The Queen Pedauque Part 23

The meat was good, the beds were bad. M. Coignard slept in the lower chamber, under the stairs, in the same feather bed with the host and his wife, and all three thought they would be suffocated. M. d'Anquetil with Jahel took the upstairs room, where the bacon and the onions were suspended on hooks driven into the ceiling. I myself climbed by means of a ladder to a loft and stretched out on a bundle of straw. Being awakened by the moonlight, a ray of which fell into my eyes, I suddenly saw Jahel in her night-cap coming through the trap door. At a cry that I gave she put her finger to her lips.

"Hus.h.!.+" she said to me, "Maurice is as drunk as a stevedore and a marquis. He sleeps the sleep of Noah."

"Who is Maurice?" I inquired, rubbing my eyes.

"It's Anquetil. Who did you think it was?"

"n.o.body, but I did not know that his name was Maurice."

"It's not long that I knew it myself, but never mind."

"You are right, Jahel, it's of no importance."

She was in her chemise, and the moonlight fell like drops of milk on her naked shoulders. She slipped down at my side, called me by the sweetest of names and by the most horrid of coa.r.s.e names, in whispers sounding out of her lips like heavenly murmurs. And then she became dumb, and kissed me with the kisses she alone was able to give, and in comparison with which the caresses of any other woman were but an insipidity.

The constraint and the silence enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. We became aware, during that wonderful night, of voluptuousness the abyss of which borders on suffering.

When I came down to the innyard in the morning I met M. d'Anquetil, who, now that I had deceived him, appeared to me less odious than formerly.

On his part he felt better inclined to me than he had yet done since we started on our travels. He talked familiarly to me, with sympathy and confidence; his only reproach was that I did not show to Jahel all the regard and attention she deserved, and did not give her the care an honest man ought to bestow on every woman.

"She complains," he said, "of your want of civility. Take care, my dear Tournebroche; I should be sorry for a difference to arise between her and yourself. She's a pretty girl, and loves me immensely."

The carriage had rolled on for more than an hour when Jahel put her head out of the coach window and said to me:

"The other carriage has reappeared. I should like to discover the features of the two men who occupy it, but I cannot."

I replied that at such a distance, and in the morning mist, it would be impossible to discern them.

"But," she exclaimed, "those are not faces."

"What else do you want them to be?" I questioned, and burst out laughing.

Now, in her turn, she inquired of me what silly idea had sprung into my brain to laugh so stupidly and said:

"They are not faces, they are masks. Yonder two men follow us and are masked."

I informed M. d'Anquetil that seemingly an ugly carriage followed us.

But he asked me to let him alone.

"If all the hundred thousand devils were on our track," he exclaimed, "I should not care a rap for it as I have enough to do to look after that obese old abbe who plays his tricks with the cards in the most artful way, and who robs me of my money. I almost suspect, Tournebroche, you call my attention to yonder coach for the purpose of aiding and abetting that old sharper. Cannot a carriage be on the same road as ours without causing you anxiety?"

Jahel whispered to me:

"I predict, Jacques, that yonder carriage brings trouble for us. I have a presentiment of it, and my presentiments have never failed to come true."

"Do you want to make me believe that you have the gift of prophecy?"

Gravely, she replied:

"Yes; I have."

"What, you are a prophetess!" I cried, smiling. "Here is something strange!"

"You sneer and you doubt because you have never seen a prophetess so near at hand. How did you wish them to look?"

"I thought that they must be virgins."

"That's not necessary," she replied, with a.s.surance.

The threatening carriage had disappeared at a turning of the road.

But Jahel's uneasiness had, without his acknowledging it, impressed M.

d'Anquetil, who ordered the postboys to hurry their horses, promising them extra good tips. And by an excess of care he pa.s.sed to each of them a bottle of the wine that the abbe had placed in reserve in the bottom of the carriage.

The postillions made their horses feel the stimulus that the wine gave to them.

"You can calm yourself, Jahel," said he; "at the speed we are going that antique coach, drawn by the horses of the Apocalypse, will never catch us."

"We run like cats on hot bricks," said the abbe.

"If only it would last!" said Jahel.

We saw the vineyards on our right disappear rapidly. On the left the River Saone ran slowly. Like a hurricane we pa.s.sed the bridge of Tournus. The town itself rose on the other side of the river on a hill crowned by the walls of an abbey, proud as a fortress.

"That," said the abbe, "is one of the numberless Benedictine abbeys which are strewn like so many gems on the robe of ecclesiastical Gaul.

If it had pleased G.o.d that my destiny should match my character I should have lived an obscure life, gay and sweet, in one of these abodes.

There is no other religious order I hold in such high esteem, for their doctrines as well as for their morals, as the Benedictines. They have admirable libraries. Happy he who wears their habit and follows their holy rules! It may be from the inconvenience I feel at this moment in being shaken to pieces in this carriage, which no doubt will very soon be upset by sinking into one of the many holes of this confounded road, or it may perhaps be the effect of age, which is the time for retreat and grave thinking; whatever be the cause I wish more ardently than ever to seat myself at a table in one of those venerable galleries, where books plenty and choice are a.s.sembled in quiet and silence. I prefer their entertainment to that of men, and my dearest wish is to wait, in the work of the spirit, for the hour in which it will please G.o.d to call me from this earth. I shall write history, and by preference that of the Romans at the decline of the Republic, because it is full of great actions and examples. I'll divide my zeal between Cicero, Saint John Chrysostom and Boethius and my modest and fruitful life would resemble the garden of the old man of Tarentum.

"I have experienced different manners of living, and I think the best is to give oneself to study, to look on peacefully at the vicissitudes of men, and to prolong, by the spectacle of centuries and empires, the brevity of our days. But order and continuity are needed. And that's the very thing that has always been wanting in my existence. If, as I hope, I am able to disentangle myself from the bad position I'm in just now, I'll do my best to find an honourable and safe asylum in some learned abbey where _bonnes lettres_ are held in honour and respect. I can see myself there already, enjoying the ill.u.s.trious peace of science. Could I obtain the good offices of the Sylph a.s.sistants of whom that old fool d'Asterac speaks, and who appear, it is said, when they are invoked by the cabalistic name of AGLA--"

At the very moment my dear tutor spoke these words a violent shock brought down a rain of gla.s.s on our heads, in such confusion that I felt myself blinded, as well as suffocated under Jahel's petticoats, while the abbe complained in a smothered voice that M. d'Anquetil's sword had broken the remainder of his teeth, and over my head Jahel screamed fit to tear to pieces all the air of the Burgundian valleys. M. d'Anquetil, in rough, barrack-room style, promised to get the postboys hanged. When at last I was able to rise, he had already jumped out through a broken window. We followed him, my dear tutor and I, by the same exit, and then all three of us pulled Jahel out of the overturned vehicle. No harm had been done to her, and her first thought was to adjust her head-dress.

"Thank G.o.d!" said my tutor, "I have not suffered any other damage than the loss of a tooth, and that was neither whole nor white. Time had already effected its decay." M. d'Anquetil, legs astride and arms akimbo, examined the carriage.

"The rascals," he said, "have put it in a nice state. If the horses are got up they will break it all to pieces. Abbe, that carriage is no good for anything else but to play spillikins with."

The horses had fallen topsy-turvy, one on the other, and were kicking furiously. In a heap of croups and legs and steaming bellies, one of the postboys was buried, his boots in the air. The other was spitting blood in the ditch, where he had been thrown. M. d'Anquetil shouted to them:

"Idiots! I really don't know why I do not spit you on my sword."

"Sir," said Abbe Coignard, "would it not be better to get that poor fellow out of the midst of these horses wherein he is entangled?"

We all went to work with a will, and when the horses were freed and raised we were able to discover the extent of the damage done. One of the springs was broken, one of the wheels also, and one of the horses lame.

"Fetch a smith," ordered M. d'Anquetil.

"There is no smith in the neighbourhood," was the postboy's reply.

"A mechanic of some kind."