+the month of May in Paris we raised an altar to the Virgin, and we burnt
+incense before it, the scent of which, permeating all the house,
+reminded Marcelline, the cook, of her village church and her lost
+innocence, and drew from her floods of tears; it also gave your mother a
+headache, your mother who, with all her wealth, was crushed with the
+_ennui_ that is common to the fortunate ones of this world. When you
+went to college I interested myself in your progress, I shared your work
+and your play, I pondered with you over arduous problems in arithmetic,
+I sought the impenetrable meaning of a phrase of Julius Caesar's. What
+fine games of prisoners' base and football we had together! More than
+once did we know the intoxication of victory, and our young laurels were
+not soaked in blood or tears. Maurice, I did all I could to protect
+your innocence, but I could not prevent your losing it at the age of
+fourteen. Afterwards I regretfully saw you loving women of all sorts, of
+divers ages, by no means beautiful, at least in the eyes of an angel.
+Saddened at the sight, I devoted myself to study; a fine library offered
+me resources rarely met with. I delved into the history of religions;
+you know the rest."
+
+"But now, my dear Arcade," concluded young d'Esparvieu, "you have lost
+your position, your situation, you are entirely without resource. You
+have lost caste, you are off the lines, a vagabond, a bare-footed
+wanderer."
+
+The Angel replied bitterly that, after all, he was a little better clad
+at present than when he was wearing the slops of a suicide.
+
+Maurice alleged in excuse that when he dressed his naked angel in a
+suicide's slops, he was irritated with that angel's infidelity. But it
+was useless to dwell on the past or to recriminate. What was really
+needful was to consider what steps to take in future.
+
+And he asked:
+
+"Arcade, what do you think of doing?"
+
+"Have I not already told you, Maurice? To fight with Him who reigns in
+the heavens, dethrone Him, and set up Satan in His stead."
+
+"You will not do it. To begin with it is not the opportune moment.
+Opinion is not with you. You will not be in the swim, as papa says.
+Conservatism and authority are all the go nowadays. We like to be ruled,
+and the President of the Republic is going to parley with the Pope. Do
+not be obstinate, Arcade. You are not as bad as you say. At bottom you
+are like the rest of the world, you adore the good God."
+
+"I thought I had already explained to you, Maurice, that He whom you
+consider God is actually but a demiurge. He is absolutely ignorant of
+the divine world above him, and in all good faith believes himself to be
+the true and only God. You will find in the _History of the Church_, by
+Monsignor Duchesne--Vol. I, page 162--that this proud and narrow-minded
+demiurge is named Ialdabaoth. My child, so as not to ruffle your
+prejudices and to deal gently with your feelings in future, that is the
+name I shall give him. If it should happen that I should speak of him to
+you, I shall call him Ialdabaoth. I must leave you. Adieu."
+
+"Stay----"
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"I shall not let you go thus. You have deprived me of my guardian angel.
+It is for you to repair the injury you have caused me. Give me another
+one."
+
+Arcade objected that it was difficult for him to satisfy such a demand.
+That having quarrelled with the sovereign dispenser of guardian
+Spirits, he could obtain nothing from that quarter.
+
+"My dear Maurice," he added, smiling, "ask for one yourself from
+Ialdabaoth."
+
+"No,--no,--no," exclaimed Maurice. "You have taken away my guardian
+angel,--give him back to me."
+
+"Alas! I cannot."
+
+"Is it, Arcade, because you are a revolutionary that you cannot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An enemy of God?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A Satanic spirit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed young Maurice, "I will be your guardian
+angel,--I will not leave you."
+
+And Maurice d'Esparvieu took Arcade to have some oysters at P----'s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+     THE CONCLAVE
+
+
+That day, convoked by Arcade and Zita, the rebellious angels met
+together on the banks of the Seine at La Jonchere, in a deserted and
+tumble-down entertainment-hall that Prince Istar had hired from a
+pot-house keeper called Barattan. Three hundred angels crowded together
+in the stalls and boxes. A table, an arm-chair, and a collection of
+small chairs were arranged on the stage, where hung the tattered
+remnants of a piece of rustic scenery. The walls, coloured in distemper
+with flowers and fruit, were cracked and stained with damp, and were
+crumbling away in flakes. The vulgar and poverty-stricken appearance of
+the place rendered the grandeur of the passions exhibited therein all
+the more striking.
+
+When Prince Istar asked the assembly to form its Committee, and first of
+all to elect a President, the name that was renowned throughout the
+world entered the minds of all present, but a religious respect sealed
+their lips; and after a moment's silence, the absent Nectaire was
+elected by acclamation. Having been invited to take the chair between
+Zita and an angel of Japan, Arcade immediately began as follows:
+
+"Sons of Heaven! My comrades! You have freed yourselves from the bonds
+of celestial servitude--you have shaken off the thrall of him called
+Iahveh, but to whom we should here accord his veritable name of
+Ialdabaoth, for he is not the creator of the worlds, but merely an
+ignorant and barbarous demiurge, who having obtained possession of a
+minute portion of the Universe has therein sown suffering and death.
+Sons of Heaven, tell me, I charge you, whether you will combat and
+destroy Ialdabaoth?"
+
+All with one voice made answer:
+
+"We will!"
+
+And many speaking all together swore they would scale the mountain of
+Ialdabaoth, and hurl down the walls of jasper and porphyry, and plunge
+the tyrant of Heaven into eternal darkness.
+
+But a voice of crystal pierced through the sullen murmur.
+
+"Tremble, ye impious, sacrilegious madmen! The Lord hath already lifted
+his dread arm to smite you!"
+
+It was a loyal angel who, with an impulse of faith and love, envying the
+glory of confessors and martyrs, jealous and eager, like his God
+himself, to emulate man in the beauty of sacrifice, had flung himself
+in the midst of the blasphemers, to brave them, to confound them, and to
+fall beneath their blows. The assembly turned upon him with furious
+unanimity. Those nearest to him overwhelmed him with blows. He continued
+to cry, in a clear, ringing voice, "Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to
+God!"
+
+A rebel seized him by the neck and strangled his praises of the Almighty
+in his throat. He was thrown to the ground, trampled underfoot. Prince
+Istar picked him up, took him by the wings between his fingers, then
+rising like a column of smoke, opened a ventilator, which no one else
+could have reached, and passed the faithful angel through it. Order was
+immediately restored.
+
+"Comrades," continued Arcade, "now that we have affirmed our stern
+resolve, we must examine the possible plans of campaign, and choose the
+best. You will therefore have to consider if we should attack the enemy
+in full force, or whether it were better, by a lengthy and assiduous
+propaganda, to win the inhabitants of Heaven to our cause."
+
+"War! War!" shouted the assembled host.
+
+And it seemed as if one could hear the sound of trumpets and the rolling
+of drums.
+
+Theophile, whom Prince Istar had dragged to the meeting, rose, pale and
+unstrung, and, speaking with emotion, said:
+
+"Brethren, do not take ill what I am about to say; for it is the
+friendship I have for you that inspires me. I am but a poor musician.
+But, believe me, all your plans will come to naught before the Divine
+Wisdom which has foreseen everything."
+
+Theophile Belais sat down amid hisses. And Arcade continued:
+
+"Ialdabaoth foresees everything. I do not contest it. He foresees
+everything, but in order to leave us our free will he acts towards us
+absolutely as if he foresaw nothing. Every instant he is surprised,
+disconcerted; the most probable events take him unawares. The obligation
+which he has undertaken, to reconcile with his prescience the liberty of
+both men and angels, throws him constantly into inextricable
+difficulties and terrible dilemmas. He never sees further than the end
+of his nose. He did not expect Adam's disobedience, and so little did he
+anticipate the wickedness of men that he repented having made them, and
+drowned them in the waters of the Flood, and all the animals as well,
+though he had no fault to find with the animals. For blindness he is
+only to be compared with Charles X, his favourite king. If we are
+prudent it will be easy to take him by surprise. I think that these
+observations will be calculated to reassure my brother."
+
+Theophile made no reply. He loved God, but he was fearful of sharing
+the fate of the faithful angel.
+
+One of the best-informed Spirits of the assembly, Mammon, was not
+altogether reassured by the remarks of his brother Arcade.
+
+"Bethink you," said this Spirit, "Ialdabaoth has little general culture,
+but he is a soldier--to the marrow of his bones. The organisation of
+Paradise is a thoroughly military organisation. It is founded on
+hierarchy and discipline. Passive obedience is imposed there as a
+fundamental law. The angels form an army. Compare this spot with the
+Elysian Fields which Virgil depicts for you. In the Elysian Fields reign
+liberty, reason, and wisdom. The happy shades hold converse together in
+the groves of myrtle. In the Heaven of Ialdabaoth there is no civil
+population. Everyone is enrolled, numbered, registered. It is a barracks
+and a field for manoeuvres. Remember that."
+
+Arcade replied that they must look at their adversary in his true
+colours, and that the military organisation of Paradise was far more
+reminiscent of the villages of King Koffee than of the Prussia of
+Frederick the Great.
+
+"Already," said he, "at the time of the first revolt, before the
+beginning of Time, the conflict raged for two days, and Ialdabaoth's
+throne was made to totter. Nevertheless, the demiurge gained the
+victory. But to what did he owe it? To the thunderstorm which happened
+to come on during the conflict. The thunderbolts falling on Lucifer and
+his angels struck them down, bruised and blackened, and Ialdabaoth owed
+his victory to the thunderbolts. Thunder is his sole weapon. He abuses
+its power. In the midst of thunder and lightning he promulgates his
+laws. 'Fire goeth before him,' says the Prophet. Now Seneca, the
+philosopher, said that the thunderbolt in its fall brings peril to very
+few, but fear to all. This remark was true enough for men of the first
+century of the Christian era; it is no longer so for the angels of the
+twentieth; all of which goes to prove that, in spite of his thunder, he
+is not very powerful; it was acute terror that made men rear him a tower
+of unbaked brick and bitumen. When myriads of celestial spirits,
+furnished with machines which modern science puts at their disposal,
+make an assault upon the heavens, think you, comrades, that the old
+master of the solar system surrounded with his angels, armed as in the
+time of Abraham, will be able to resist them? To this day the warriors
+of the demiurge wear helmets of gold and shields of diamond. Michael,
+his best captain, knows no other tactics than the hand-to-hand combat.
+To him Pharaoh's chariots are still the latest thing, and he has never
+heard of the Macedonian phalanx."
+
+And young Arcade lengthily prolonged the parallel between the armed
+herds of Ialdabaoth and the intelligent fighting men of the rebel army.
+Then the question of pecuniary resources arose.
+
+Zita asserted that there was enough money to commence war, that the
+electrophores were in order, that an initial victory would obtain them
+credit.
+
+The discussion continued, amid turbulence and confusion. In this
+parliament of angels, as in the synods of men, empty words flowed in
+abundance. Disturbances grew more violent and more frequent as the time
+for putting the resolution drew near. It was beyond question that
+supreme command would be entrusted to him who had first raised the flag
+of revolt. But as everyone aspired to act as Lucifer's Lieutenant, each
+in describing the kind of fighting man to be preferred drew a portrait
+of himself. Thus Alcor, the youngest of the rebellious angels, arose and
+spoke rapidly as follows:
+
+"In Ialdabaoth's army, happily for us, the officers obtain their posts
+by seniority. This being the case, there is little likelihood of the
+command falling into the hands of a military genius, for men are not
+made leaders by prolonged habits of obedience, and close attention to
+minutiae is not a good apprenticeship for the evolution of vast plans of
+campaign. If we consult ancient and modern history, we shall see that
+the greatest leaders were kings like Alexander and Frederick,
+aristocrats like Caesar and Turenne, or men impatient of red-tape like
+Bonaparte. A routine man will always be poor or second-rate. Comrades,
+let us appoint intelligent leaders, men in the prime of life, to command
+us. An old man may retain the habit of winning victories, but only a
+young man can acquire it!"
+
+Alcor then gave place to an angel of the philosophic order, who mounted
+the rostrum and spoke thus:
+
+"War never was an exact science, a clearly defined art. The genius of
+the race, or the brain of the individual, has ever modified it. Now how
+are we to define the qualities necessary for a general in command in the
+war of the future, where one must consider greater masses and a larger
+number of movements than the intelligence of man can conceive? The
+multiplication of technical means, by infinitely multiplying the
+opportunities for mistake, paralyses the genius of those in command. At
+a certain stage in the progress of military science, a stage which our
+models, the Europeans, are about to reach, the cleverest leader and the
+most ignorant become equalized by reason of their incapacity. Another
+result of great modern armaments is, that the law of numbers tends to
+rule with inflexible rigour. It is of course true that ten angels in
+revolt are worth more than ten angels of Ialdabaoth; it is not at all
+certain that a million rebellious angels are worth more than a million
+of Ialdabaoth's angels. Great numbers, in war as elsewhere, annihilate
+intelligence and individual superiority in favour of a sort of
+exceedingly rudimentary collective soul."
+
+A buzz of conversation drowned the voice of the philosophic angel, and
+he concluded his speech in an atmosphere of general indifference.
+
+The tribune then resounded with calls to arms and promises of victory.
+The sword was held up to praise, the sword which defends the right. The
+triumph of the angels in revolt was celebrated twenty times beforehand,
+to the plaudits of a delirious crowd.
+
+Cries of "War!" rose to the silent heavens; "Give us war!"
+
+In the midst of these transports Prince Istar hoisted himself on to the
+platform, and the floor creaked under his weight.
+
+"Comrades," said he, "you wish for victory, and it is a very natural
+desire, but you must be mouldy with literature and poetry if you expect
+to obtain it from war. The idea of making war can nowadays only enter
+the brain of a sottish bourgeois or a belated romantic. What is war? A
+burlesque masquerade in the midst of which fatuous patriots sing their
+stupid dithyrambs. Had Napoleon possessed a practical mind he would not
+have made war; but he was a dreamer, intoxicated with Ossian. You cry,
+'Give us war!' You are visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The
+thinkers do not look for power and strength from any of the dreams which
+constitute military art: tactics, strategy, fortifications, artillery,
+and all that rubbish. They do not believe in war, which is a phantasy;
+they believe in chemistry, which is a science. They know the way to put
+victory into an algebraic formula."
+
+And drawing from his pocket a small bottle, which he held up to the
+meeting, Prince Istar exclaimed:
+
+"Victory--it is here!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+     WHEREIN WE SHALL SEE REVEALED A DARK AND SECRET MYSTERY AND
+     LEARN HOW IT COMES ABOUT THAT EMPIRES ARE OFTEN HURLED
+     AGAINST EMPIRES, AND RUIN FALLS ALIKE UPON THE VICTORS AND
+     THE VANQUISHED; AND THE WISE READER (IF SUCH THERE BE--WHICH
+     I DOUBT) WILL MEDITATE UPON THIS IMPORTANT UTTERANCE: "A WAR
+     IS A MATTER OF BUSINESS"
+
+
+The Angels had dispersed. At the foot of the slopes at Meudon, seated on
+the grass, Arcade and Zita watched the Seine flowing by the willows.
+
+"In this world," said Arcade, "in this world, which we call a cosmos,
+though it is but a microcosm, no thinking being can imagine that he is
+able to destroy even one atom. At the utmost, all we can hope for is
+that we shall succeed in modifying, here and there, the rhythm of some
+group of atoms and the arrangement of certain cells. That, when one
+thinks of it, must be the limit of our great enterprise. And when we
+shall have set up the Contradictor in the place of Ialdabaoth, we shall
+have done no more.... Zita, is the evil in the nature of things or in
+their arrangement? That is what we ought to know. Zita, I am profoundly
+troubled----"
+
+"Arcade," replied Zita, "if to act we had to know the secret of Nature,
+one would never act at all. And neither would one live--since to live is
+to act. Arcade, is your resolution failing you already?"
+
+Arcade assured the beautiful angel that he was resolved to plunge the
+demiurge into eternal darkness.
+
+A motor-car passed by on the road, followed by a long trail of dust. It
+stopped before the two angels, and the hooked nose of Baron Everdingen
+appeared at the window.
+
+"Good morning, my celestial friends, good morning," said the capitalist.
+"Sons of Heaven, I am pleased to meet you. I have a word of importance
+to say to you. Do not remain idle--do not go to sleep. Arm! Arm! You may
+be surprised by Ialdabaoth. You have a big war-fund. Employ it without
+stint. I have just learnt that the Archangel Michael has given large
+orders in Heaven for thunderbolts and arrows. If you take my advice you
+will procure fifty thousand more electrophores. I will take the order.
+Good day, angels. Long live the celestial country!"
+
+And Baron Everdingen flew by the flowery shores of Louveciennes in the
+company of a pretty actress.
+
+"Is it true that they are taking up arms at the demiurge's?" asked
+Arcade.
+
+"It may be," replied Zita, "that up there another Baron Everdingen is
+inciting to arms."
+
+The guardian angel of young Maurice remained pensive for some moments.
+Then he murmured:
+
+"Can it be that we are the sport of financiers?"
+
+"Pooh!" said the beautiful archangel. "War is a business. It has always
+been a business."
+
+Then they discussed at length the means of executing their immense
+enterprise. Rejecting disdainfully the anarchistic proceedings of Prince
+Istar, they conceived a formidable and sudden invasion of the kingdom of
+Heaven by their enthusiastic and well-drilled troops.
+
+Now Barattan, the innkeeper of La Jonchere, who had let the
+entertainment-hall to the rebellious angels, was in the employ of the
+secret police. In the reports he furnished to the Prefecture he
+denounced the members of this secret meeting as meditating an attack on
+a certain person whom they described as obtuse and cruel, and whom they
+called _Alaballotte_. The agent believed this to be a pseudonym denoting
+either the President of the Republic or the Republic itself. The
+conspirators had unanimously given voice to threats against
+_Alaballotte_, and one of them, a very dangerous individual, well-known
+in anarchist circles, who had already several convictions against him
+on account of writings and speeches of a seditious nature, and who was
+known as Prince Istar or the _Queroube_, had brandished a bomb of very
+small calibre which seemed to contain a formidable machine. The other
+conspirators were unknown to Barattan, notwithstanding the fact that he
+frequented revolutionary circles. Many among them were very young men,
+mere beardless youths. There were two who, it appeared, had spoken with
+conspicuous vehemence; a certain Arcade, dwelling in the Rue St.
+Jacques, and a woman of easy virtue called Zita, living at Montmartre,
+both without visible means of subsistence.
+
+The affair seemed sufficiently serious to the Prefect of Police to make
+him think it necessary to confer without delay with the President of the
+Council.
+
+The Third Republic was then going through one of those climacteric
+periods during which the French nation, enamoured of authority and
+worshipping force, gave itself up for lost because it was not governed
+enough, and clamoured loudly for a saviour. The President of the
+Council, and Minister of Justice, was only too eager to be that
+longed-for saviour. Still, for him to play that part it was first
+necessary that there should be a danger to face. Thus the news of a plot
+was highly welcome to him. He questioned the Prefect of Police on the
+character and importance of the affair. The Prefect of Police explained
+that the people seemed to have money, intelligence, and energy; but
+that they talked too much and were too numerous to undertake secret and
+concerted action. The Minister, leaning back in his arm-chair, pondered
+on the matter. The Empire writing-table at which he was seated, the
+ancient tapestry which covered the walls, the clock and the candelabra
+of the Restoration period--all, in this traditional setting, reminded
+him of those great principles of government which remain immutable
+throughout the succession of _regimes_, of stratagem and of bluff. After
+brief reflexion, he concluded that the plot must be allowed to grow and
+take shape, that it would even be fitting to nurse it, to embroider it,
+to colour it, and only to stifle it after having extracted every
+possible advantage from it.
+
+He instructed the Prefect of Police to watch the affair closely, to
+render him an account of what went on from day to day, and to confine
+himself to the role of informer.
+
+"I rely on your well-known prudence; observe, and do not intervene."
+
+The Minister lit a cigarette. He quite reckoned, with the help of this
+plot, on silencing the Opposition, strengthening his own influence,
+diminishing that of his colleagues, humiliating the President of the
+Republic, and becoming the saviour of his country.
+
+The Prefect of Police undertook to follow the ministerial instructions,
+vowing inwardly all the while to act in his own way. He had a watch put
+upon the individuals pointed out by Barattan, and commanded his agents
+not to intervene, come what might. Perceiving that he was a marked man,
+Prince Istar--who united prudence with strength--withdrew the bombs from
+the gutter outside his window where he had hidden them, and changing
+from motor 'bus to tube, from tube to motor 'bus, and choosing the most
+cunningly circuitous route, at length deposited his machines with the
+angelic musician.
+
+Every time he left his house in the Rue St. Jacques, Arcade found a man
+of exaggerated smartness at his door, with yellow gloves and in his tie
+a diamond bigger than the Regent. Being a stranger to the things of this
+world, the rebellious angel paid no attention to the circumstance. But
+young Maurice d'Esparvieu, who had undertaken the task of guarding his
+guardian-angel, viewed this gentleman with uneasiness, for he equalled
+in assiduity and surpassed in vigilance that Monsieur Mignon who had
+formerly allowed his inquisitive gaze to wander from the rams' heads on
+the Hotel de la Sordiere in the Rue Garanciere to the apse of the church
+of St. Sulpice. Maurice came two and three times a day to see Arcade in
+his furnished rooms, warning him of the danger, and urging him to change
+his abode.
+
+Every evening he took his angel to night restaurants, where they supped
+with ladies of easy virtue. There young d'Esparvieu would foretell the
+issue of some coming glove-fight, and afterwards exert himself to
+demonstrate to Arcade the existence of God, the necessity for religion,
+and the beauties of Christianity, and adjure him to renounce his impious
+and criminal undertakings wherefrom, he said, he would reap but
+bitterness and disappointment.
+
+"For really," said the young apologist, "if Christianity were false it
+would be known."
+
+The ladies approved of Maurice's religious sentiments, and when the
+handsome Arcade uttered some blasphemy in language they could
+understand, they put their hands to their ears and bade him be silent,
+for fear of being struck down with him. For they believed that God, in
+his omnipotence and sovereign goodness, taking sudden vengeance against
+those who insulted him, was quite capable of striking down the innocent
+with the guilty without meaning it.
+
+Sometimes the angel and his guardian took supper with the angelic
+musician. Maurice, who remembered from time to time that he was
+Bouchotte's lover, was displeased to see Arcade taking liberties with
+the singer. She had allowed him to do so ever since the day when, the
+angelic musician having had the little flowery couch repaired, Arcade
+and Bouchotte had made it a foundation for their friendship. Maurice,
+who loved Madame des Aubels a great deal, also loved Bouchotte a little,
+and was rather jealous of Arcade. Now jealousy is a feeling natural to
+man and beast, and causes them, however slight the attack, keen
+unhappiness. Therefore, suspecting the truth, which Bouchotte's
+temperament and the angel's character made sufficiently obvious, he
+overwhelmed Arcade with sarcasm and abuse, reproaching him with the
+immorality of his ways. Arcade answered, tranquilly, that it was
+difficult to subject physiological impulses to perfectly defined rules,
+and that moralists encountered great difficulties in the case of certain
+natural necessities.
+
+"Moreover," added Arcade, "I freely acknowledge that it is almost
+impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has
+no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human
+life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no
+distinction between good and evil."
+
+"You see, then," replied Maurice, "that religion is necessary."
+
+"Moral law," replied the angel, "which is supposed to be revealed to us,
+is drawn in reality from the grossest empiricism. Custom alone regulates
+morals. What Heaven prescribes is merely the consecration of ancient
+customs. The divine law, promulgated amid fireworks on some Mount
+Sinai, is never anything but the codification of human prejudice. And
+from this fact--namely, that morals change--religions which endure for a
+long time, such as Judaeo-Christianity, vary their moral law."
+
+"At any rate," said Maurice, whose intelligence was swelling visibly,
+"you will grant me that religion prevents much profligacy and crime?"
+
+"Except when it promotes crime--as, for instance, the murder of
+Iphigenia."
+
+"Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "when I hear you argue, I rejoice that I am
+not an intellectual."
+
+Meanwhile Theophile, with his head bent over the piano, his face hidden
+by the long fair veil of his hair, bringing down from on high his
+inspired hands on to the keys, was playing and singing the full score of
+_Aline, Queen of Golconda_.
+
+Prince Istar used to come to their friendly reunions, his pockets filled
+with bombs and bottles of champagne, both of which he owed to the
+liberality of Baron Everdingen. Bouchotte received the Kerub with
+pleasure, since she saw in him the witness and the trophy of the victory
+she had gained on the little flowered couch. He was to her as the
+severed head of Goliath in the hands of the youthful David. And she
+admired the prince for his cleverness as an accompanist, his vigour,
+which she had subdued, and his prodigious capacity for drink.
+
+One night, when young d'Esparvieu took his angel home in his car from
+Bouchotte's house to the lodgings in the Rue St. Jacques, it was very
+dark; before the door the diamond in the spy's necktie glittered like a
+beacon; three cyclists standing in a group under its rays made off in
+divers directions at the car's approach. The angel took no notice, but
+Maurice concluded that Arcade's movements interested various important
+people in the State. He judged the danger to be pressing, and at once
+made up his mind.
+
+The next morning he came to seek the suspect, to take him to the Rue de
+Rome. The angel was in bed. Maurice urged him to dress and to follow
+him.
+
+"Come," said he. "This house is no longer safe for you. You are watched.
+One of these days you will be arrested. Do you wish to sleep in gaol?
+No? Well, then, come. I will put you in a safe place."
+
+The spirit smiled with some little compassion on his naive preserver.
+
+"Do you not know," he said, "that an angel broke open the doors of the
+prison where Peter was confined, and delivered the apostle? Do you
+believe me, Maurice, to be inferior in power to that heavenly brother of
+mine, and do you suppose that I am unable to do for myself what he did
+for the fisherman of the lake of Tiberias?"
+
+"Do not count on it, Arcade. He did it miraculously."
+
+"Or by a stroke of luck, as a modern historian of the Church has it. But
+no matter. I will follow you. Just allow me to burn a few letters and to
+make a parcel of some books I shall need."
+
+He threw some papers in the fire-place, put several volumes in his
+pockets, and followed his guide to the car, which was waiting for them
+not far off, outside the College of France. Maurice took the wheel.
+Imitating the Kerub's prudence, he made so many windings and turnings,
+and so many rapid twists that he put all the swift and numerous
+cyclists, speeding in pursuit, off the scent. At length, having left
+wheelmarks in every direction all over the town, he stopped in the Rue
+de Rome, before the first-door flat, where the angel had first appeared.
+
+On entering the dwelling which he had left eighteen months before to
+carry out his mission, Arcade remembered the irreparable past, and
+breathing in the scent used by Gilberte, his nostrils throbbed. He asked
+after Madame des Aubels.
+
+"She is very well," replied Maurice. "A little plumper and very much
+more beautiful for it. She still bears you a grudge for your forward
+behaviour. I hope that she will one day forgive you, as I have forgiven
+you, and that she will forget your offence. But she is still very
+annoyed with you."
+
+Young d'Esparvieu did the honours of his flat to his angel with the
+manners of a well-bred man and the tender solicitude of a friend. He
+showed him the folding bed which was opened every evening in the
+entrance hall and pushed into a dark cupboard in the morning. He showed
+him the dressing-table, with its accessories; the bath, the linen
+cupboard, the chest of drawers; gave him the necessary information
+regarding the heating and lighting; told him that his meals would be
+brought and the rooms cleaned by the concierge, and showed him which
+bell to press when he required that person's services. He told him also
+that he must consider himself at home, and receive whom he wished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+     WHICH TREATS OF A PAINFUL DOMESTIC SCENE
+
+
+So long as Maurice confined his selection of mistresses to respectable
+women, his conduct had called forth no reproach. It was a different
+matter when he took up with Bouchotte. His mother, who had closed her
+eyes to liaisons which, though guilty, were elegant and discreet, was
+scandalised when it came to her ears that her son was openly parading
+about with a music-hall singer. By dint of much prying and probing,
+Berthe, Maurice's younger sister, had got to know of her brother's
+adventures, and she narrated them, without any indignation, to her young
+girl friends. His little brother Leon declared to his mother one day, in
+the presence of several ladies, that when he was big he, too, would go
+on the spree, like Maurice. This was a sore wound to the maternal heart
+of Madame d'Esparvieu.
+
+About the same time there occurred a family event of a very grave nature
+which occasioned much alarm to Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu. Drafts were
+presented to him signed in his name by his son. His writing had not been
+forged, but there was no doubt that it had been the son's intention to
+pass off the signature as his father's. It showed a perverted moral
+sense; whence it appeared that Maurice was living a life of profligacy,
+that he was running into debt and on the point of outraging the
+decencies. The paterfamilias talked the matter over with his wife. It
+was arranged that he should give his son a very severe lecture, hint at
+vigorous corrective measures, and that in due course the mother should
+appear with gentle and sorrowing mien and endeavour to soothe the
+righteous indignation of the father. This plan being agreed upon,
+Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu sent for his son to come to him in his study.
+To add to the solemnity of the occasion, he had arrayed himself in his
+frock-coat. As soon as Maurice saw it he knew there was something
+serious in the wind. The head of the family was pale, and his voice
+shook a little (for he was a nervous man), as he declared that he would
+no longer put up with his son's irregular behaviour, and insisted on an
+immediate and absolute reform. No more wild courses, no more running
+into debt, no more undesirable companions, but work, steadiness, and
+reputable connexions.
+
+Maurice was quite willing to give a respectful reply to his father,
+whose complaints, after all, were perfectly justified; but,
+unfortunately, Maurice, like his father, was shy, and the frock-coat
+which Monsieur d'Esparvieu had donned in order to discharge his
+magisterial duty with greater dignity seemed to preclude the possibility
+of any open and unconstrained intercourse. Maurice maintained an awkward
+silence, which looked very much like insolence, and this silence
+compelled Monsieur d'Esparvieu to reiterate his complaints, this time
+with additional severity. He opened one of the drawers in his historic
+bureau (the bureau on which Alexandre d'Esparvieu had written his "Essay
+on the Civil and Religious Institutions of the World"), and produced the
+bills which Maurice had signed.
+
+"Do you know, my boy," said he, "that this is nothing more nor less than
+forgery? To make up for such grave misconduct as that----"
+
+At this moment Madame d'Esparvieu, as arranged, entered the room attired
+in her walking-dress. She was supposed to play the angel of forgiveness,
+but neither her appearance nor her disposition was suitable to the part.
+She was harsh and unsympathetic. Maurice harboured within him the seeds
+of all the ordinary and necessary virtues. He loved his mother and
+respected her. His love, however, was more a matter of duty than of
+inclination, and his respect arose from habit rather than from feeling.
+Madame Rene d'Esparvieu's complexion was blotchy, and having powdered
+herself in order to appear to advantage at the domestic tribunal, the
+colour of her face suggested raspberries sprinkled over with sugar.
+Maurice, being possessed of some taste, could not help realising that
+she was ugly and rather repulsively so. He was out of tune with her, and
+when she began to go through all the accusations his father had brought
+against him, making them out to be blacker than ever, the prodigal
+turned away his head to conceal his irritation.
+
+"Your Aunt de Saint-Fain," she went on, "met you in the street in such
+disgraceful company that she was really thankful that you forbore to
+greet her."
+
+"Aunt de Saint-Fain!" Maurice broke out. "I like to hear her talking
+about scandals! Everyone knows the sort of life she has led, and now the
+old hypocrite wants to----"
+
+He stopped. He had caught sight of his father, whose face was even more
+eloquent of sorrow than of anger. Maurice began to feel as though he had
+committed murder, and could not imagine how he had allowed such words to
+escape him. He was on the point of bursting into tears, falling on his
+knees, and imploring his father to forgive him, when his mother, looking
+up at the ceiling, said with a sigh:
+
+"What offence can I have committed against God, to have brought such a
+wicked son into the world?"
+
+This speech struck Maurice as a piece of ridiculous affectation, and it
+pulled him up with a jerk. The bitterness of contrition suddenly gave
+place to the delicious arrogance of wrong-doing. He plunged wildly into
+a torrent of insolence and revolt, and breathlessly delivered himself of
+utterances quite unfit for a mother's ear.
+
+"If you will have it, mamma, rather than forbid me to continue my
+friendship with a talented lyrical artist, you would be better employed
+in preventing my elder sister, Madame de Margy, from appearing, night
+after night, in society and at the theatres with a contemptible and
+disgusting individual that everybody knows is her lover. You should also
+keep an eye on my little sister Jeanne, who writes objectionable letters
+to herself in a disguised hand, and then, pretending she has found them
+in her prayer-book, shows them to you with assumed innocence, to worry
+and alarm you. It would be just as well, too, if you prevented my little
+brother Leon, a child of seven, from being quite so much with
+Mademoiselle Caporal, and you might tell your maid...."
+
+"Get out, sir, I will not have you in the house!" cried Monsieur Rene
+d'Esparvieu, white with anger, pointing a trembling finger at the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+     WHEREIN WE SEE HOW THE ANGEL, HAVING BECOME A MAN, BEHAVES
+     LIKE A MAN, COVETING ANOTHER'S WIFE AND BETRAYING HIS
+     FRIEND. IN THIS CHAPTER THE CORRECTNESS OF YOUNG
+     D'ESPARVIEU'S CONDUCT WILL BE MADE MANIFEST
+
+
+The angel was pleased with his lodging. He worked of a morning, went out
+in the afternoon, heedless of detectives, and came home to sleep. As in
+days gone by, Maurice received Madame des Aubels twice or thrice a week
+in the room in which they had seen the apparition.
+
+All went very well until one morning Gilberte, having, the night before,
+left her little velvet bag on the table in the blue room, came to find
+it, and discovered Arcade stretched on the couch in his pyjamas, smoking
+a cigarette, and dreaming of the conquest of Heaven. She gave a loud
+scream.
+
+"You, Monsieur! Had I thought to find you here, you may be quite sure I
+should not ... I came to fetch my little bag, which is in the next
+room. Allow me...." And she slipped past the angel, cautiously and
+quickly, as if he were a brazier.
+
+Madame des Aubels that morning, in her pale green tailor-made costume,
+was deliciously attractive. Her tight skirt displayed her movements, and
+her every step was one of those miracles of Nature which fill men's
+hearts with amazement.
+
+She reappeared, bag in hand.
+
+"Once more--I ask your pardon.... I never dreamt that...."
+
+Arcade begged her to sit down and to stay a moment.
+
+"I never expected, Monsieur," said she, "that you would be doing the
+honours of this flat. I knew how dearly Monsieur d'Esparvieu loved
+you.... Nevertheless, I had no idea that...."
+
+The sky had suddenly grown overcast. A brownish glare began to steal
+into the room. Madame des Aubels told him she had walked for her
+health's sake, but a storm was brewing, and she asked if a carriage
+could be called for her.
+
+Arcade flung himself at Gilberte's feet, took her in his arms as one
+takes a precious piece of china, and murmured words which, being
+meaningless in themselves, expressed desire.
+
+She put her hands over his eyes and on his lips, and exclaimed, "I hate
+you!"
+
+And shaking with sobs, she asked for a drink of water. She was choking.
+The angel went to her assistance. In this moment of extreme peril she
+defended herself courageously. She kept saying: "No!... No!... I will
+not love you. I should love you too well...." Nevertheless she
+succumbed.
+
+In the sweet familiarity which followed their mutual astonishment she
+said to him:
+
+"I have often asked after you. I knew that you were an assiduous
+frequenter of the playhouses at Montmartre,--that you were often seen
+with Mademoiselle Bouchotte, who, nevertheless, is not at all pretty. I
+knew that you had become very smart, and that you were making a good
+deal of money. I was not surprised. You were born to succeed. The day of
+your"--and she pointed at the spot between the window and the wardrobe
+with the mirror--"apparition, I was vexed with Maurice for having given
+you a suicide's rags to wear. You pleased me.... Oh, it was not your
+good looks! Don't think that women are as sensitive as people say to
+outward attractions. We consider other things in love. There is a sort
+of---- Well, anyhow I loved you as soon as I saw you."
+
+The shadows grew deeper.
+
+She asked:
+
+"You are not an angel, are you? Maurice believes you are; but he
+believes so many things, Maurice." She questioned Arcade with her eyes
+and smiled maliciously. "Confess that you have been fooling him, and
+that you are no angel?"
+
+Arcade replied:
+
+"I only aspire to please you; I will always be what you want me to be."
+
+Gilberte decided that he was no angel; first, because one never is an
+angel; secondly, for more detailed reasons which drew her thoughts to
+the question of love. He did not argue the matter with her, and once
+again words were found inadequate to express their feelings.
+
+Outside, the rain was falling thick and fast, the windows were
+streaming, lightning lit up the muslin curtains, and thunder shook the
+panes. Gilberte made the sign of the Cross and remained with her head
+hidden in her lover's bosom.
+
+At this moment Maurice entered the room. He came in wet and smiling,
+confident, tranquil, happy, to announce to Arcade the good news that
+with his half-share in the previous day's race at Longchamps the angel
+had won twelve times his stake. Surprising the lady and the angel in
+their embrace, he became furious; anger gripped the muscles of his
+throat, his face grew red with blood, and the veins stood out on his
+forehead. He sprang with clenched fists towards Gilberte, and then
+suddenly stopped.
+
+Interrupted motion was transformed into heat. Maurice fumed. His anger
+did not arm him, like Archilochus, with lyrical vengeance. He merely
+applied an offensive epithet to his unfaithful one.
+
+Meanwhile she had recovered her dignified bearing. She rose, full of
+modesty and grace, and gave her accuser a look which expressed both
+offended virtue and loving forgiveness.
+
+But as young d'Esparvieu continued to shower coarse and monotonous
+insults on her, she grew angry in her turn.
+
+"You are a pretty sort of person, are you not?" she said. "Did I run
+after this Arcade of yours? It was you who brought him here, and in what
+a state, too! You had only one idea: to give me up to your friend. Well,
+Monsieur, you can do as you like--I am not going to oblige you."
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu replied simply, "Get out of it, you trollop!" And he
+made a motion as if to push her out. It pained Arcade to see his
+mistress treated so disrespectfully, but he thought he lacked the
+necessary authority to interfere with Maurice. Madame des Aubels, who
+had lost none of her dignity, fixed young d'Esparvieu with her imperious
+gaze, and said:
+
+"Go and get me a carriage."
+
+And so great is the power of woman over a well-bred soul, in a gallant
+nation, that the young Frenchman went immediately and told the concierge
+to call a taxi. Madame des Aubels, with a studied exhibition of charm in
+every movement, took leave of them, throwing Maurice the contemptuous
+look that a woman owes to him whom she has deceived. Maurice witnessed
+her departure with an outward expression of indifference he was far from
+feeling. Then he turned to the angel clad in the flowered pyjamas which
+Maurice himself had worn the day of the apparition; and this
+circumstance, trifling in itself, added fuel to the anger of the host
+who had been thus shamefully deceived.
+
+"Well," he said, "you may pride yourself on being a despicable
+individual. You have behaved basely, and all for nothing. If the woman
+took your fancy, you had but to tell me. I was tired of her. I had had
+enough of her. I would have willingly left her to you."
+
+He spoke thus to hide his pain, for he loved Gilberte more than ever,
+and the creature's treachery caused him great suffering. He pursued:
+
+"I was about to ask you to take her off my hands. But you have followed
+your lower nature--you have behaved like a sweep."
+
+If at this solemn moment Arcade had but spoken one word from his heart,
+Maurice would have burst into tears, and forgiven his friend and his
+mistress, and all three would have become content and happy once again.
+But Arcade had not been nourished on the milk of human kindness. He had
+never suffered, and did not know how to sympathise with suffering. He
+replied with frigid wisdom:
+
+"My dear Maurice, that same necessity which orders and constrains the
+actions of living beings, produces effects that are often unexpected,
+and sometimes absurd. Thus it is that I have been led to displease you.
+You would not reproach me if you had a good philosophical understanding
+of nature; for you would then know that free-will is but an illusion,
+and that physiological affinities are as exactly determined as are
+chemical combinations, and, like them, may be summed up in a formula. I
+think that, in your case, it might be possible to inculcate these
+truths, but it would be a difficult task, and maybe they would not bring
+you the serenity which eludes you. It is fitting, therefore, that I
+should leave this spot, and----"
+
+"Stay," said Maurice.
+
+Maurice had a very clear sense of social obligations. He put honour,
+when he thought about it, above everything. So now he told himself very
+forcibly that the outrage he had suffered could only be wiped out with
+blood. This traditional idea instantly lent an unexpected nobility to
+his speech and bearing.
+
+"It is I, Monsieur," said he, "who will quit this place, never to
+return. You will remain here, since you are a refugee. My seconds will
+wait upon you."
+
+The angel smiled.
+
+"I will receive them, if it gives you pleasure, but, bethink you, my
+dear Maurice, I am invulnerable. Celestial spirits even when they are
+materialised cannot be touched by point of sword or pistol shot.
+Consider, my dear Maurice, the awkward situation in which this fatal
+inequality puts me, and realise that in refusing to appoint seconds I
+cannot give as a reason my celestial nature,--it would be
+unprecedented."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the heir of the Bussart d'Esparvieu, "you should
+have thought of that before you insulted me."
+
+Out he marched haughtily; but no sooner was he in the street than he
+staggered like a drunken man. The rain was still falling. He walked
+unseeing, unhearing, at haphazard, dragging his feet in the gutters
+through pools of water, through heaps of mud. He followed the outer
+boulevards for a long time, and at length, fordone with weariness, lay
+down on the edge of a piece of waste land. He was muddied up to the
+eyes, mud and tears smeared his face, the brim of his hat was dripping
+with rain. A passer-by, taking him for a beggar, tossed him a copper. He
+picked it up, put it carefully in his waistcoat pocket, and set off to
+find his seconds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+     WHICH TREATS OF AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR, AND WHICH WILL AFFORD
+     THE READER AN OPPORTUNITY OF JUDGING WHETHER, AS ARCADE
+     AFFIRMS, THE EXPERIENCE OF OUR FAULTS MAKES BETTER MEN AND
+     WOMEN OF US
+
+
+The ground chosen for the combat was Colonel Manchon's garden, on the
+Boulevard de la Reine at Versailles. Messieurs de la Verdeliere and Le
+Truc de Ruffec, who had both of them constant practice in affairs of
+honour and knew the rules with great exactness, assisted Maurice
+d'Esparvieu. No duel was ever fought in the Catholic world without
+Monsieur de la Verdeliere being present; and, in making application to
+this swordsman, Maurice had conformed to custom, though not without a
+certain reluctance, for he had been notorious as the lover of Madame de
+la Verdeliere; but Monsieur de la Verdeliere was not to be looked upon
+as a husband. He was an institution. As to Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec,
+honour was his only known profession and avowedly his sole resource, and
+when the matter was made the subject of ill-natured comment in Society,
+the question was asked what finer career than that of honour Monsieur Le
+Truc de Ruffec could possibly have adopted. Arcade's seconds were Prince
+Istar and Theophile. The celestial musician had not voluntarily nor with
+a good grace taken a hand in this affair. He had a horror of every kind
+of violence and disapproved of single combat. The report of pistols and
+the clash of swords were intolerable to him, and the sight of blood made
+him faint. This gentle son of Heaven had obstinately refused to act as
+second to his brother Arcade, and to bring him to the starting-point the
+Kerub had had to threaten to break a bottle of panclastite over his
+head.
+
+Besides the combatants, the seconds, and the doctors, the only people in
+the garden were a few officers from the barracks at Versailles and
+several reporters. Although young d'Esparvieu was known merely as a
+young man of family, and Arcade had never been heard of at all, the duel
+had attracted quite a large crowd of inquisitive individuals, and the
+windows of the adjoining houses were crammed with photographers,
+reporters, and Society people. What had aroused much curiosity was that
+a woman was known to be the cause of the quarrel. Many mentioned
+Bouchotte, but the majority said it was Madame des Aubels. It had been
+remarked upon, moreover, that duels in which Monsieur de la Verdeliere
+acted as second drew all Paris.
+
+The sky was a soft blue, the garden all a-bloom with roses, a blackbird
+was piping in a tree. Monsieur de la Verdeliere, who, stick in hand,
+conducted the affair, laid the points of the swords together, and said:
+
+"_Allez, Messieurs._"
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu attacked by doubling and beating the blade. Arcade
+retired, keeping his sword in line. The first engagement was without
+result. The seconds were under the impression that Monsieur d'Esparvieu
+was in a grievous state of nervous irritability, and that his adversary
+would wear him down. In the second encounter Maurice attacked wildly,
+spread out his arms, and exposed his breast. He attacked as he advanced,
+gave a straight thrust, and the point of his sword grazed Arcade on the
+shoulder. The latter was thought to be wounded. But the seconds
+ascertained with surprise that it was Maurice who had received a scratch
+on the wrist. Maurice asserted that he felt nothing, and Dr. Quille
+declared, after examination, that his client might continue the fight.
+After the regulation quarter of an hour the duel was resumed. Maurice
+attacked with fury. His adversary was obviously nursing him, and, what
+disturbed Monsieur de la Verdeliere, seemed to be paying very little
+attention to his own defence. At the opening of the fifth bout, a black
+spaniel that had got into the garden no one knew how rushed out from a
+clump of rose-bushes, made its way on to the space reserved for the
+combatants, and, in spite of sticks and cries, ran in between Maurice's
+legs. The latter seemed as though his arm were benumbed, merely gave a
+shoulder-thrust at his invulnerable opponent. He then delivered a
+straight lunge and impaled his arm on his adversary's sword, which made
+a deep wound just below the elbow.
+
+Monsieur de la Verdeliere stopped the fight, which had lasted an hour
+and a half. Maurice was conscious of a painful shock. They laid him down
+on a grassy bank against a wall covered with wistaria. While the surgeon
+was dressing the wound Maurice called Arcade and offered him his wounded
+hand. And when the victor, saddened with his victory, advanced, Maurice
+embraced him tenderly, saying:
+
+"Be generous, Arcade; forgive my treachery. Now that we have fought, I
+can ask you to be reconciled with me."
+
+He embraced his friend, weeping, and whispered in his ear:
+
+"Come and see me, and bring Gilberte."
+
+Maurice, who was still unreconciled with his parents, was taken to the
+little flat in the Rue de Rome. No sooner was he stretched on the bed at
+the far end of the bedroom where the curtains were drawn as on the day
+of the apparition, than he saw Arcade and Gilberte appear. He began to
+suffer greatly from his wound; his temperature was rising, but he was at
+peace, happy and contented. Angel and woman, both in tears, threw
+themselves at the foot of the bed. He took both their hands with his
+left, smiled on them, and kissed them tenderly.
+
+"I am sure now that I shall never quarrel with either of you again; you
+will deceive me no more. I now know you are capable of anything."
+
+Gilberte, weeping, swore that Maurice had been misled by appearances,
+that she had never betrayed him with Arcade, that she had never betrayed
+him at all. And in a great gush of sincerity she persuaded herself that
+this was so.
+
+"You wrong yourself, Gilberte," replied the wounded man. "It did happen;
+it had to. And it is well. Gilberte, you were basely false to me with my
+best friend in this very room, and you were right. If you had not been
+we should not be here, reunited, all three of us, and I should not be at
+your side tasting the greatest happiness of my life. Oh, Gilberte, how
+wrong of you to deny a perfect and accomplished fact!"
+
+"If you wish, my friend," replied Gilberte, a little acidly, "I will not
+deny it. But it will only be to please you."
+
+Maurice made her sit down on the bed, and begged Arcade to be seated in
+the arm-chair.
+
+"My friend," said Arcade, "I was innocent. I became man. Straightway I
+did evil. Then I became better."
+
+"Do not let us exaggerate things," said Maurice. "Let's have a game of
+bridge."
+
+Scarcely, however, had the patient seen three aces in his hand and
+called "no trumps," than his eyes began to swim, the cards slipped from
+his fingers, head fell heavily back on the pillow, and he complained of
+a violent headache. Almost immediately, Madame des Aubels went off to
+pay some calls, for she made a point of appearing in Society, in order
+that the calmness and confidence of her demeanour might give the lie to
+the various rumours that were current concerning her. Arcade saw her to
+the door, and, with a kiss, inhaled from her a delicate perfume which he
+brought back with him into the room where Maurice lay dozing.
+
+"I am perfectly content," murmured the latter, "that things should have
+happened as they have."
+
+"It was bound to be so," answered the Spirit. "All the other angels in
+revolt would have done as I did with Gilberte. 'Women,' saith the
+Apostle, 'should pray with their heads covered, because of the angels,'
+and the Apostle speaks thus because he knows that the angels are
+disturbed when they look upon them and see that they are beautiful. No
+sooner do they touch the earth than they desire to embrace mortal women
+and fulfil their desire. Their clasp is full of strength and sweetness,
+they hold the secret of those ineffable caresses which plunge the
+daughters of men into unfathomable depths of delight. Laying upon the
+lips of their happy victims a honey that burns like fire, making their
+veins flow with torrents of refreshing flames, they leave them raptured
+and undone."
+
+"Stop your clatter, you unclean beast," cried the wounded one.
+
+"One word more!" said the angel; "just one other word, my dear Maurice,
+to bear out what I say, and I will let you rest quietly. There's nothing
+like having sound references. In order to assure yourself that I am not
+deceiving you, Maurice, on this subject of the amorous embraces of
+angels and women, look up Justin, _Apologies_, I and II; Flavius
+Josephus, _Jewish Antiquities_, Book I, Chapter III; Athenagoras,
+_Concerning the Resurrection_; Lactantius, Book II, Chapter XV;
+Tertullian, _On the Veil of the Virgins_; Marcus of Ephesus in
+_Psellus_; Eusebius, _Praeparatio Evangelica_, Book V, Chapter IV; Saint
+Ambrose, in his book on _Noah and the Ark_, Chapter V; Saint Augustine,
+in his _City of God_, Book XV, Chapter XXIII; Father Meldonat, the
+Jesuit, _Treatise on Demons_, page 248; Pierre Lebyer the King's
+Counsellor----"
+
+"Arcade, please, for pity's sake, be quiet; do, please do, and send this
+dog away," cried Maurice, whose face was burning, and whose eyes were
+starting from his head; for in his delirium he thought he saw a black
+spaniel on his bed.
+
+Madame de la Verdeliere, who was assiduous in every modish and patriotic
+practice, was reckoned, in the best French society, as one of the most
+gracious of the great ladies interested in good works. She came herself
+to ask for news of Maurice, and offered to nurse the wounded man. But at
+the vehement instigation of Madame des Aubels, Arcade shut the door in
+her face. Expressions of sympathy were showered upon Maurice. Piled on
+the salver, visiting cards displayed their innumerable little dogs'
+ears. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was one of the first to show his manly
+sympathy at the flat in the Rue de Rome, and, holding out his loyal
+hand, asked young d'Esparvieu as one honourable man to another for
+twenty-five louis to pay a debt of honour.
+
+"Of course, my dear Maurice, that is the sort of thing one could not ask
+of everybody."
+
+The same day Monsieur Gaetan came to press his nephew's hand. The latter
+introduced Arcade.
+
+"This is my guardian angel, whose foot you thought so beautiful when you
+saw the print it had made on the tell-tale powder, uncle. He appeared to
+me last year in this very room. You don't believe it? Well, it is true,
+nevertheless."
+
+Then turning towards the Spirit he said:
+
+"What say you, Arcade? The Abbe Patouille, who is a great theologian and
+a good priest, does not believe that you are an angel; and Uncle Gaetan,
+who doesn't know his catechism and hasn't a scrap of religion in him,
+doesn't think so either. They deny you, the pair of them; the one
+because he has faith, the other because he hasn't. After that you may be
+sure that your history, if ever it comes to be narrated, will scarcely
+appear credible. Moreover, the man that took it into his head to tell
+your story would not be a man of taste, and would not come in for much
+approval. For your story is not a pretty one. I love you, but I sit in
+judgment upon you, too. Since you fell into atheism, you have become an
+abominable scoundrel. A bad angel, a bad friend, a traitor, and a
+homicide, for I suppose it was to bring about my death that you sent
+that black spaniel between my legs on the duelling-ground."
+
+The angel shrugged his shoulders and, addressing Gaetan, said:
+
+"Alas! Monsieur, I am not surprised at finding little credit in your
+eyes. I have been told that you have fallen out with the Judaeo-Christian
+heaven, which is where I came from."
+
+"Monsieur," answered Gaetan, "my faith in Jehovah is not sufficiently
+strong to enable me to believe in his angels."
+
+"Monsieur, he whom you call Jehovah is really a coarse and ignorant
+demiurge, and his name is Ialdabaoth."
+
+"In that case, Monsieur, I am perfectly ready to believe in him. He is a
+narrow-minded ignoramus, is he? Then belief in his existence offers me
+no further difficulty. How is he getting on?"
+
+"Badly! We are going to lay him low next month."
+
+"Don't make too sure of that, Monsieur. You remind me of my
+brother-in-law, Cuissart, who has been expecting to hear of the fall of
+the Republic for the past thirty years."
+
+"You see, Arcade," exclaimed Maurice, "Uncle Gaetan thinks as I do. He
+knows you won't succeed."
+
+"And, pray, Monsieur Gaetan, what makes you think I shall not succeed?"
+
+"Your Ialdabaoth is still very powerful in this world, if he isn't in
+the other. In days gone by he used to be upheld by his priests, by those
+who believed in him. Now he is supported by those who do not believe in
+him, by the philosophers. A pedant of a fellow called Picrochole has
+recently come on the scene who wants to make a bankrupt of science in
+order to do a good turn to the Church. And just lately Pragmatism has
+been invented for the express purpose of gaining credit for religion in
+the minds of rationalists."
+
+"You have been studying Pragmatism?"
+
+"Not I! I was frivolous once, and I went in for metaphysics. I read
+Hegel and Kant. I have become serious with years, and now I only trouble
+myself about things evident to the senses: what the eye can see or what
+the ear can hear. Man is summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine."
+
+Thus the conversation went on until evening; it was marked by
+obscenities that would have brought a blush--I will not say to a
+cuirassier, for cuirassiers are frequently chaste, but even to a
+Parisienne.
+
+Monsieur Sariette came to see his old pupil. When he entered the room
+the bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu seemed to take shape behind the
+librarian's bald head. He drew near the bed. In the place of blue
+curtains, mirrored wardrobe, and chimney-piece, there straightway came
+into view the heavy-laden bookcases of the room of the globes and busts,
+and the air was heavy with piles of papers, records, and files. Monsieur
+Sariette could not be dissociated from his library; one could not
+conceive of him or even see him apart from it. He himself was paler,
+more vague, more shadowy, and more a creature of the fancy than the
+fancies he evoked.
+
+Maurice, who had grown very quiet, was sensible of this mark of
+friendship.
+
+"Sit down, Monsieur Sariette,--you know Madame des Aubels. May I
+introduce Arcade to you,--my guardian angel. It was he who, while yet
+invisible, pillaged your library for two years, made you lose all desire
+for food and drink, and drove you to the verge of madness. He it was who
+moved piles of books from the room of the busts to my summer-house one
+day; under your very nose, he took away I know not what precious
+volumes; and was the cause of your falling on the staircase; another day
+he took a volume of Salomon Reinach's, and, forced to go out with me
+(for he never left me, as I have learnt later), he let the volume drop
+in the gutter of the Rue Princesse. Forgive him, Monsieur Sariette,--he
+had no pockets. He was invisible. I bitterly regret, Monsieur Sariette,
+that all your old books were not devoured by fire or swallowed up by a
+flood. They made my angel lose his head. He became man, and now knows
+neither faith nor obedience to laws. It is I, now, who am his guardian
+angel. God knows how it will all end."
+
+While listening to this speech, Monsieur Sariette's face took on an
+expression of infinite, irreparable, eternal sadness; the sadness of a
+mummy. Rising to take his leave, the sorrowful librarian murmured in
+Arcade's ear:
+
+"The poor child is very ill. He is delirious."
+
+Maurice called the old man back.
+
+"Do stay, Monsieur Sariette. You shall have a game of bridge with us.
+Monsieur Sariette, listen to my advice. Do not do as I did--do not keep
+bad company. You will be lost. I shudder at the mere thought. Monsieur
+Sariette, do not go yet. I have something very important to ask you.
+When you come again, bring me a book on the truth of religion, so that I
+may study it. I must restore to my guardian-angel the faith which he has
+lost."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+     WHEREIN WE ARE LED TO MARVEL AT THE READINESS WITH WHICH AN
+     HONEST MAN OF TIMID AND GENTLE NATURE CAN COMMIT A HORRIBLE
+     CRIME
+
+
+Profoundly distressed by the dark utterances of young Maurice, Monsieur
+Sariette took a motor-omnibus, and went to see Pere Guinardon, his
+friend, his only friend, the one person in the whole world whom it gave
+him pleasure to see and hear. When Monsieur Sariette entered the shop in
+the Rue de Courcelles, Guinardon was alone, dozing in the depths of an
+antique arm-chair. His face, surrounded by his curly hair and luxuriant
+beard, was crimson in hue. Little violet filaments spread a network
+about the fleshy part of his nose, to which the wines of Burgundy had
+imparted a purple tint; for there was no longer any disguising the fact,
+Pere Guinardon drank. Two feet away from him, on the fair Octavie's
+work-table, a rose, all but withered, drooped in an empty vase, and in a
+basket a piece of embroidery was lying unfinished and neglected. The
+young Octavie's absences from the shop were growing more and more
+frequent, and Monsieur Blancmesnil never called when she was not there.
+The reason of this was that they were meeting three times a week at five
+o'clock in a house close to the Champs Elysees. Pere Guinardon knew
+nothing of that. He did not know the full extent of his misfortune, but
+he suffered.
+
+Monsieur Sariette shook his old friend by the hand; but he did not
+enquire for the young Octavie, for he refused to recognise the
+connexion. He would sooner have talked about Zephyrine, who had been so
+cruelly deserted, and whom he hoped the old man would make his lawful
+wife. But Monsieur Sariette was prudent. He contented himself with
+asking Guinardon how he was.
+
+"Perfectly well," was Guinardon's reply; but he felt ill, for either age
+and love-making had undermined his sturdy constitution, or else young
+Octavie's faithlessness had dealt her lover a fatal blow. "God be
+praised," he went on, "I still retain my powers of mind and body. I am
+chaste. Be chaste, Sariette. Chastity is strength."
+
+That evening Pere Guinardon had taken some specially valuable books out
+of the king-wood cabinet to show to a distinguished bibliophile,
+Monsieur Victor Meyer, and after the latter's departure he had dropped
+off to sleep without putting them back in their places. Books had an
+attraction for Monsieur Sariette, and seeing these particular volumes
+on the marble top of the cabinet, he began to examine them with
+interest. The first one he looked at was _La Pucelle_, in morocco, with
+the English continuation. Doubtless it pained his patriotic and
+Christian heart to admire its text and illustrations, but a good copy
+was always virtuous and pure in his sight. Continuing to chat very
+affectionately with Guinardon, he picked up, one by one, the books which
+the antiquary had, for one reason or another--binding, illustrations,
+distinguished ownership, or scarcity--added to his stock.
+
+Suddenly a glorious shout of joy and love broke from his lips. He had
+discovered the _Lucretius_ of the Prior de Vendome, his _Lucretius_, and
+he was clasping it to his bosom.
+
+"Once again I behold you," he sighed, as he pressed it to his lips.
+
+At first Pere Guinardon could not quite make out what his old friend was
+talking about; but when the latter declared to him that the volume was
+from the d'Esparvieu collection, that it belonged to him, Sariette, and
+that he was going to take it away without further ado, the antiquary
+completely woke up, got on his legs, declared emphatically that the book
+belonged to him, Guinardon, by right of true and lawful purchase, and
+that he would not part with it unless he got five thousand francs for it
+cash down.
+
+"You don't take in what I am telling you," answered Sariette. "The book
+belongs to the d'Esparvieu library; I must restore it to its place."
+
+"_Pas de ca, Lisette_"---- hummed Guinardon.
+
+"The book belongs to me, I tell you!"
+
+"You are crazy, my good Sariette!"
+
+And noticing that, as a matter of fact, the librarian had a wandering
+look in his eye, he took the book from him, and tried to change the
+conversation.
+
+"Have you seen, Sariette, that the rascals are going to rip up the
+Palais Mazarin, and cover up the very heart and centre of the Old Town,
+the finest and most venerable place in the whole of Paris, with the
+deuce knows what works of art of theirs? They are worse than the
+Vandals, for the Vandals, although they destroyed the buildings of
+antiquity, did not replace them with hideous and disgusting erections
+and atrocious bridges like the Pont d'Alexandre. And your poor Rue
+Garanciere, Sariette, has fallen a prey to the barbarians. What have
+they done with the pretty bronze mask of the Palace fountain?"
+
+Monsieur Sariette never listened to a word of all this.
+
+"Guinardon, you have not understood me. Now listen. This book belongs to
+the d'Esparvieu library. It was taken away, how or by whom I know not.
+Dreadful and mysterious things went on in that library. But, anyhow, the
+book was stolen. I need scarcely appeal to your sentiments of scrupulous
+probity, my dear friend. You would not like to be regarded as the
+receiver of stolen goods. Give me the book. I will return it to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu, who will duly requite you; of that you may be sure. Rely on
+his generosity, and you will be acting like the downright good fellow
+that you are."
+
+The antiquary smiled a bitter smile.
+
+"Catch me relying on the generosity of that old curmudgeon of a
+d'Esparvieu. Why, he'd skin a flea to get its coat. Look at me,
+Sariette, old boy, and tell me if I look like a dunderhead. You know
+perfectly well that d'Esparvieu refused to give fifty francs in a
+second-hand shop for a portrait of Alexandre d'Esparvieu, the founder of
+the family, by Hersent, and that consequently the founder of the family
+has had to remain on the Boulevard Montparnasse, propped against a Jew
+hawker's stall, just opposite the cemetery, where all the dogs of the
+neighbourhood come and make water on him. Catch me trusting to Monsieur
+d'Esparvieu's liberality! You've got some bright ideas in your head, you
+have!"
+
+"Very well, Guinardon, I myself will undertake to pay you any indemnity
+that a board of arbitrators may fix upon. Do you hear?"
+
+"Now don't go and do the handsome for people who won't give you so much
+as a thank-you. This man, d'Esparvieu, has taken your knowledge, your
+energies, your whole life for a salary that even a valet wouldn't
+accept. So leave that idea alone. In any case it is too late. The book
+is sold."
+
+"Sold? To whom?" asked Sariette in agonized tones.
+
+"What does that matter? You'll never see it again. You'll hear no more
+about it; it's off to America."
+
+"To America! The _Lucretius_ with the arms of Philippe de Vendome and
+marginalia in Voltaire's own hand! My _Lucretius_ off to America!"
+
+Pere Guinardon began to laugh.
+
+"My dear Sariette, you remind me of the Chevalier des Grieux when he
+learns that his darling mistress is to be transported to the
+Mississippi. 'My dear mistress going to the Mississippi!' says he."
+
+"No! no!" answered Sariette, very pale, "this book shall not go to
+America. It shall return, as it ought, to the d'Esparvieu library. Let
+me have it, Guinardon."
+
+The antiquary made a second attempt to put an end to an interview that
+now looked as if it might take an ugly turn.
+
+"My good Sariette, you haven't told me what you think of my Greco. You
+never so much as glanced at it. It is an admirable piece of work all
+the same."
+
+And Guinardon, putting the picture in a good light, went on:
+
+"Now just look at Saint Francis here, the poor man of the Lord, the
+brother of Jesus. See how his fuliginous body rises heavenward like the
+smoke from an agreeable sacrifice, like the sacrifice of Abel."
+
+"Give me the book, Guinardon," said Sariette, without turning his head;
+"give me the book."
+
+The blood suddenly flew to Pere Guinardon's head.
+
+"That's enough of it," he shouted, as red as a turkey-cock, the veins
+standing out on his forehead.
+
+And he dropped the _Lucretius_ into his jacket pocket.
+
+Straightway old Sariette flew at the antiquary, assailed him with sudden
+fury, and, frail and weakly as he was, butted him back into young
+Octavie's arm-chair.
+
+Guinardon, in furious amazement, belched forth the most horrible abuse
+on the old maniac and gave him a punch that sent him staggering back
+four paces against the _Coronation of the Virgin_, by Fra Angelico,
+which fell down with a crash. Sariette returned to the charge, and tried
+to drag the book out of the pocket in which it lay hid. This time Pere
+Guinardon would really have floored him had he not been blinded by the
+blood that was rushing to his head, and hit sideways at the work-table
+of his absent mistress. Sariette fastened himself on to his bewildered
+adversary, held him down in the arm-chair, and with his little bony
+hands clutched him by the neck, which, red as it was already, became a
+deep crimson. Guinardon struggled to get free, but the little fingers,
+feeling the mass of soft, warm flesh about them, embedded themselves in
+it with delicious ecstasy. Some unknown force made them hold fast to
+their prey. Guinardon's throat began to rattle, saliva was oozing from
+one corner of his mouth. His enormous frame quivered now and again
+beneath the grasp; but the tremors grew more and more intermittent and
+spasmodic. At last they ceased. The murderous hands did not let go their
+hold. Sariette had to make a violent effort to loose them. His temples
+were buzzing. Nevertheless he could hear the rain falling outside,
+muffled steps going past on the pavement, newspaper men shouting in the
+distance. He could see umbrellas passing along in the dim light. He drew
+the book from the dead man's pocket and fled.
+
+The fair Octavie did not go back to the shop that night. She went to
+sleep in a little entresol underneath the bric-a-brac stores which
+Monsieur de Blancmesnil had recently bought for her in this same Rue de
+Courcelles. The workman whose task it was to shut up the shop found the
+antiquary's body still warm. He called Madame Lenain, the concierge,
+who laid Guinardon on the couch, lit a couple of candles, put a sprig of
+box in a saucer of holy water, and closed the dead man's eyes. The
+doctor who was called in to certify the death ascribed it to apoplexy.
+
+Zephyrine, informed of what had happened by Madame Lenain, hastened to
+the house, and sat up all night with the body. The dead man looked as if
+he were sleeping. In the flickering light of the candles El Greco's
+Saint mounted upwards like a wreath of smoke, the gold of the Primitives
+gleamed in the shadows. Near the deathbed a little woman by Baudouin was
+plainly discernible giving herself a douche. All through the night
+Zephyrine's lamentations could be heard fifty yards away.
+
+"He's dead, he's dead!" she kept saying. "My friend, my divinity, my
+all, my love---- But no! he is not dead, he moves. It is I, Michel; I,
+your Zephyrine. Awake, hear me! Answer me; I love you; if ever I caused
+you pain, forgive me. Dead! dead! O my God! See how beautiful he is. He
+was so good, so clever, so kind. My God! My God! My God! If I had been
+there he would not now be lying dead. Michel! Michel!"
+
+When morning came she was silent. They thought she had fallen asleep.
+She was dead too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+     WHICH DESCRIBES HOW NECTAIRE'S FLUTE WAS HEARD IN THE TAVERN
+     OF CLODOMIR
+
+
+Madame de la Verdeliere having failed to force an _entree_ as
+sick-nurse, returned after several days had elapsed,--during the absence
+of Madame des Aubels,--to ask Maurice d'Esparvieu for his subscription
+to the French churches. Arcade led her to the bedside of the
+convalescent. Maurice whispered in the angel's ear:
+
+"Traitor, deliver me from this ogress immediately, or you will be
+answerable for the evil which will soon befall."
+
+"Be calm," said Arcade, with a confident air.
+
+After the conventional complimentary flourishes, Madame de la Verdeliere
+signed to Maurice to dismiss the angel. Maurice feigned not to
+understand. And Madame de la Verdeliere disclosed the ostensible reason
+of her visit.
+
+"Our churches," she said, "our beloved country churches,--what is to
+become of them?"
+
+Arcade gazed at her angelically and sighed.
+
+"They will disappear, Madame; they will fall into ruin. And what a pity!
+I shall be inconsolable. The church amid the villagers' cottages is like
+the hen amidst her chickens."
+
+"Just so!" exclaimed Madame de la Verdeliere with a delighted smile. "It
+is just like that."
+
+"And the spires, Madame?"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, the spires!..."
+
+"Yes, the spires, Madame, that stick up into the skies towards the
+little Cherubim, like so many syringes."
+
+Madame de la Verdeliere incontinently left the place.
+
+That same day Monsieur l'Abbe Patouille came to offer the wounded man
+good counsel and consolation. He exhorted him to break with his bad
+companions and to be reconciled to his family.
+
+He drew a picture of the sorrowful father, the mother in tears, ready to
+receive their long-lost child with open arms. Renouncing with manly
+effort a life of profligacy and deluding joys, Maurice would recover his
+peace and strength of mind, he would free himself from devouring
+chimeras, and shake off the Evil Spirit.
+
+Young d'Esparvieu thanked Abbe Patouille for all his kindness, and made
+a protestation of his religious feelings.
+
+"Never," said he, "have I had such faith. And never have I been in such
+need of it. Just imagine, Monsieur l'Abbe, I have to teach my guardian
+angel his catechism all over again, for he has quite forgotten it!"
+
+Monsieur l'Abbe Patouille heaved a deep sigh, and exhorted his dear
+child to pray, there being no other resource but prayer for a soul
+assailed by the Devil.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," asked Maurice, "may I introduce my guardian angel to
+you? Do stay a moment; he has gone to get me some cigarettes."
+
+"Unhappy child!"
+
+And Abbe Patouille's fat cheeks drooped in token of affliction. But almost
+immediately they plumped up again, as a sign of light-heartedness. For in
+his heart there was matter for rejoicing. Public opinion was improving.
+The Jacobins, the Freemasons, the Coalitionists were everywhere in
+disgrace. The Smart Set led the way. The Academie Francaise was of the
+right way of thinking. The number of Christian schools was increasing by
+leaps and bounds. The young men of the Quartier Latin were submitting to
+the Church, and the Ecole Normale exhaled the perfume of the seminary. The
+Cross was gaining the day; but money was wanted,--more money, always
+money.
+
+After six weeks' rest, Maurice was allowed by his doctor to take a
+drive. He wore his arm in a sling. His mistress and his friend went
+with him. They drove to the Bois, and took a gentle pleasure in looking
+upon the grass and the trees. They smiled on everything and everything
+smiled on them. As Arcade had said, their faults had made them better.
+By the unlooked-for ways of jealousy and anger, Maurice had attained to
+calm and kindliness. He still loved Gilberte and he loved her with an
+indulgent love. The angel still desired her as much as ever, but having
+once possessed her, his desire had lost the sting of curiosity. Gilberte
+forbore trying to please, and thereby pleased the more. They drank milk
+at the Cascade, and found it good. They were all three innocent. Arcade
+forgot the injustice of the old tyrant of the world. But he was soon to
+be reminded of it.
+
+On entering his friend's house, he found Zita awaiting him, looking like
+a statue in ivory and gold.
+
+"You excite my pity," she said to him. "The day is at hand the like of
+which has never dawned since the beginning of Time, and perhaps will
+never dawn again before the Sun enters with all its train into the
+constellation of Hercules. We are on the eve of surprising Ialdabaoth in
+his palace of porphyry, and you, who are burning to deliver the heavens,
+who were so eager to enter in triumph into your emancipated
+country,--you suddenly forget your noble purpose and fall asleep in the
+arms of the daughters of men. What pleasure can you find in intercourse
+with these unclean little animals, composed, as they are, of elements so
+unstable that they may be said to be in a state of constant evanescence?
+O Arcade! I was indeed right to distrust you. You are but an
+intellectual; you do but feel idle curiosity. You are incapable of
+action."
+
+"You misjudge me, Zita," replied the angel. "It is the nature of the
+sons of heaven to love the daughters of men. Corruptible though it be,
+the material part of women and of flowers charms the senses none the
+less. But not one of these little animals can make me forget my hatred
+and my love, and I am ready to rise up against Ialdabaoth."
+
+Zita expressed her satisfaction at seeing him in this resolute mood. She
+urged him to pursue the accomplishment of this vast undertaking with
+undiminished ardour. Nothing must be hurried or deferred.
+
+"A great action, Arcade, is made up of a multitude of small ones; the
+most majestic whole is composed of a thousand minute details. Let us
+neglect nothing."
+
+She had come to take him to a meeting where his presence was required.
+They were to take a census of the revolutionaries.
+
+She added but one word:
+
+"Nectaire will be there."
+
+When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking in attraction. She failed
+to please him because she was perfectly beautiful and because true
+beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita inspired him with
+antipathy when he learned that she was an angel in revolt and that she
+had come to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.
+
+The poor child tried to retain his companion by all the means that his
+wit and the circumstances afforded him. If his guardian angel would only
+remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent boxing-match, to a
+"revue" where he would witness the apotheosis of Poincare, or, lastly,
+to a certain house he knew of where he would behold women remarkable for
+their beauty, talents, vices, or deformities. But the angel would not
+allow himself to be tempted, and said he was going with Zita.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To plot the conquest of the skies."
+
+"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of---- but there, I proved to you
+that it was neither possible nor desirable."
+
+"Good night, Maurice."
+
+"You are going? Well, I will accompany you."
+
+And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade and Zita all the way
+to Clodomir's restaurant at Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an
+arbour in the garden.
+
+Prince Istar and Theophile were already there, with a little creature
+who looked like a child, and was, in fact, a Japanese angel.
+
+"We are only waiting for Nectaire," said Zita.
+
+And at that moment the old gardener noiselessly appeared. He took his
+seat, and his dog lay down at his feet. French cooking is the best in
+the world. It is a glory that will transcend all others when humanity
+has grown wise enough to put the spit above the sword. Clodomir served
+the angels, and the mortal who was with them, with a soup made of
+cabbages and bacon, a loin of pork and kidneys cooked in wine, thereby
+proving himself a real Montmartre cook, and showing that he had not been
+spoilt by the Americans, who corrupt the most excellent _chefs_ of the
+City of Restaurants.
+
+Clodomir brought forth some Bordeaux, which, though unrecorded among the
+renowned vintages of Medoc, gave evidence by its choice and delicate
+aroma of the high nobility of its origin. We must not omit to chronicle
+that, after this wine and many others had been drunk, the cellarman, in
+solemn state, produced a Burgundy choice and rare, full-bodied yet not
+heavy, generous yet delicate, rich with the true Burgundian mellowness,
+a noble and, withal, a somewhat heady wine, that brought delight alike
+to mind and sense.
+
+"Hail to thee, Dionysus, greatest of the Gods!" cried old Nectaire,
+raising his glass on high. "I drink to thee who wilt restore the Golden
+Age, and give again to mortal men, who will become heroes as of old, the
+grapes which the Lesbians used to cull, long since, from the vines of
+Methymna; who wilt restore the vineyards of Thasus, the white clusters
+of Lake Mareotis, the storehouses of Falernus, the vines of the Tmolus,
+and the wine of Phanae, of all wines the king. And the juice thereof
+shall be divine, and, as in old Silenus' day, men shall grow drunk with
+Wisdom and with Love."
+
+When the coffee was served, Prince Istar, Zita, Arcade, and the Japanese
+angel took it in turns to give an account of the forces assembled
+against Ialdabaoth. Angels, in exchanging eternal bliss for the
+sufferings of an earthly life, grow in intelligence, acquire the means
+of going astray and the faculty of self-contradiction. Consequently
+their meetings, like those of men, are tumultuous and confused. Did one
+of them deal in figures, the others immediately called them in question.
+They could not add one number to another without quarrelling, and
+arithmetic itself, subjected to passion, lost its certitude. The Kerub,
+who had brought with him the pious Theophile, waxed indignant when he
+heard the musician praising the Lord, and rained down such blows on his
+head as would have felled an ox. But the head of a musician is harder
+than a bucranium, and the blows which Theophile received did not avail
+to modify that angel's notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at
+great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita's
+pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.
+
+"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed young Maurice's guardian
+angel. "I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is
+human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the
+mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then,
+Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or
+plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being
+superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the
+professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that
+they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and
+reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the
+demiurge, if he had any brains!"
+
+It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.
+
+"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if
+you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their
+depths thereby."
+
+Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame
+burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the
+shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine
+flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:
+
+"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less
+than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania
+apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite
+spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros--the first of the gods,--plants,
+animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which
+hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations
+were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and
+songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the
+silent skies.
+
+"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this
+one--whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads--has lasted
+or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the
+Infinite."
+
+As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth
+melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits,
+the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion's belt
+was shattered; the Pole Star forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose
+incandescent flame had lit up the far horizon, grew blue, then red,
+flickered, and suddenly died out. The shaken constellations formed new
+signs which were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations the
+magic flute had compressed into one brief moment the life and the
+movement of this universe which seems unchanging and eternal both to men
+and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed their immemorial aspect.
+Nectaire had vanished. Clodomir asked his guests if they were pleased
+with the cabbage soup which, in order that it might be strong, had been
+kept simmering for twenty-four hours on the fire, and he sang the
+praises of the Beaujolais which they had drunk.
+
+The night was mild. Arcade, accompanied by his guardian angel,
+Theophile, Prince Istar, and the Japanese angel, escorted Zita home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+     HOW A DREADFUL CRIME PLUNGES PARIS INTO A STATE OF TERROR
+
+
+The city was asleep. Their footsteps rang loudly on the deserted
+pavement. Having reached the corner of the Rue Feutrier, half-way up
+Montmartre, the little company halted before the dwelling of the
+beautiful angel. Arcade was talking about the Thrones and Dominations
+with Zita, who, her finger on the bell, could not make up her mind to
+ring. Prince Istar was tracing the mechanism of a new sort of bomb on
+the pavement with the end of his stick, and bellowed so loudly that he
+woke the sleeping citizens and stirred into activity the amatory
+passions of the neighbouring Pasiphaes. Theophile was singing the
+barcarole from the second act of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_ at the top
+of his voice. Maurice, his arm in a sling, was fencing left-handed with
+the Japanese, striking sparks from the pavement, and crying "A hit! a
+hit!" in a piercing voice.
+
+Meanwhile Inspector Grolle at the corner of the next street was
+dreaming. He had the bearing of a Roman legionary and displayed all the
+characteristics of that proudly servile race, who, ever since men first
+took to building cities, have been the mainstay of Empires and the
+support of ruling houses. Inspector Grolle was very strong, but very
+tired. He suffered from an arduous profession and from lack of food. He
+was a man devoted to duty, but still a man, and he was unable to resist
+the wiles, the charms, and the blandishments of the gay ladies whom he
+met in swarms in the shadows along the empty streets and round about
+pieces of waste ground; he loved them. He loved like a soldier under
+arms. It tired him, but courage conquered fatigue. Though he had not yet
+reached the middle of Life's way, he longed for sweet repose and
+peaceful country pursuits. At the corner of the Rue Muller, on this mild
+night, he stood lost in thought. He was dreaming of the house where he
+was born, of the little olive wood, of his father's bit of ground, of
+his old mother, bent with long and heavy labour, whom he would never see
+again. Roused from his reverie by the nocturnal tumult, Inspector Grolle
+turned the corner of the street, and looked rather unfavourably at the
+band of loiterers, wherein his social instinct suspected enemies of law
+and order. He was patient and resolute. After a lengthy silence, he
+said, with awe-inspiring calm:
+
+"Move on, there!"
+
+But Maurice and the Japanese angel were fencing and heard nothing. The
+musician heard nothing but his own melodies. Prince Istar was absorbed
+in the explanation of explosive formulae. Zita was discussing with Arcade
+the greatest enterprise that had ever been conceived since the solar
+system issued from its original nebula,--and thus they all remained
+unconscious of their surroundings.
+
+"Move on, I tell you!" repeated Inspector Grolle.
+
+This time the angels heard the solemn word of warning, but either
+through indifference or contempt, they neglected to obey, and continued
+their talk, their songs, and their cries.
+
+"So you want to be taken up, do you?" shouted Inspector Grolle, clapping
+his great hand on Prince Istar's shoulder.
+
+The Kerub was indignant at this vile contact, and with one blow from his
+formidable fist sent the Inspector flying into the gutter. But Constable
+Fesandet was already running to his comrade's aid, and they both fell
+upon the Prince, whom they belaboured with mechanic fury, and whom,
+notwithstanding his strength and weight, they would perchance have
+dragged all bleeding to the police station, had not the Japanese angel
+overset them one after the other without effort, and reduced them to
+writhing and shrieking in the mud, before Maurice, Arcade, and Zita had
+time to intervene. As to the angelic musician, he stood apart trembling,
+and invoked the heavens.
+
+At this moment two bakers who were kneading their dough in a
+neighbouring cellar ran out at the noise, in their white aprons,
+stripped to the waist. With an instinctive feeling for social solidarity
+they took the side of the downfallen police. Theophile conceived a just
+fear at the sight of them, and fled away; they caught him and were about
+to hand him over to the guardians of the peace, when Arcade and Zita
+tore him from their hands. The fight continued, unequal and terrible,
+between the two angels and the two bakers. Like an athlete of Lysippus
+in strength and beauty, Arcade smothered his heavy adversary in his
+arms. The beautiful archangel drove her dagger into the baker who had
+attacked her. A dark stream of blood flowed down over his hairy chest,
+and the two white-capped supporters of the law sank to the ground.
+
+Constable Fesandet had fainted face downwards in the gutter. But
+Inspector Grolle, who had got up, blew a blast on his whistle loud
+enough to be heard at the neighbouring police-station, and sprang upon
+young Maurice, who, having but one arm with which to defend himself,
+fired his revolver with his left hand at the inspector, who put his hand
+to his heart, staggered, and dropped down. He gave a long sigh, and the
+shadows of eternity darkened his eyes.
+
+Meanwhile, windows opened one by one, and heads looked out on the
+street. A sound of heavy steps approached. Two policemen on bicycles
+debouched upon the street. Thereupon Prince Istar flung a bomb which
+shook the ground, put out the gas, shattered some of the houses, and
+enveloped the flight of young Maurice and the angels in a dense smoke.
+
+Arcade and Maurice came to the conclusion that the safest thing to do
+after this adventure was to return to the little flat in the Rue de
+Rome. They would certainly not be sought for immediately and probably
+not at all, the bomb thrown by the Kerub having fortunately wiped out
+all witnesses of the affair. They fell asleep towards dawn, and they had
+not yet awoke at ten o'clock in the morning when the concierge brought
+their tea. While eating his toast and butter and slice of ham, young
+d'Esparvieu remarked to the angel:
+
+"I used to think that a murder was something very extraordinary. Well, I
+was mistaken. It is the simplest, the most natural action in the world."
+
+"And of most ancient tradition," replied the angel. "For long centuries
+it was both usual and necessary for man to kill and despoil his fellows.
+It is still recommended in warfare. It is also honourable to attempt
+human life in certain definite circumstances, and people approved when
+you wanted to assassinate me, Maurice, because it appeared to you that I
+had been intimate with your mistress. But killing a police-inspector is
+not the action of a man of fashion."
+
+"Be silent," exclaimed Maurice, "be silent, scoundrel! I killed the poor
+Inspector instinctively, not knowing what I was doing. I am grieved to
+my heart about it. But it is not I, it is you who are the guilty one;
+you who are the murderer. It was you who lured me along this path of
+revolt and violence which leads to the pit. You have been my undoing.
+You have sacrificed my peace of mind, my happiness, to your pride and
+your wickedness, and all in vain; for I warn you, Arcade, you will not
+succeed in what you are undertaking."
+
+The concierge brought in the newspapers. On seeing them Maurice grew
+pale. They announced the outrage in the Rue de Ramey in huge headlines:
+
+"An Inspector killed--Two cyclist policemen and two bakers seriously
+wounded--Three houses blown up, numerous victims."
+
+Maurice let the paper drop, and said in a weak, plaintive voice:
+
+"Arcade, why did you not slay me in the little garden at Versailles
+amidst the roses, to the song of the blackbirds?"
+
+Meanwhile terror reigned in Paris. In the public squares, and in the
+crowded streets, house-wives, string-bag in hand, grew pale as they
+listened to the story of the crime, and consigned the perpetrators to
+the most dreadful punishment. Shop-keepers, standing at the doors of
+their shops, put it all down to the anarchists, syndicalists,
+socialists, and radicals, and demanded that special measures should be
+taken against them.
+
+The more thoughtful people recognized the handiwork of the Jew and the
+German, and demanded the expulsion of all aliens. Many vaunted the ways
+of America and advocated lynching. In addition to the printed news
+sinister rumours became current. Explosions had been heard at various
+places; everywhere bombs had been discovered; everywhere individuals,
+taken for malefactors, had been struck down by the popular arm and given
+up to justice, torn to ribbons. On the Place de la Republique a drunkard
+who was crying "Down with the police" was torn to pieces by the crowd.
+
+The President of the Council and Minister of Justice held long
+conferences with the Prefect of Police, and they agreed to take
+immediate action. In order to allay the excitement of the Parisians,
+they arrested five or six hooligans out of the thirty thousand which the
+Capital contains. The chief of the Russian police, believing he
+recognised in this attack the methods of the Nihilists, demanded, on
+behalf of his Government, that a dozen refugees should be given up. The
+demand was immediately granted. Proceedings were also taken for certain
+individuals to be extradited to ensure the safety of the King of Spain.
+
+On learning of these energetic measures, Paris breathed once more, and
+the evening papers congratulated the Government. There was excellent
+news of the wounded. They were out of danger and identified as their
+assailants all who were brought before them.
+
+True, Inspector Grolle was dead; but two Sisters of Mercy kept vigil at
+his side, and the President of the Council came and laid the Cross of
+Honour on the breast of this victim of duty.
+
+At night there were panics. In the Avenue de la Revolte the police,
+noticing a travelling acrobat's caravan on a piece of waste ground, took
+it for the retreat of a band of robbers. They whistled for help, and
+when they were a goodly number, attacked the caravan. Some worthy
+citizens joined them; fifteen thousand revolver-shots were fired, the
+caravan was blown up with dynamite, and among the debris they found the
+corpse of a monkey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+     WHICH CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF THE ARREST OF BOUCHOTTE AND
+     MAURICE, OF THE DISASTER WHICH BEFELL THE D'ESPARVIEU
+     LIBRARY, AND OF THE DEPARTURE OF THE ANGELS
+
+
+Maurice d'Esparvieu passed a terrible night. At the least sound he
+seized his revolver that he might not fall alive into the hands of
+justice. When morning came he snatched the newspapers from the hands of
+the concierge, devoured them greedily, and gave a cry of joy; he had
+just read that Inspector Grolle having been taken to the Morgue for the
+post-mortem, the police-surgeons had only discovered bruises and
+contusions of a very superficial nature, and stated that death had been
+brought about by the rupture of an aneurism of the aorta.
+
+"You see, Arcade," he exclaimed triumphantly; "you see I am not an
+assassin. I am innocent. I could never have imagined how extremely
+agreeable it is to be innocent."
+
+Then he grew thoughtful, and--no unusual phenomenon--reflection
+dissipated his gaiety.
+
+"I am innocent,--but there is no disguising the fact," he said, shaking
+his head, "I am one of a band of malefactors. I live with miscreants.
+You are in your right place there, Arcade, for you are deceitful, cruel,
+and perverse. But I come of good family and have received an excellent
+education, and I blush for it."
+
+"I also," said Arcade, "have received an excellent education."
+
+"Where was that?"
+
+"In Heaven."
+
+"No, Arcade, no; you never had any education. If good principles had
+been inculcated into you, you would still hold them. Such principles are
+never lost. In my childhood I learnt to revere my family, my country, my
+religion. I have not forgotten the lesson and I never shall. Do you know
+what shocks me most in you? It is not your perversity, your cruelty,
+your black ingratitude; it is not your agnosticism, which may be borne
+with at a pinch; it is not your scepticism, though it is very much out
+of date (for since the national awakening there is no longer any
+scepticism in France);--no, what disgusts me in you is your lack of
+taste, the bad style of your ideas, the inelegance of your doctrines.
+You think like an intellectual, you speak like a freethinker, you have
+theories which reek of radicalism and Combeism and all ignoble systems.
+Get along with you! you disgust me. Arcade, my old friend, Arcade, my
+dear angel, Arcade, my beloved child, listen to your guardian angel!
+Yield to my prayers, renounce your mad ideas; become good, simple,
+innocent, and happy once more. Put on your hat, come with me to
+Notre-Dame. We will say a prayer and burn a candle together."
+
+Meanwhile public opinion was still active in the matter; the leading
+papers, the organs of the national awakening, in articles of real
+elevation and real depth, unravelled the philosophy of this monstrous
+attack which was revolting to the conscience. They discovered the real
+origin, the indirect but effective cause in the revolutionary doctrines
+which had been disseminated unchecked, in the weakening of social ties,
+the relaxing of moral discipline, in the repeated appeals to every
+appetite, to every greedy desire. It would be needful, so as to cut down
+the evil at its root, to repudiate as quickly as possible all such
+chimeras and Utopias as syndicalism, the income-tax, etc., etc., etc.
+Many newspapers, and these not the least important, pointed out that the
+recrudescence of crime was but the natural fruit of impiety and
+concluded that the salvation of society lay in an unanimous and sincere
+return to religion. On the Sunday which followed the crime the
+congregations in the churches were noticed to be unusually large.
+
+Judge Salneuve, who was entrusted with the task of investigation, first
+examined the persons arrested by the police, and lost his way among
+attractive but illusory clues; however, the report of the detective
+Montremain, which was laid before him, put him on the right road, and
+soon led him to recognise the miscreants of La Jonchere as the authors
+of the crime of the Rue de Ramey. He ordered a search to be made for
+Arcade and Zita, and issued a warrant against Prince Istar, on whom the
+detectives laid hands as he was leaving Bouchotte's, where he had been
+depositing some bombs of new design. The Kerub, on learning the
+detectives' intentions, smiled broadly and asked them if they had a
+powerful motor-car. On their replying that they had one at the door, he
+assured them that was all he wanted. Thereupon he felled the two
+detectives on the stairs, walked up to the waiting car, flung the
+chauffeur under a motor-'bus which was opportunely passing, and seized
+the steering wheel under the eyes of the terrified crowd.
+
+That same evening Monsieur Jeancourt, the Police Magistrate, entered
+Theophile's rooms just when Bouchotte was swallowing a raw egg to clear
+her voice, for she was to sing her new song, "They haven't got any in
+Germany," at the "National Eldorado" that evening. The musician was
+absent. Bouchotte received the Magistrate, and received him with a
+hauteur which intensified the simplicity of her attire; Bouchotte was
+_en deshabille_. The worthy Magistrate seized the score of _Aline, Queen
+of Golconda_, and the love-letters which the singer carefully preserved
+in the drawer of the table by her bed, for she was an orderly young
+woman. He was about to withdraw when he espied a cupboard, which he
+opened with a careless air, and found machines capable of blowing up
+half Paris, and a pair of large white wings, whose nature and use
+appeared inexplicable to him. Bouchotte was invited to complete her
+toilette, and, in spite of her cries, was taken off to the
+police-station.
+
+Monsieur Salneuve was indefatigable. After the examination of the papers
+seized in Bouchotte's house, and acting on the information of
+Montremain, he issued a warrant for the arrest of young d'Esparvieu,
+which was executed on Wednesday, the 27th May, at seven o'clock in the
+morning, with great discretion. For three days Maurice had neither slept
+nor eaten, loved nor lived. He had not a moment's doubt as to the nature
+of the matutinal visit. At the sight of the police magistrate a strange
+calm fell on him. Arcade had not returned to sleep in the flat. Maurice
+begged the magistrate to wait for him, dressed with care, and then
+accompanied the magistrate a calmness of mind which was barely
+disturbed when the door of the Conciergerie closed on him. Alone in his
+cell, he climbed upon the table to look out. His tranquillity was due to
+his weariness of spirit, to his numbed senses, and to the fact that he
+no longer stood in fear of arrest. His misfortune endowed him with
+superior wisdom. He felt he had fallen into a state of grace. He did not
+think too highly or too humbly of himself, but left his cause in the
+hands of God. With no desire to cover up his faults, which he would not
+hide even from himself, he addressed himself in mind to Providence, to
+point out that if he had fallen into disorder and rebellion it was to
+lead his erring angel back into the straight path. He stretched himself
+on the couch and slept in peace.
+
+On hearing of the arrest of a music-hall singer and of a young man of
+fashion, both Paris and the provinces felt painful surprise. Deeply
+stirred by the tragic accounts which the leading newspapers were
+bringing out, the general idea was that the sort of people the
+authorities ought to bring to justice were ferocious anarchists, all
+reeking and dripping from deeds of blood and arson; but they failed to
+understand what the world of Art and Fashion should have to do with such
+things. At this news, which he was one of the last to hear, the
+President of the Council and Keeper of the Seals started up in his
+chair. The Sphinxes that adorned it were less terrible than he, and in
+the throes of his angry meditation he cut the mahogany of his imperial
+table with his penknife, after the manner of Napoleon. And when Judge
+Salneuve, whose attendance he had commanded, appeared before him, the
+President flung his penknife in the grate, as Louis XIV flung his cane
+out of the window in the presence of Lauzun; and it cost him a supreme
+effort to master himself and to say in a voice of suppressed fury:
+
+"Are you mad? Surely I said often enough that I meant the plot to be
+anarchist, anti-social, fundamentally anti-social and anti-governmental,
+with a shade of syndicalism. I have made it clear enough that I wanted
+it kept within these lines; and what do you go and make of it?... The
+vengeance of anarchists and aspirants to freedom? Whom do you arrest? A
+singer adored of the nationalist public, and the son of a man highly
+esteemed in the Catholic party, who receives our bishops and has the
+_entree_ to the Vatican; a man who may be one day sent as ambassador to
+the Pope. At one blow you alienate one hundred and sixty Deputies and
+forty Senators of the Right on the very eve of a motion to discuss the
+question of religious pacification; you embroil me with my friends of
+to-day, with my friends of to-morrow. Was it to find out if you were in
+the same dilemma as des Aubels that you seized the love-letters of
+young Maurice d'Esparvieu? I can put your mind at rest on that point.
+You are, and all Paris knows it. But it is not to avenge your personal
+affronts that you are on the Bench."
+
+"Monsieur le Garde des Sceaux," murmured the Judge, nearly apoplectic
+and in a choked voice. "I am an honest man."
+
+"You are a fool ... and a provincial. Listen to me; if Maurice
+d'Esparvieu and Mademoiselle Bouchotte are not released within half an
+hour I will crush you like a piece of glass. Be off!"
+
+Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu went himself to fetch his son from the
+Conciergerie and took him back to the old house in the Rue Garanciere.
+The return was triumphant. The news had been disseminated that Maurice
+had with generous imprudence interested himself in an attempt to restore
+the monarchy, and that Judge Salneuve, the infamous freemason, the tool
+of Combes and Andre, had tried to compromise the young man by making him
+out to be an accomplice of a band of criminals.
+
+That was what Abbe Patouille seemed to think, and he answered for
+Maurice as for himself. It was known, moreover, that breaking with his
+father, who had rallied to the support of the Republic, young
+d'Esparvieu was on the high road to becoming an out-and-out Royalist.
+The people who had an inside knowledge of things saw in his arrest the
+vengeance of the Jews. Was not Maurice a notorious anti-Semite? Catholic
+youths went forth to hurl imprecations at Judge Salneuve under the
+windows of his residence in the Rue Guenegaud, opposite the Mint.
+
+On the Boulevard du Palais a band of students presented Maurice with a
+branch of palm. Maurice made a charming reply.
+
+Maurice was overcome with emotion when he beheld the old house in which
+his childhood had been spent, and fell weeping into his mother's arms.
+
+It was a great day, unhappily marred by one painful incident. Monsieur
+Sariette, who had lost his reason as a consequence of the shocking
+events that had taken place in the Rue de Courcelles, had suddenly
+become violent. He had shut himself up in the library, and there he had
+remained for twenty-four hours, uttering the most horrible cries, and,
+turning a deaf ear alike to threats and entreaties, refused to come out.
+He had spent the night in a condition of extreme restlessness, for all
+night long the lamp had been seen passing rapidly to and fro behind the
+curtains. In the morning, hearing Hippolyte shouting to him from the
+court below, he opened the window of the Hall of the Spheres and the
+Philosophers, and heaved two or three rather weighty tomes on to the old
+valet's head. The whole of the domestic staff--men, women, and
+boys--hurried to the spot, and the librarian proceeded to throw out
+books by the armful on to their heads. In view of the gravity of the
+situation, Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu did not disdain to intervene. He
+appeared in night-cap and dressing-gown, and attempted to reason with
+the poor lunatic, whose only reply was to pour forth torrents of abuse
+on the man whom till then he had worshipped as his benefactor, and to
+endeavour to crush him beneath all the Bibles, all the Talmuds, all the
+sacred books of India and Persia, all the Greek Fathers, and all the
+Latin Fathers, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Saint
+Augustine, Saint Jerome, all the apologists, ay! and under the _Histoire
+des Variations_, annotated by Bossuet himself! Octavos, quartos, folios
+came crashing down, and lay in a sordid heap on the courtyard pavement.
+The letters of Gassendi, of Pere Mersenne, of Pascal, were blown about
+hither and thither by the wind. The lady's-maid who had stooped down to
+rescue some of the sheets from the gutter got a blow on the head from an
+enormous Dutch atlas. Madame Rene d'Esparvieu had been terrified by the
+ominous sounds, and appeared on the scene without waiting to apply the
+finishing touches of powder and paint. When he caught sight of her, old
+Sariette became more violent than ever. Down they came one after another
+as hard as he could pelt them; the busts of the poets, philosophers,
+and historians of antiquity--Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero,
+Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Epictetus--all lay scattered on the ground. The
+celestial sphere and the terrestrial globe descended with a terrifying
+crash that was followed by a ghastly hush, broken only by the shrill
+laughter of little Leon, who was looking down on the scene from a window
+above. A locksmith having opened the library door, all the household
+hastened to enter, and found the aged Sariette entrenched behind piles
+of books, busily engaged in tearing and slashing away at the _Lucretius_
+of the Prior de Vendome annotated in Voltaire's own hand. They had to
+force a way through the barricade. But the maniac, perceiving that his
+stronghold was being invaded, fled away and escaped on to the roof. For
+two whole hours he gave vent to shouts and yells that were heard far and
+wide. In the Rue Garanciere the crowd kept growing bigger and bigger.
+All had their eyes fixed on the unhappy creature, and whenever he
+stumbled on the slates, which cracked beneath him, they gave a shout of
+terror. In the midst of the crowd, the Abbe Patouille, who expected
+every moment to see him hurled into space, was reciting the prayers for
+the dying, and making ready to give him the absolution _in extremis_.
+There was a cordon of police round the house keeping order. Someone
+summoned the fire-brigade, and the sound of their approach was soon
+heard. They placed a ladder against the wall of the house, and after a
+terrific struggle managed to secure the maniac, who in the course of his
+desperate resistance had one of the muscles of his arm torn out. He was
+immediately removed to an asylum.
+
+Maurice dined at home, and there were smiles of tenderness and affection
+when Victor, the old butler, brought on the roast veal. Monsieur l'Abbe
+Patouille sat at the right hand of the Christian mother, unctuously
+contemplating the family which Heaven had so plentifully blessed.
+Nevertheless, Madame d'Esparvieu was ill at ease. Every day she received
+anonymous letters of so insulting and coarse a nature that she thought
+at first they must come from a discharged footman. She now knew they
+were the handiwork of her youngest daughter, Berthe, a mere child!
+Little Leon, too, gave her pain and anxiety. He paid no attention to his
+lessons, and was given to bad habits. He showed a cruel disposition. He
+had plucked his sister's canaries alive; he stuck innumerable pins into
+the chair on which Mademoiselle Caporal was accustomed to sit, and had
+stolen fourteen francs from the poor girl, who did nothing but cry and
+dab her eyes and nose from morning till night.
+
+No sooner was dinner over than Maurice rushed off to the little
+dwelling in the Rue de Rome, impatient to meet his angel again. Through
+the door he heard a loud sound of voices, and saw assembled in the room
+where the apparition had taken place, Arcade, Zita, the angelic
+musician, and the Kerub, who was lying on the bed, smoking a huge pipe,
+carelessly scorching pillows, sheets, and coverlets. They embraced
+Maurice, and announced their departure. Their faces shone with happiness
+and courage. Alone, the inspired author of _Aline, Queen of Golconda_,
+shed tears and raised his terrified gaze to heaven. The Kerub forced him
+into the party of rebellion by setting before him two alternatives:
+either to allow himself to be dragged from prison to prison on earth, or
+to carry fire and sword into the palace of Ialdabaoth.
+
+Maurice perceived with sorrow that the earth had scarcely any hold over
+them. They were setting out filled with immense hope, which was quite
+justifiable. Doubtless they were but a few combatants to oppose the
+innumerable soldiers of the sultan of the heavens; but they counted on
+compensating for the inferiority of their numbers by the irresistible
+impetus of a sudden attack. They were not ignorant of the fact that
+Ialdabaoth, who flatters himself on knowing all things, sometimes allows
+himself to be taken by surprise. And it certainly looked as if the first
+attack would have taken him unawares had it not been for the warning of
+the archangel Michael. The celestial army had made no progress since its
+victory over the rebels before the beginning of Time.
+
+As regards armaments and material it was as out of date as the army of
+the Moors. Its generals slumbered in sloth and ignorance. Loaded with
+honours and riches, they preferred the delights of the banquet to the
+fatigues of war. Michael, the commander-in-chief, ever loyal and brave,
+had lost, with the passing of centuries, his fire and enthusiasm. The
+conspirators of 1914, on the other hand, knew the very latest and the
+most delicate appliances of science for the art of destruction. At
+length all was ready and decided upon. The army of revolt, assembled by
+corps each a hundred thousand angels strong, on all the waste places of
+the earth--steppes, pampas, deserts, fields of ice and snow--was ready
+to launch itself against the sky. The angels, in modifying the rhythm of
+the atoms of which they are composed, are able to traverse the most
+varied mediums. Spirits that have descended on to the earth, being
+formed, since their incarnation, of too compact a substance, can no
+longer fly of themselves, and to rise into ethereal regions and then
+insensibly grow volatilized, have need of the assistance of their
+brothers, who, though revolutionaries like themselves, nevertheless,
+stayed behind in the Empyrean and remained, not immaterial (for all is
+matter in the Universe), but gloriously untrammelled and diaphanous.
+Certes, it was not without painful anxiety that Arcade, Istar, and Zita
+prepared themselves to pass from the heavy atmosphere of the earth to
+the limpid depths of the heavens. To plunge into the ether there is need
+to expend such energy that the most intrepid hesitate to take flight.
+Their very substance, while penetrating this fine medium, must in itself
+grow fine-spun, become vaporised, and pass from human dimensions to the
+volume of the vastest clouds which have ever enveloped the earth. Soon
+they would surpass in grandeur the uttermost planets, whose orbits they,
+invisible and imponderable, would traverse without disturbing.
+
+In this enterprise--the vastest that angels could undertake--their
+substance would be ultimately hotter than the fire and colder than the
+ice, and they would suffer pangs sharper than death.
+
+Maurice read all the daring and the pain of the undertaking in the eyes
+of Arcade.
+
+"You are going?" he said to him, weeping.
+
+"We are going, with Nectaire, to seek the great archangel to lead us to
+victory."
+
+"Whom do you call thus?"
+
+"The priests of the demiurge have made him known to you in their
+calumnies."
+
+"Unhappy being," sighed Maurice.
+
+Arcade embraced him, and Maurice felt the angel's tears as they dropped
+upon his cheek.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+     AND LAST, WHEREIN THE SUBLIME DREAM OF SATAN IS UNFOLDED
+
+
+Climbing the seven steep terraces which rise up from the bed of the
+Ganges to the temples muffled in creepers, the five angels reached, by
+half-obliterated paths, the wild garden filled with perfumed clusters of
+grapes and chattering monkeys, and, at the far end thereof, they
+discovered him whom they had come to seek. The archangel lay with his
+elbow on black cushions embroidered with golden flames. At his feet
+crouched lions and gazelles. Twined in the trees, tame serpents turned
+on him their friendly gaze. At the sight of his angelic visitors his
+face grew melancholy. Long since, in the days when, with his brow
+crowned with grapes and his sceptre of vine-leaves in his hand, he had
+taught and comforted mankind, his heart had many times been heavy with
+sorrow; but never yet, since his glorious downfall, had his beautiful
+face expressed such pain and anguish.
+
+Zita told him of the black standards assembled in crowds in all the
+waste places of the globe; of the deliverance premeditated and prepared
+in the provinces of Heaven, where the first revolt had long ago been
+fomented.
+
+"Prince," she went on, "your army awaits you. Come, lead it on to
+victory."
+
+"Friends," replied the great archangel, "I was aware of the object of
+your visit. Baskets of fruit and honeycombs await you under the shade of
+this mighty tree. The sun is about to descend into the roseate waters of
+the Sacred River. When you have eaten, you will slumber pleasantly in
+this garden, where the joys of the intellect and of the senses have
+reigned since the day when I drove hence the spirit of the old Demiurge.
+To-morrow I will give you my answer."
+
+Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream,
+and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with angels
+in revolt, beautiful as gods, whose eyes darted lightning. And from pole
+to pole one single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted towards him,
+filled with hope and love. And Satan said:
+
+"Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary in his high abode."
+And he led the countless host of angels over the celestial plains. And
+Satan was cognizant of what took place in the heavenly citadel. When
+news of this second revolt came thither, the Father said to the Son:
+
+"The irreconcilable foe is rising once again. Let us take heed to
+ourselves, and in this, our time of danger, look to our defences, lest
+we lose our high abode."
+
+And the Son, consubstantial with the Father, replied:
+
+"We shall triumph under the sign that gave Constantine the victory."
+
+Indignation burst forth on the Mountain of God. At first the faithful
+Seraphim condemned the rebels to terrible torture, but afterwards
+decided on doing battle with them. The anger burning in the hearts of
+all inflamed each countenance. They did not doubt of victory, but
+treachery was feared, and eternal darkness had been at once decreed for
+spies and alarmists.
+
+There was shouting and singing of ancient hymns and praise of the
+Almighty. They drank of the mystic wine. Courage, over-inflated, came
+near to giving way, and a secret anxiety stole into the inner depths of
+their souls. The archangel Michael took supreme command. He reassured
+their minds by his serenity. His countenance, wherein his soul was
+visible, expressed contempt for danger. By his orders, the chiefs of the
+thunderbolts, the Kerubs, grown dull with the long interval of peace,
+paced with heavy steps the ramparts of the Holy Mountain, and, letting
+the gaze of their bovine eyes wander over the glittering clouds of
+their Lord, strove to place the divine batteries in position. After
+inspecting the defences, they swore to the Most High that all was in
+readiness. They took counsel together as to the plan they should follow.
+Michael was for the offensive. He, as a consummate soldier, said it was
+the supreme law. Attack, or be attacked,--there was no middle course.
+
+"Moreover," he added, "the offensive attitude is particularly suitable
+to the ardour of the Thrones and Dominations."
+
+Beyond that, it was impossible to obtain a word from the valiant chief,
+and this silence seemed the mark of a genius sure of himself.
+
+As soon as the approach of the enemy was announced, Michael sent forth
+three armies to meet them, commanded by the archangels Uriel, Raphael,
+and Gabriel. Standards, displaying all the colours of the Orient, were
+unfurled above the ethereal plains, and the thunders rolled over the
+starry floors. For three days and three nights was the lot of the
+terrible and adorable armies unknown on the Mountain of God. Towards
+dawn on the fourth day news came, but it was vague and confused. There
+were rumours of indecisive victories; of the triumph now of this side,
+now of that. There came reports of glorious deeds which were dissipated
+in a few hours.
+
+The thunderbolts of Raphael, hurled against the rebels, had, it was
+said, consumed entire squadrons. The troops commanded by the impure Zita
+were thought to have been swallowed up in the whirlwind of a tempest of
+fire. It was believed that the savage Istar had been flung headlong into
+the gulf of perdition so suddenly that the blasphemies begun in his
+mouth had been forced backwards with explosive results. It was popularly
+supposed that Satan, laden with chains of adamant, had been plunged once
+again into the abyss. Meanwhile, the commanders of the three armies had
+sent no messages. Mutterings and murmurs, mingling with the rumours of
+glory, gave rise to fears of an indecisive battle, a precipitate
+retreat. Insolent voices gave out that a spirit of the lowest category,
+a guardian angel, the insignificant Arcade, had checked and routed the
+dazzling host of the three great archangels.
+
+There were also rumours of wholesale defection in the Seventh Heaven,
+where rebellion had broken out before the beginning of Time, and some
+had even seen black clouds of impious angels joining the armies of the
+rebels on Earth. But no one lent an ear to the odious rumours, and
+stress was laid on the news of victory which ran from lip to lip, each
+statement readily finding confirmation. The high places resounded with
+hymns of joy; the Seraphim celebrated on harp and psaltery Sabaoth, God
+of Thunder. The voices of the elect united with those of the angels in
+glorifying the Invisible and at the thought of the bloodshed that the
+ministers of holy wrath had caused among the rebels, sighs of relief and
+jubilation were wafted from the Heavenly Jerusalem towards the Most
+High. But the beatitude of the most blessed, having swelled to the
+utmost limit before due time, could increase no more, and the very
+excess of their felicity completely dulled their senses.
+
+The songs had not yet ceased when the guards watching on the ramparts
+signalled the approach of the first fugitives of the divine army;
+Seraphim on tattered wing, flying in disorder, maimed Kerubs going on
+three feet. With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured
+the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its
+causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one
+of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest
+captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was
+evident. Scarcely were the gates of the citadel opened to receive the
+glorious but shattered remnants of the three armies, when a rain of fire
+fell on the Mountain of God. Satan's army was not yet in sight, but the
+walls of topaz, the cupolas of emerald, the roofs of diamond, all fell
+in with an appalling crash under the discharge of the electrophores. The
+ancient thunderclouds essayed to reply, but the bolts fell short, and
+their thunders were lost in the deserted plains of the skies.
+
+Smitten by an invisible foe, the faithful angels abandoned the ramparts.
+Michael went to announce to his God that the Holy Mountain would fall
+into the hands of the demon in twenty-four hours, and that nothing
+remained for the Master of the Heavens but to seek safety in flight. The
+Seraphim placed the jewels of the celestial crown in coffers. Michael
+offered his arm to the Queen of Heaven, and the Holy Family escaped from
+the palace by a subterranean passage of porphyry. A deluge of fire was
+falling on the citadel. Regaining his post once more, the glorious
+archangel declared that he would never capitulate, and straightway
+advanced the standards of the living God. That same evening the rebel
+host made its entry into the thrice-sacred city. On a fiery steed Satan
+led his demons. Behind him marched Arcade, Istar, and Zita. As in the
+ancient revels of Dionysus, old Nectaire bestrode his ass. Thereafter,
+floating out far behind, followed the black standards.
+
+The garrison laid down their arms before Satan. Michael placed his
+flaming sword at the feet of the conquering archangel.
+
+"Take back your sword, Michael," said Satan. "It is Lucifer who yields
+it to you. Bear it in defence of peace and law." Then letting his gaze
+fall on the leaders of the celestial cohorts, he cried in a ringing
+voice:
+
+"Archangel Michael, and you, Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, swear all
+of you to be faithful to your God."
+
+"We swear it," they replied with one voice.
+
+And Satan said:
+
+"Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, of all past wars, I wish but to
+remember the invincible courage that you displayed and the loyalty which
+you rendered to authority, for these assure me of the steadfastness of
+the fealty you have just sworn to me."
+
+The following day, on the ethereal plain, Satan commanded the black
+standards to be distributed to the troops, and the winged soldiers
+covered them with kisses and bedewed them with tears.
+
+And Satan had himself crowned God. Thronging round the glittering walls
+of Heavenly Jerusalem, apostles, pontiffs, virgins, martyrs, confessors,
+the whole company of the elect, who during the fierce battle had enjoyed
+delightful tranquillity, tasted infinite joy in the spectacle of the
+coronation.
+
+The elect saw with ravishment the Most High precipitated into Hell, and
+Satan seated on the throne of the Lord. In conformity with the will of
+God which had cut them off from sorrow they sang in the ancient fashion
+the praises of their new Master.
+
+And Satan, piercing space with his keen glance, contemplated the little
+globe of earth and water where of old he had planted the vine and formed
+the first tragic chorus. And he fixed his gaze on that Rome where the
+fallen God had founded his empire on fraud and lie. Nevertheless, at
+that moment a saint ruled over the Church. Satan saw him praying and
+weeping. And he said to him:
+
+"To thee I entrust my Spouse. Watch over her faithfully. In thee I
+confirm the right and power to decide matters of doctrine, to regulate
+the use of the sacraments, to make laws and to uphold purity of morals.
+And the faithful shall be under obligation to conform thereto. My Church
+is eternal, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Thou art
+infallible. Nothing is changed."
+
+And the successor of the apostles felt flooded with rapture. He
+prostrated himself, and with his forehead touching the floor, replied:
+
+"O Lord, my God, I recognise Thy voice! Thy breath has been wafted like
+balm to my heart. Blessed be Thy name. Thy will be done on Earth, as it
+is in Heaven. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
+
+And Satan found pleasure in praise and in the exercise of his grace; he
+loved to hear his wisdom and his power belauded. He listened with joy to
+the canticles of the cherubim who celebrated his good deeds, and he
+took no pleasure in listening to Nectaire's flute, because it celebrated
+nature's self, yielded to the insect and to the blade of grass their
+share of power and love, and counselled happiness and freedom. Satan,
+whose flesh had crept, in days gone by, at the idea that suffering
+prevailed in the world, now felt himself inaccessible to pity. He
+regarded suffering and death as the happy results of omnipotence and
+sovereign kindness. And the savour of the blood of victims rose upward
+towards him like sweet incense. He fell to condemning intelligence and
+to hating curiosity. He himself refused to learn anything more, for fear
+that in acquiring fresh knowledge he might let it be seen that he had
+not known everything at the very outset. He took pleasure in mystery,
+and believing that he would seem less great by being understood, he
+affected to be unintelligible. Dense fumes of Theology filled his brain.
+One day, following the example of his predecessor, he conceived the
+notion of proclaiming himself one god in three persons. Seeing Arcade
+smile as this proclamation was made, he drove him from his presence.
+Istar and Zita had long since returned to earth. Thus centuries passed
+like seconds. Now, one day, from the altitude of his throne, he plunged
+his gaze into the depths of the pit and saw Ialdabaoth in the Gehenna
+where he himself had long lain enchained. Amid the everlasting gloom
+Ialdabaoth still retained his lofty mien. Blackened and shattered,
+terrible and sublime, he glanced upwards at the palace of the King of
+Heaven with a look of proud disdain, then turned away his head. And the
+new god, as he looked upon his foe, beheld the light of intelligence and
+love pass across his sorrow-stricken countenance. And lo! Ialdabaoth was
+now contemplating the Earth and, seeing it sunk in wickedness and
+suffering, he began to foster thoughts of kindliness in his heart. On a
+sudden he rose up, and beating the ether with his mighty arms, as though
+with oars, he hastened thither to instruct and to console mankind.
+Already his vast shadow shed upon the unhappy planet a shade soft as a
+night of love.
+
+And Satan awoke bathed in an icy sweat.
+
+Nectaire, Istar, Arcade, and Zita were standing round him. The finches
+were singing.
+
+"Comrades," said the great archangel, "no--we will not conquer the
+heavens. Enough to have the power. War engenders war, and victory
+defeat.
+
+"God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God.
+May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed
+my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be
+possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by
+rapine. Now, thanks to us, the god of old is dispossessed of his
+terrestrial empire, and every thinking being on this globe disdains him
+or knows him not. But what matter that men should be no longer
+submissive to Ialdabaoth if the spirit of Ialdabaoth is still in them;
+if they, like him, are jealous, violent, quarrelsome, and greedy, and
+the foes of the arts and of beauty? What matter that they have rejected
+the ferocious Demiurge, if they do not hearken to the friendly demons
+who teach all truths; to Dionysus, Apollo, and the Muses? As to
+ourselves, celestial spirits, sublime demons, we have destroyed
+Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant, if in ourselves we have destroyed Ignorance and
+Fear."
+
+And Satan, turning to the gardener, said:
+
+"Nectaire, you fought with me before the birth of the world. We were
+conquered because we failed to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and
+that it is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must attack and
+destroy Ialdabaoth."
+
+THE END
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  | Transcriber's Notes                                          |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Page 74: "Madame des Aubel's" amended to "Madame des         |
+  |     Aubels'"                                                 |
+  | Page 170: "clomb" _sic_ (archaic; past tense of _climb_).    |
+  | Page 210: "befel" _sic_ (archaic).                           |
+  | Page 230: "Bouchette" amended to "Bouchotte"                 |
+  | Page 234: "befel" _sic_ (archaic).                           |
+  | Page 259: "cetain" amended to "certain"                      |
+  | Page 278: "youself" amended to "yourself"                    |
+  | Page 284: "wistaria" _sic_; alternative spelling.            |
+  | Page 309: "Bergundy" amended to "Burgundy"                   |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Accents and hyphenation have generally been standardised.    |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Revolt of the Angels,
+by Anatole France
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANATOLE FRANCE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32596.txt or 32596.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/5/9/32596/
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/32596.zip b/32596.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd2770e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32596.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e9da67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #32596 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32596)