“I’ve reflected. I must first go round to the post and look at his letters. I won’t change till this afternoon. Pass me your looking-glass.”
He went to the window, and bending towards his reflection in the glass, he fastened to his lip a pair of short brown moustaches, a trifle lighter than his hair.
“Call Baptistin.”
Carola had finished dressing. She went to the door and pulled a string hanging near it.
“I’ve already told you I can’t bear to see you in those sleeve-links. They attract attention.”
“You know very well who gave them to me.”
“Precisely.”
“You aren’t jealous, are you?”
“Silly fool!”
At this moment Baptistin knocked at the door and came in.
“Here! Try and get up in the world a peg or two,” said Protos, pointing to a coat, collar and tie, which were lying on the chair and which he had brought back with him from his expedition to the other side of the wall. “You’re to keep your client company in his walks abroad.I shan’t take him off your hands till this evening. Until then, don’t lose sight of him.”
It was to S. Luigi dei Francesche that Amédée went to confess, in preference to St. Peter’s, whose enormousness overwhelmed him. Baptistin guided him there, and afterwards led him to the post office. As was to be expected, the Millipede had confederates there too. Baptistin had learnt Amédée’s name by means of the little visiting-card which was nailed on to the top of his portmanteau, and had informed Protos, who had no difficulty in getting an obliging employé to hand him over a letter of Arnica’s—and no scruple in reading it.
“It’s curious!” cried Fleurissoire, when an hour later he came in his turn to ask for his letters. “It’s curious! The envelope looks as if it had been opened.”
“That often happens here,” said Baptistin phlegmatically.
Fortunately the prudent Arnica had ventured only on the most discreet of allusions. The letter, besides, was very short; she simply recommended Amédée, on the advice of Father Mure, to go to Naples and see Cardinal San-Felice S.B. “before attempting to do anything.” Her expressions were as vague as could well be desired and in consequence as little compromising.
When he found himself in front of the Castle of St. Angelo, Fleurissoire was filled with bitter disappointment. The huge mass of building rose from the middle of aninner court-yard, access to which was forbidden to the public, and into which only such visitors as were provided with cards were allowed to enter. It was even specified that they must be accompanied by one of the guardians.
These excessive precautions, to be sure, confirmed Amédée’s suspicions, but they also enabled him to estimate the extravagant difficulty of his task. Fleurissoire then, having at last got rid of Baptistin, was wandering up and down the quay, which was almost deserted at that hour of the evening, and alongside the outer wall which defends the approach to the castle. Backwards and forwards in front of the drawbridge, he passed and repassed, with gloomy and despondent thoughts; then he would retreat once more to the bank of the Tiber and endeavour from there to get a better view of the building over the top of the first enclosure.
He had not hitherto paid any particular attention to a priest (there are so many of them in Rome) who was sitting on a bench not far from there, and who, though apparently plunged in his breviary, had been observing him for some time past. The worthy ecclesiastic had long and abundant locks of silver, and the freshness of his youthful complexion—the sure sign of purity of life—contrasted curiously with that apanage of old age. From the face alone one would have recognised a priest, and from that peculiarly respectable something which distinguishes him—a French priest. As Fleurissoire was about to pass by the bench for the third time, theabbésuddenly rose, came towards him, and in a voice which had in it something of a sob:
“What!” he said, “I am not the only one! You too are seeking him!”
So saying, he hid his face in his hands and the sobs which he had been too long controlling burst forth. Then suddenly recovering himself:
“Imprudent! Imprudent that I am! Hide your tears! Stifle your sighs!” ... Then, seizing Amédée by the arm: “We must not stay here, Sir. We are observed. The emotion I am unable to master has been remarked already.”
Amédée by this time was following him in a state of stupefaction.
“But how,” he at last managed to ask, “how could you guess what I am here for?”
“Pray Heaven that no one else has been permitted to suspect it! But how could your anxious face, your sorrowful looks, as you examined this spot, escape the notice of one who has haunted it day and night for the last three weeks? Alas! my dear sir, as soon as I saw you, some presentiment, some warning from on high, told me that a sister soul.... Hush! Someone is coming. For Heaven’s sake, pretend complete unconcern.”
A man carrying vegetables was coming along the quay from the opposite direction. Immediately, without changing his tone of voice, but speaking in a slightly more animated manner, and as if he were continuing a sentence:
“And that is why Virginia cigars, which some smokers appreciate so highly, can be lighted only at the flame of a candle, after you have removed the thin straw, that goes through the middle of them, and whose object is to keep open a little channel in which the smoke can circulate freely. A Virginia that doesn’t draw well is fit for nothing but to be thrown away. I have seen smokers whoare particular as to what they smoke, throw away as many as six, my dear sir, before finding one that suits them....”
And as soon as the man had passed them:
“Did you see how he looked at us? It was essential to put him off the scent.”
“What!” cried Fleurissoire, flabbergasted, “is it possible that a common market gardener can be one of the persons of whom we must beware?”
“I cannot certify that it is so, sir, but I imagine it. The neighbourhood of this castle is watched with particular care; agents of a special police are continually patrolling it. In order not to arouse suspicion, they assume the most varied disguises. The people we have to deal with are so clever—so clever! And we so credulous, so naturally confiding! But if I were to tell you, sir, that I was within an ace of ruining everything simply because I gave my modest luggage to an ordinary-looking facchino to carry from the station to the lodging where I am staying! He spoke French, and though I have spoken Italian fluently ever since I was a child ... you yourself, I am persuaded, would have felt the same emotion.... I couldn’t help giving way to it when I heard someone speaking my mother tongue in a foreign land.... Well! This facchino....”
“Was he one of them?”
“He was one of them. I was able to make practically sure of it. Fortunately I had said very little.”
“You fill me with alarm,” said Fleurissoire; “the same thing happened to me the evening I arrived—yesterday, that is—I fell in with a guide to whom I entrusted my portmanteau, and who talked French.”
“Good heavens!” cried thecuré, struck with terror; “could his name have been Baptistin?”
“Baptistin! That was it!” wailed Amédée, who felt his knees giving way beneath him.
“Unhappy man! What did you say to him?” Thecurépressed his arm.
“Nothing that I can remember.”
“Think! Think! Try to remember, for Heaven’s sake!”
“No, really!” stammered Amédée, terrified; “I don’t think I said anything to him.”
“What did you let out?”
“No, nothing, I assure you. But you do well to warn me.”
“What hotel did he take you to?”
“I’m not in a hotel. I’m in private lodgings.”
“God save us! But you must be somewhere.”
“Oh, I’m in a little street which you certainly don’t know,” stuttered Fleurissoire, in great confusion. “It’s of no consequence. I won’t stay on there.”
“Be very careful! If you leave suddenly, it’ll look as if you suspected something.”
“Yes, perhaps it will. You’re right. I had better not leave at once.”
“How I thank a merciful Heaven that you arrived in Rome to-day! One day later and I should have missed you! To-morrow—no later than to-morrow—I’m obliged to leave for Naples in order to see a saintly and important personage, who is secretly devoting himself to the cause.”
“Could it be the Cardinal San-Felice?” asked Fleurissoire, trembling with emotion.
Thecurétook a step or two back in amazement:
“How did you know?” Then drawing nearer: “But why should I be astonished? He is the only person in Naples who is in the secret.”
“Do you ... know him?”
“Do I know him? Alas! my dear sir, it is to him I owe.... But no matter! Were you thinking of going to see him?”
“I suppose so; if I must.”
“He is the best of men....” With a rapid whisk of his hand, he wiped the corner of his eye. “You know where to find him, of course?”
“I suppose anyone could tell me. Everyone knows him in Naples.”
“Naturally! But I don’t suppose you are going to inform all Naples of your visit. Surely, you can’t have been told of his participation in ... you know what, and perhaps entrusted with some message for him, without having been instructed at the same time how to gain access to him.”
“Pardon me,” said Fleurissoire timidly, for Arnica had given him no such instructions.
“What! were you meaning to go and see him straight off—in the archbishop’s palace, perhaps!—and speak to him point-blank?”
“I confess that....”
“But are you aware, sir,” went on the other severely, “are you aware that you run the risk of gettinghimimprisoned too?”
He seemed so deeply vexed that Fleurissoire did not dare to speak.
“So sacred a cause confided to such imprudent hands!” murmured Protos, and he took the end of a rosary out of his pocket, then put it back again, then crossed himself feverishly; then turning to his companion:
“Pray tell me, sir, who asked you to concern yourself with this matter. Whose instructions are you obeying?”
“Forgive me, Monsieur l’abbé,” said Fleurissoire in some confusion, “I was given no instructions by anyone. I am just a poor distraught soul seeking on my own behalf.”
These humble words disarmed thecuré; he held out his hand to Fleurissoire:
“I spoke to you roughly.... But such dangers surround us.” Then, after a short hesitation:
“Look here! Will you come with me to-morrow? We will go and see my friend together....” and raising his eyes to Heaven: “Yes, I dare to call him my friend,” he repeated in a heartfelt voice. “Let’s sit down for a minute on this bench. I will write him a line which we will both sign, to give him notice of our visit. If it is posted before six o’clock (eighteen o’clock, as they say here), he will get it to-morrow morning in time for him to be ready to receive us by twelve; we might even, I dare say, have lunch with him.”
They sat down. Protos took a note-book from his pocket, and under Amédée’s haggard eyes began on a virgin sheet as follows:
“Dear old cock....”
Then, seeing the other’s stupefaction, he smiled very calmly:
“So, it’s the Cardinal you’d have addressed if you’d had your way?”
After that he became more amicable and consented toexplain things to Amédée: once a week the Cardinal San-Felice was in the habit of leaving the archbishop’s palace in the dress of a simpleabbé; he became plain chaplain Bardolotti and made his way to a modest villa on the slopes of Mount Vomero, where he received a few intimate friends, and the secret letters which the initiated addressed him under his assumed name. But even in this vulgar disguise, he could feel no security—he could not be sure that his letters were not opened in the post, and begged therefore that nothing of any significance should be said in any letter and that the tone of a letter should in no way suggest his Eminence, or have in it the slightest trace of respect.
Now that he was let into the secret, Amédée smiled in his turn.
“‘Dear old cock’.... Let me think! What shall we say to the dear old cock?” joked theabbé, hesitating with pencil in hand. “Ah!... ‘I’ve got a funny old chap in tow!’ (Yes, yes! It’s all right! I know the kind of style.) ‘I’ll bring him along, so dig out a bottle or two of Falernian and to-morrow we three will have a party.’ ... Here! you sign too.”
“Perhaps I’d better not sign my own name.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about yours,” returned Protos, and after the name of Amédée Fleurissoire he wrote the wordCave.[G]
“Oh, that’s very clever!”
“What! are you astonished at my signing the nameCave? Your head is full of nothing but the VaticanCave. You must know, my good Monsieur Fleurissoire,thatCaveis a Latin word too, and that it means BEWARE!”
All this was said in so potent and so strange a tone that poor Amédée felt a cold shiver run down his spine. It lasted only a second; Father Cave had already recovered his affability when he handed him the envelope on which he had just inscribed the Cardinal’s apocryphal address.
“Will you post it yourself? It’s more prudent;curés’letters are opened. And now we’d better part; we mustn’t be seen together any longer. Let’s agree to meet to-morrow morning in the train that leaves for Naples at seven-thirty. Third class of course. I shall not be in this dress, naturally. What an idea! You must look out for just an ordinary Calabrian peasant. (I don’t want to have to cut my hair.) Good-bye! Good-bye!”
He went off, making little signs with his hand.
“Thanks be to Heaven that I met that excellentabbé!” murmured Fleurissoire as he returned homewards. “What should I have done without him?”
And Protos murmured as he went:
“You shall have a jolly good dose of your Cardinal, my boy!... Why, if he had been left to himself, I’m hanged if he wouldn’t have gone to see therealone.”
As Fleurissoire complained of great fatigue, Carola had allowed him to sleep that night notwithstanding the interest she took in him and the tender compassion she was thrown into when he confessed his ignorance inthe matter of love ... sleep, that is, as much as he was able for the intolerable itching of the bites—fleas’ as well as mosquitoes’—which covered his whole body.
“You oughtn’t to scratch like that, dearie,” she said to him the next morning, “you only irritate it. Oh, how inflamed this one is!” and she touched the spot on his chin. Then as he was getting ready to go out: “Here! wear these in remembrance of me.” And she fastened the grotesque trinkets which Protos had objected to her wearing, into thepilgrim’scuffs. Amédée promised to come back the same evening, or at latest the next morning.
“You’ll swear that you’ll not hurt him?” repeated Carola a moment later to Protos, who had come through the secret door already disguised; and as he was late because he had waited for Fleurissoire to leave before showing himself, he was obliged to take a carriage to the station.
In his new aspect, with his open shirt, his brown breeches, his sandals, laced over his blue stockings, his short pipe and his tan-coloured hat with its small flat brim, it must be admitted that he looked far more like a regular Abruzzi brigand than like acuré. Fleurissoire, who was walking up and down the platform waiting for him, hesitated to recognise the individual who, like St. Peter Martyr, with a finger on his lips, passed by him without seeming to see him and disappeared into a carriage at the head of the train. But after a moment he reappeared at the door of the carriage, and looking in Amédée’s direction with one eye half shut, he made him a surreptitious sign with his hand to come up; and as Amédée was about to get in:
“Please see whether there’s anyone next door,” whispered Protos.
No one; and their compartment was the last in the carriage.
“I was following you in the street,” went on Protos; “but I wouldn’t speak to you for fear that we might be seen together.”
“How is it that I didn’t see you?” asked Fleurissoire. “I turned round a dozen times to make sure that I wasn’t being followed. Your conversation yesterday filled me with such terror that I see nothing but spies everywhere.”
“Yes, you show that you do only too clearly. Do you think it’s natural to turn round every twenty paces?”
“What? Really? Do I look ...?”
“Suspicious. Alas! That’s the word—suspicious. It’s the most compromising look you can have.”
“And yet I didn’t even discover that you were following me! On the other hand, I see something disquieting in the appearance of everyone I pass in the street. It alarms me if they look at me, and if they don’t look at me they seem as if they were pretending not to see me. I didn’t realise till to-day how rarely people’s presence in the street is justifiable. There aren’t more than four out of twelve whose occupation is obvious. Ah! You have given me food for thought, and no mistake! For a naturally credulous soul like mine suspicion is not easy; it’s an apprenticeship....”
“Pooh! You’ll get accustomed to it—quickly too; you’ll see; in a short time it’ll become a habit—a habit, alas! Which I’ve been obliged to adopt myself.... The main thing is to look cheerful all the time. Ah! A word to the wise! When you’re afraid you’re beingfollowed, don’t turn round; just merely drop your stick or your umbrella (according to the weather) or your handkerchief, and as you pick it up—whatever it may be—while your head is down, look between your legs behind you, in a natural kind of way. I advise you to practise. But tell me. What do you think of me in this costume? I’m afraid thecurémay show through in places.”
“Don’t worry,” said Fleurissoire candidly; “no one but I, I’m sure, could see what you are.” Then, looking him up and down benevolently, with his head a little on one side: “Evidently, when I examine you carefully, I can see a slight touch of the ecclesiastic behind your disguise—I can distinguish beneath the joviality of your voice the sickening anxiety which is tormenting us both. But what self-control you must have to let it show so little! As for me, I have still a great deal to learn, it’s clear. Your advice....”
“What curious sleeve-links you have!” interrupted Protos, amused at seeing Carola’s links on Fleurissoire.
“They’re a present,” he said, blushing.
The heat was sweltering. Protos was looking out of the window; “Monte Cassino,” he said; “can you see the celebrated convent up there?”
“Yes, I see it,” said Fleurissoire absently.
“You don’t care much for scenery, then?”
“Yes, yes, I do care for it! But how can I take an interest in anything as long as I’m so uneasy? It’s the same at Rome with the sights. I’ve seen nothing; I’ve not tried to see anything.”
“How well I understand you!” said Protos. “I’m like that too; I told you that ever since I’ve been in RomeI’ve spent the whole of my time between the Vatican and the Castle of St. Angelo.”
“It’s a pity, butyouknow Rome already.”
In this way our travellers chatted.
At Caserta they got down, and went each on his own account to the buffet, to get a sandwich or two and a drink.
“At Naples too,” said Protos, “when we get near his villa we will part company, if you please. You must follow me at a distance; I shall want a little time first, especially if he isn’t alone, to explain who you are and the object of your visit, so you mustn’t come in till a quarter of an hour after me.”
“I’ll take the opportunity of getting shaved. I hadn’t time this morning.”
A tram took them as far as the Piazza Dante.
“Let’s part here,” said Protos. “It’s still rather a long way off, but it’s better so. Walk about fifty paces behind me; and don’t look at me the whole time as if you were afraid of losing me; and don’t turn round either; you would get yourself followed. Look cheerful.”
He started off in front. Fleurissoire followed with downcast eyes. The street was narrow and steep; the sun blazed; sweating, hustling, effervescing, the crowd clamoured and gesticulated and sang, while Fleurissoire panted bewildered through their midst. A number of half-naked children were dancing in front of a barrel organ; a kind of mountebank was getting up an impromptu lottery at two-sous the ticket, for a fat plucked turkey, which he was holding up at the end of a stick; Protos, to seem more natural, took a ticket as he passed, and disappeared into the crowd; Fleurissoire, unable toadvance, thought he had lost him for good; then, after he had managed to get through the obstruction, he caught sight of him again, walking briskly up the hill, with the turkey under his arm.
At last the houses became smaller and further apart, fewer people were to be seen, and Protos slackened his pace. He stopped in front of a barber’s shop and, turning to Fleurissoire, winked his eye; then, twenty paces further on, stopped again in front of a little low door and rang the bell.
The barber’s window was not particularly attractive but Father Cave doubtless had his reasons for pointing it out; moreover, Fleurissoire would have had to go a long way back before finding another, which would no doubt have been equally uninviting. The door was left open on account of the excessive heat; a wide-meshed curtain kept the flies out and let the air in; one had to raise it to go in; he entered.
Truly, a skilful fellow, this barber! After soaping Amédée’s chin, he cautiously pushed aside the lather with a corner of his towel and brought to light the fiery pimple, which his nervous client pointed out to him. Oh, somnolence! Oh, warmth and drowsiness of the quiet little shop! Amédée, half lying in the leather arm-chair, with his head leaning comfortably back, let himself drift. Ah! just for one short moment to forget! To think no more of the Pope and the mosquitoes and Carola! To imagine himself back to Pau with Arnica; to imagine himself somewhere—anywhere else—no longer to know where he was!... He shut his eyes, then half opening them, saw as in a dream on the wall opposite him, a woman with streaming hair issuingout of the Bay of Naples, and bringing up from the watery depths, together with a voluptuous sensation of coolness, a glittering bottle of hair-restorer. Above this advertisement were arranged, on a marble slab, more bottles, a stick of cosmetic and a powder puff, a pair of tweezers, a comb, a lancet, a pot of ointment, a glass jar in which a few leeches were indolently floating, a second glass jar which contained the long ribbon of a tapeworm and lately a third jar which was without a lid, half full of some gelatinous substance, and had pasted on its crystalline surface a label, inscribed by hand, in large fancy capitals, with the word ANTISEPTIC.
The barber now, in order to bring his work to perfection, spread afresh an unctuous lather over the already shaven chin, and with the gleaming edge of a second rasor, which he sharpened on the palm of his damp hand, he set about his final polishing. Amédée thought no more of his appointment, thought no more of leaving, began to doze off.... It was just at this moment that there came into the shop a loud-voiced Sicilian, rending the peacefulness with his clatter; it was then that the barber, plunging at once into talk, began to shave with a less attentive hand, and with a sudden sweep of his blade—pop! the pimple was beheaded!
Amédée gave a cry and was putting his hand to the cut, from which a drop of blood came oozing:
“Niente! Niente!” said the barber, holding back his arm; then, taking a piece of discoloured cotton-wool from the back of the drawer, he lavishly dipped it into the ANTISEPTIC and applied it to the place.
Without caring now whether the passers-by turned tolook at him, Amédée fled down the hill towards the town—where else but to the first druggist’s he could find?
He showed his hurt to the man of healing—a mouldy, greenish, unhealthy-looking old fellow, who smiled and, taking a little round of sticking-plaster out of a box, passed his broad tongue over it and....
Flinging out of the shop, Fleurissoire spat with disgust, tore off the slimy plaster and, pressing his pimple between two fingers, made it bleed as much as he could. Then, having wetted his handkerchief with saliva—his own this time—he rubbed the place. Then, looking at his watch, he was seized with panic, rushed up the street at a run, and arrived in front of the Cardinal’s door, perspiring, panting, bleeding, red in the face, and a quarter of an hour late.
Protos welcomed him with a finger on his lips.
“As long as the servants are there, nothing must be said to arouse suspicion. They all speak French. Not a word—not a sign to betray us! Don’t go plastering him with ‘Cardinals,’ whatever you do. Your host is Ciro Bardolotti, the chaplain. As for me, I’m not ‘Father Cave’ but plain Cave. Understand?” And abruptly changing his tone and smacking him on the shoulder, he explained in a loud voice: “Here he is, by Jove! It’s Amédée! Well, old man, you’ve been a fine time over your shave! In another moment or two, perBaccho, we should have sat down without you. The turkey that turneth on the spit beginneth to glow likethe setting sun!” Then, in a whisper: “Ah, my dear sir, how painful it is to play a part! My heart is wrung....” Then in a loud voice: “What do I see? A cut? Thou bleedest, my lad. Run, Dorino, to the barn and fetch a cobweb—a sovereign remedy for wounds....”
Thus clowning it, he pushed Fleurissoire across the lobby, towards a terrace garden, where a table lay spread under a trellis of vine.
“My dear Bardolotti, allow me to introduce my cousin, Monsieur de la Fleurissoire. He’s a devil of a fellow, as I told you.”
“I bid you welcome, sir guest,” said Bardolotti with a flourish, but without rising from the arm-chair in which he was sitting; then, pointing to his bare feet, which were plunged in a tub of clear water:
“These pedal ablutions improve my appetite and draw the blood from my head.”
He was a funny little roundabout man, whose smooth face gave no indication of age or sex. He was dressed in alpaca; there was nothing about him to denote a high dignitary; one would have had to be exceedingly perspicacious, or else in the secret—like Fleurissoire—to have discovered a discreet touch of cardinalesque unction beneath the joviality of his manners. He was leaning sideways on the table, fanning himself languidly with a kind of cocked hat made out of a sheet of newspaper.
“Er ... er ... highly flattered ... er ... er ... what a charming garden!” stuttered Fleurissoire, finding speech and silence equally embarrassing.
“Soaked enough!” cried the Cardinal. “Hullo, someone! Take away this tub! Assunta!”
A young maidservant came running up, plump and debonair; she took up the tub and emptied it over a flower-bed; her breasts were bursting out of her stays and all a-quiver beneath the muslin of her bodice; she stayed laughing and lingering beside Protos, and the gleam of her bare arms made Fleurissoire uncomfortable. Dorino put the fiaschi down on the table, which had no cloth on it; and the sun, streaming joyously through the wreaths of vine, set its frolic touch of light and shade on the dishes.
“We don’t stand upon ceremony here,” said Bardolotti, and he put on the paper hat. “You take my meaning, my dear sir?”
In a commanding tone, emphasising the syllables and beating with his fist on the table, Father Cave repeated in his turn:
“We don’t stand upon ceremony here!”
Fleurissoire gave a knowing wink. Did he take their meaning? Yes, indeed, and there was no need for reiteration; but he racked his brains in vain for a pregnant sentence that would say nothing and convey everything.
“Speak! Speak!” prompted Protos. “Make a pun or two. They understand French perfectly.”
“Come, come, sit down!” said Ciro. “My dear Cave, stick your knife into thispasteccaand slice it up into Turkish crescents. Are you one of those persons, Monsieur de la Fleurissoire, who prefer the pretentious melons of the north—prescots—cantaloups—whatnots—to our streaming Italian watermelons?”
“Nothing, I’m sure, could come up to this—but please allow me to refrain; I’m feeling a bit squeamish,” said Amédée, who was still heaving with repugnance at the recollection of the druggist.
“Well, then, some figs at any rate! Dorino has just picked them.”
“No, not any either. Excuse me.”
“That’s bad! That’s bad! Make a pun or two,” whispered Protos in his ear. Then aloud: “We must dose that squeamish stomach of yours with a little wine and get it ready for the turkey. Assunta, fill our worthy guest’s glass!”
Amédée was obliged to pledge his hosts and drink more than he was accustomed to; this, added to the heat and fatigue of the day, soon fuddled him. He joked with less effort. Protos made him sing; his voice was shrill but it enraptured his audience. Assunta wanted to kiss him. And yet from the depths of his poor battered faith there rose a sickening and undefinable distress; he laughed so as not to cry. He admired Cave’s easy naturalness.... Who but Fleurissoire and the Cardinal could ever have imagined that he was playing a part? Bardolotti’s dissimulation and self-possession were for that matter, no whit inferior to theabbé’s, and he laughed and applauded and lewdly jostled Dorino, when Cave, upsetting Assunta in his arms, nuzzled her with his face; and then, as Fleurissoire, with a bursting heart, bent towards Cave and murmured: “How you must be suffering!” Cave seized his hand behind Assunta’s back and pressed it silently, his head turned aside and his eyes cast up to Heaven.
Then, rising abruptly, Cave clapped his hands:
“Now then, you must leave us! No, you can clear away later. Be off with you! Via! Via!”
He went to make certain that Dorino and Assunta were not eavesdropping, and came back with a face turned suddenly long and grave, while the Cardinal, passing his hand over his countenance, effaced in an instant all its profane and factitious gaiety.
“You see, Monsieur de la Fleurissoire, you see, my son, to what we are reduced! Oh, this acting! this shameful acting!”
“It makes me turn in loathing,” added Protos, “from even the most innocent joys—from the purest gaiety.”
“God will count it to your credit, my poor dear Father Cave,” went on the Cardinal, turning towards Protos; “God will reward you for helping me to drain this cup,” and, by way of symbol, he tossed off the wine which remained in his half-emptied glass, while the most agonised disgust was painted on his features.
“What!” cried Fleurissoire, bending forward, “is it possible that even in this retreat and under this borrowed habit, your Eminence....”
“My son, call me plain Monsieur.”
“Forgive me! I thought in private....”
“Even when I am alone I tremble.”
“Can you not choose your servants?”
“They are chosen for me; and those two you have seen....”
“Ah! if I were to tell him,” said Protos, “that they have gone straight off to report our most trifling words to....”
“Is it possible that in the palace....”
“Hush! No big words! You’ll get us hanged. Don’t forget that it’s to the chaplain Ciro Bardolotti that you’re speaking.”
“I am at their mercy,” wailed Ciro.
And Protos, who was sitting with his arms crossed on the table, leant across it towards Ciro.
“And if I were to tell him,” said he, “that you are never left alone, night or day, for a single hour!”
“Yes, whatever disguise I put on,” continued the bogus Cardinal, “I can never be sure that some of the secret police aren’t at my heels.”
“What! Do these people here know who you are?”
“You misunderstand him,” said Protos. “You are one of the few persons—and I say it before God—who can pride themselves on establishing any resemblance between Cardinal San-Felice and the modest Bardolotti. But try to understand this—their enemies are not the same! While the Cardinal in his palace has to defend himself against the freemasons, chaplain Bardolotti is threatened by the....”
“Jesuits!” interrupted the chaplain wildly.
“That has not yet been explained to him,” said Protos.
“Ah! If we’ve got the Jesuits against us too!” sobbed Fleurissoire. “But who would have thought it? Are you sure?”
“Reflect a little; you will see it is quite natural. You must understand that the Holy See’s recent policy, all made up as it is of conciliation and compromise, is just the thing to please them and that the last encyclicals are exactly to their taste. Perhaps they are not aware that the Pope who promulgated them is not therealone; but they would be heart-broken if he were changed.”
“If I understand you rightly,” Fleurissoire took him up, “the Jesuits are allied with the freemasons in this affair.”
“How do you make that out?”
“But Monsieur Bardolotti has just revealed....”
“Don’t make him say absurdities.”
“I’m sorry. I know so little about politics.”
“That is why you must believe just what you are told and no more: two great parties are facing each other—the Lodge and the Company of Jesus; and as we who are in the secret cannot get support from either of them without discovering ourselves, we have them both against us.”
“What do you think of that? Eh?” asked the Cardinal.
Fleurissoire had given up thinking; he was utterly bewildered.
“Yes, they are all against us,” went on Protos; “such is always the way when one has truth on one’s side.”
“Ah! how happy I was when I knew nothing!” wailed Fleurissoire. “Alas! never, never more shall I be able to know nothing!” ...
“He has not yet told you all,” continued Protos, touching him gently on the shoulder. “Prepare for something more terrible still....” Then, leaning forward, he whispered: “In spite of every precaution, the secret has leaked out; a certain number of sharpers are using it to make a house-to-house collection in the departments which have a reputation for piety; they act in the name of the Crusade and rake in money which in reality ought to come to us.”
“How frightful!”
“Added to which,” said Bardolotti, “they throw discredit and suspicion on us and oblige us more than ever to make use of the greatest cunning and caution.”
“Look here! Read this!” said Protos, holding out a copy of theCroixto Fleurissoire; “it’s the day before yesterday’s paper. This short paragraph tells its own story!”
“‘We cannot too earnestly warn devout souls against certain individuals who are going about the country disguised as ecclesiastics, and in particular against a certain pseudo-canon who, under pretext of being entrusted with a secret mission, shamefully abuses the credulity of the public and actually extorts money from them for a so-called CRUSADE FOR THE DELIVERANCE OF THE POPE. The name alone sufficiently proclaims the absurdity of the business.’”
Fleurissoire felt the ground give way beneath his feet.
“Whom can one trust then? Shall I tell you in my turn, gentlemen, that it is perhaps due to this very swindler—this false canon, I mean—that I am with you to-day?”
Father Cave looked gravely at the Cardinal, then, striking his fist on the table:
“I suspected as much!” he cried.
“Everything contributed to make me fear,” continued Fleurissoire, “that the person who informed me of the affair was herself a victim of this rogue’s blandishments.”
“It would not surprise me,” said Protos.
“You see now,” went on Bardolotti, “how difficult our position is, between these sharpers on the one hand, who have stepped into our shoes, and the police on the other, who, when they mean to catchthem, may very well lay hold uponusinstead.”
“What is one to do?” wailed Fleurissoire. “I see danger everywhere.”
“Are you surprised now at our excessive prudence?” asked Bardolotti.
“And can you fail to understand that at moments we do not hesitate to clothe ourselves in the livery of sin andfeign indulgence towards the most culpable of pleasures?”
“Alas!” stammered Fleurissoire, “you at any rate do no more than feign, and you only simulate sin to hide your virtues. But I....” And as the fumes of wine and the vapours of melancholy, drunken retchings and hiccuping sobs all beset him at once, he began—bent double in Protos’s direction—by bringing up his lunch and then went on to tell a muddled story of his evening with Carola and the lamented loss of his virginity. Bardolotti and Father Cave had a hard job to prevent themselves from bursting into laughter.
“But have you been to confession, my son?” asked the Cardinal, full of solicitude.
“I went next morning.”
“Did the priest give you absolution?”
“Far too readily. That’s why I’m so uneasy. But how could I confide to him that I was no ordinary pilgrim ... reveal what it was that brought me here?... No, no! It’s all over now. It was a chosen mission that demanded the service of a blameless life. I was the very man. And now it’s all over! I have fallen!” Again he was shaken by sobs and as he struck little blows on his breast, he repeated: “I’m no longer worthy! I’m no longer worthy!...” Then he went on in a kind of chant: “Ah! you who hear me, you who see my anguish, judge me, condemn me, punish me.... Tell me what extraordinary penance will wash away my extraordinary guilt. What chastisement?”
Protos and Bardolotti looked at one another. The latter rose at last and began to pat Amédée on the shoulder:
“Come, come, my son! You mustn’t let yourself golike that. Well, yes! you have sinned, but, hang it all, you are still needed. (You’ve dirtied yourself; here, take this napkin; rub it off.) But of course I understand your anguish, and since you appeal to us, we will give you the means of redeeming yourself. (You’re not doing it properly. Let me help you.)”
“Oh, don’t trouble! Thank you! Thank you!” said Fleurissoire as Bardolotti, scrubbing the while, went on:
“At the same time, I understand your scruples; out of respect to them, I will begin by setting you a little task; there’s nothing conspicuous about it, but it will give you the opportunity of atoning and be a test of your devotion.”
“I ask nothing more.”
“Dear Father Cave, have you that little cheque about you?”
Protos pulled a paper out of the inner pocket of his shirt.
“Surrounded on all sides by enemies as we are,” went on the Cardinal, “we sometimes find it difficult to cash the offerings which a few generous souls send us in response to our secret solicitations. Watched at the same time by the freemasons and the Jesuits, by the police and by the swindlers, it would not be suitable for us to be seen presenting cheques or money orders at the banks and post offices, where our person might be recognised. The sharpers Father Cave was telling you about just now have thrown such discredit on our collections!” (Protos, in the meantime, was thrumming impatiently on the table.) “In short, here is a modest little cheque for six thousand francs which I beg you, my son, to cash in our stead; it is drawn on the Credito Commercialeof Rome by the Duchess of Ponte Cavallo; though it was addressed to the archbishop, the name of the payee has purposely been left a blank, so that it may be cashed by the bearer. Do not scruple to sign it with your own name, which will arouse no suspicions. Take care not to let yourself be robbed of it or of.... What is the matter, my dear Father Cave? You seem agitated.”
“Go on! Go on!”
“...or of the money which you will bring back to me ... let me see ... you return to Rome to-night; you can take the six o’clock express to-morrow evening; you will be at Naples again at ten and you will find me waiting for you at the station. After that we will think of employing you on some worthier errand.... No, no, my son, do not kiss my hand. Can you not see there is no ring on it?”
Amédée had half prostrated himself at his feet. The Cardinal touched his forehead, and Protos, taking him by the arm, shook him gently:
“Come, come! another glass before you start. I am very sorry I can’t go back to Rome with you; but I’m kept here by all sorts of business—besides, it’s better we shouldn’t be seen together. Good-bye! Let me embrace you, my dear Fleurissoire. May God keep you! I thank Him for having permitted me to know you.”
He accompanied Fleurissoire to the door, and as he was leaving:
“Ah! sir,” he said, “what do you think of the Cardinal? Is it not distressing to see the state to which persecution has reduced such a noble intelligence?”
Then, as he went back to the bogus Cardinal:
“You fathead! That was a bright idea of yours, wasn’t it, to get your cheque endorsed by a silly ass who hasn’t even got a passport, and whom I shall have to shadow?”
But Bardolotti, heavy with sleep, let his head roll upon the table, murmuring:
“We must keep the old ’uns busy.”
Protos went indoors to take off his wig and his peasant’s costume; he appeared a little later, looking thirty years younger and dressed like a bank clerk or a shop assistant of inferior grade. He had very little time to catch the train he knew Fleurissoire was going to take, and he went off without taking leave of the slumbering Bardolotti.
Fleurissoire got back to Rome and the Via dei Vecchierelli that same evening. He was extremely tired and persuaded Carola to allow him to sleep.
The next morning, as soon as he woke, his spot, from the way it felt, seemed to him odd; he examined it in the glass and found that a yellowish scab had formed over the part that had been grazed; the whole had a decidedly nasty look. As at that moment he heard Carola outside on the landing, he called her in and begged her to examine the place. She led Fleurissoire up to the window and at first glance assured him:
“It’s not what you think.”
To tell the truth, Amédée had not thought particularly ofit, but Carola’s attempt to reassure him had the contrary effect of filling him with alarm. For, indeed, directly she asserted that it was notit, it meant there was a chance that it might be. After all, was she really certain that it wasn’t? It seemed to him quite natural that it should be; for there was no doubt that he had sinned; he deserved that it should beit; it must beit. A cold shudder went down his spine.
“How did you get it?” she asked.
Ah! what signified that occasional cause—the rasor’s cut or the chemist’s spittle? The real, the root cause, the one that had earned him this chastisement, could he with decency tell her what it was? Would she understand him if he did? She would laugh, no doubt.... As she repeated her question:
“It was a barber,” he said.
“You ought to put something on it.”
This solicitude swept away his last doubts; what she had said at first was merely to reassure him; he saw himself with his face and body eaten away by boils—an object of disgust to Arnica; his eyes filled with tears.
“Then you think....”
“No, no, dearie, you mustn’t get into such a state; you look like a funeral. In the first place, it would be impossible to tell it at this stage, even if it is that.”
“It is! It is!... Oh! it serves me right! It serves me right!” he repeated.
She was touched.
“And, besides, it never begins like that. Shall I call Madam in to tell you so?... No? Well, then, you’d better go out a little to distract your thoughts. Go and get a glass of Marsala.” She kept silent for a moment. At last, unable to restrain herself any longer:
“Listen,” she broke out. “I’ve something serious to tell you. You didn’t happen to meet a sort ofcuréyesterday, with white hair, did you?”
“Why?” asked Fleurissoire in amazement.
“Well ...” she hesitated again; then, looking at him and seeing how pale he was, she went on impulsively: “Well, don’t trust him. Take my word for it, you poor lamb; he means to fleece you. I oughtn’t to tell you so, but ... don’t you trust him.”
Amédée was getting ready to go out, not knowing whether he was on his head or on his heels; he was already on the stairs, when she called him back:
“And mind, if you see him again, don’t tell him that I said anything. You’d as good as murder me.”
Decidedly, life was becoming too complicated for Amédée. And, what is more, his feet were frozen, his head burning and his ideas topsyturvy. How was he to know where he was, if Father Cave himself turned out to be a humbug?... Then, the Cardinal too perhaps?... But the cheque then? He took the paper out of his pocket, felt it and was reassured by its reality. No, no! It wasn’t possible! Carola was wrong. And then what did she know of the mysterious interests that compelled poor Cave to play double? It was much more likely that the whole thing was some paltry vengeance of Baptistin’s, against whom, in fact, theabbéhad warned him.... No matter! he would keep his eyes open wider than ever; he would suspect Cave for the future just as he already suspected Baptistin; and who knows if even Carola ...?
“And, indeed,” he said to himself, “here we have atonce the consequence and the proof of that initial vice—the collapse of the Holy See; everything comes tottering down with that. Whom can one trust if not the Pope? And once the corner-stone on which the Church was built gives way, nothing else deserves to be true.”
Amédée was walking hurriedly in the direction of the post office; he was in great hopes of finding news from home—honest, comfortable news, on which he could at length rest his wearied confidence. The slight mistiness of early morning and that southern profusion of light in which everything seemed melting away into a vaporous haze—seemed losing substance and reality—increased his dizziness; he walked as though in a dream, doubting the solidity of the ground, of the walls—doubting the actual existence of the people he passed—doubting, above all, his own presence in Rome.... Then he pinched himself so as to wake from this horrid dream and find himself again in Pau, in his own bed, with Arnica already up and bending over him with the accustomed question on her lips: “Have you slept well, dear?”
At the post office they recognised him and made no difficulty in giving him another letter from his wife.