The Vatican swindle

by André Gide

I

After Lafcadio, with the solicitor’s help—Julius acting as intermediary—had come into the 40,000 francs a year left him by the late Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, his chief concern was to let no signs of it appear.

“Off gold plate perhaps,” he had said to himself at the time, “but the same victuals.”

What he had not considered—or perhaps what he had not yet learned—was that his victuals for the future would have a different taste. Or, put it like this: since struggling with his hunger gave him as much pleasure as indulging his appetite, his resistance—now that he was no longer pressed by want—began to slacken. To speak plainly, thanks to a naturally aristocratic disposition he had not allowed himself to be forced by necessity into committing a single one of those actions—which he might very well commit now, out of a gambling or a mocking humour, just for the fun of putting his pleasure before his interest.

In obedience to the Count’s wishes he had not gone into mourning.

A mortifying experience awaited him when he went to replenish his wardrobe in the shops which had been patronised by his last uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres. On his mentioning this gentleman’s name as a recommendation, the tailor pulled out a number of bills which the Marquis had neglected to pay. Lafcadio had a fastidious dislike to swindling; he at once pretended that he had come on purpose to settle the account, and paid ready money for his new clothes. The same misadventure awaited him at the bootmaker’s. When it came to the shirtmaker, Lafcadio thought it more prudent to choose another.

“Oh, Uncle de Gesvres, if only I knew your address, it would be a pleasure to send you your receipted bills,” thought Lafcadio. “You would despise me for it. No matter! I’m a Baraglioul and from this day forward, you scamp of a marquis, I dismiss you from my heart.”

There was nothing to keep him in Paris—or to call him elsewhere; he crossed Italy by short stages, making his way to Brindisi, where he meant to embark on some liner bound for Java.

He was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, and contemplating—not without satisfaction—his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-coloured plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woollen material of his travelling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, and from beneath which the narrow line of a bronze silk neck-tie ran, slender as a grass-snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his clothes, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes and kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe and letting his thoughts wander at their will. He thought:

“—— The old woman with the little white cloud above her head, who pointed to it and said: ‘It won’t rain to-day!’ that poor, shrivelled old woman whose sack I carried on my shoulders” (he had followed his fancy of travelling on foot for four days across the Apennines, between Bologna and Florence, and had slept a night at Covigliajo) “and whom I kissed when we got to the top of the hill ... one of what the curé of Covigliajo would have called my ‘good actions.’ I could just as easily have throttled her—my hand would have been steady—when I felt her dirty wrinkled skin beneath my fingers.... Ah! how caressingly she stroked and dusted my coat collar and said ‘figlio mio! carino!’ ... I wonder what made my joy so intense when afterwards—I was still in a sweat—I lay down on the moss—not smoking though—in the shade of that big chestnut-tree. I felt as though I could have clasped the whole of mankind to my heart in my single embrace—or strangled it, for that matter. Human life! What a paltry thing! And with what alacrity I’d risk mine if only some deed of gallantry would turn up—something really rather pleasantly rash and daring!... All the same, I can’t turn alpinist or aviator.... I wonder what that hidebound old Julius would advise.... It’s a pity he’s such a stick-in-the-mud! I should have liked to have a brother.

“Poor Julius! So many writers and so few readers! It’s a fact. People read less and less nowadays ... to judge by myself, as they say. It’ll end by some catastrophe—some stupendous catastrophe, reeking with horror. Printing will be chucked overboard altogether; and it’ll be a miracle if the best doesn’t sink to the bottom with the worst.

“But the curious thing would be to know what the old woman would have said if I had begun to squeeze. One imagines what would happen if, but there’s always a little hiatus through which the unexpected creeps in. Nothing ever happens exactly as one thinks it’s going to.... That’s what makes me want to act.... One does so little!... ‘Let all that can be, be!’ That’s my explanation of the Creation.... In love with what might be. If I were the Government I should lock myself up.

“Nothing very exciting about the correspondence of that Monsieur Gaspard Flamand which I claimed as mine at the Poste Restante at Bologna. Nothing that would have been worth the trouble of returning to him.

“Heavens! how few people one meets whose portmanteau one would care to ransack!... And yet how few there are from whom one wouldn’t get some queer reaction if one knew the right word—the right gesture!... A fine lot of puppets; but, by Jove, one sees the strings too plainly. One meets no one in the streets nowadays but jackanapes and blockheads. Is it possible for a decent person—I ask you, Lafcadio—to take such a farce seriously? No, no! Be off with you! It’s high time! Off to a new world! Print your foot upon Europe’s soil and take a flying leap. If in the depths of Borneo’s forests there still remains a belated anthropopithex, go there and reckon the chances of a future race of mankind....

“I should have liked to see Protos again. No doubt he’s made tracks for America. He used to make out that the barbarians of Chicago were the only persons he esteemed.... Not voluptuous enough for my taste—a pack of wolves! I’m feline by nature.... Well, enough of that!

“The padre of Covigliajo with his cheery face didn’t look in the least inclined to deprave the little boy he was talking to. He was certainly in charge of him. I should have liked to make friends with him—not with the curé, my word!—but with the little boy.

“How beautiful his eyes were when he raised them to mine! He was as anxious and as afraid to meet my look as I his—but I looked away at once. He was barely five years younger than I. Yes, between fourteen and sixteen—not more. What was I at that age? A stripling[H] full of covetousness, whom I should like to meet now; I think I should take a great fancy to myself.... Faby was quite abashed at first to feel that he had fallen in love with me; it was a good thing he made a clean breast of it to my mother; after that he felt lighterhearted. But how irritated I was by his self-restraint! Later on in the Aures, when I told him about it under the tent, we had a good laugh together.... I should like to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of that!

“The truth is, I hoped the curé would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him—I could hit on nothing that wasn’t charming. It’s wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. Yet I really can’t stain my face with walnut juice, as Carola recommended, or start eating garlic.... Ah! don’t let me think of that poor creature any more. It’s to her I owe the most mediocre of my pleasures.... Oh!! What kind of ark can that strange old man have come out of?”

The sliding door into the corridor had just let in Amédée Fleurissoire. Fleurissoire had travelled in an empty compartment as far as Frosinone. At that station a middle-aged Italian had got into his carriage and had begun to stare at him with such glowering eyes that Fleurissoire had made haste to take himself off.

In the next compartment, Lafcadio’s youthful grace, on the contrary, attracted him.

“Dear me! What a charming boy!” thought he; “hardly more than a child! On his holidays, no doubt. How beautifully dressed he is! His eyes look so candid! Oh, what a relief it will be to be quit of my suspicions for once! If only he knew French, I should like to talk to him.”

He sat down opposite to him in the corner next the door. Lafcadio turned up the brim of his hat and began to consider him with a lifeless and apparently indifferent eye.

“What is there in common between me and that squalid little rat?” reflected he. “He seems to fancy himself too. What is he smiling at me like that for? Does he imagine I’m going to embrace him? Is it possible that there exist women who fondle old men? No doubt he’d be exceedingly astonished to know that I can read writing or print with perfect fluency, upside down, or in transparency, or in a looking-glass, or on blotting-paper—a matter of three months’ training and two years’ practice—all for the love of art. Cadio, my dear boy, the problem is this: to impinge on that fellow’s fate ... but how?... Oh! I’ll offer him a cachou. Whether he accepts or not, I shall at any rate hear in what language.”

“Grazio! Grazio!” said Fleurissoire as he refused.

“Nothing doing with the old dromedary. Let’s go to sleep,” went on Lafcadio to himself, and pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes, he tried to spin a dream out of one of his youthful memories.

He saw himself back at the time when he used to be called Cadio, in that remote castle in the Carpathians where his mother and he spent two summers in company with Baldi, the Italian, and Prince Wladimir Bielkowski. His room is at the end of a passage. This is the first year he has not slept near his mother.... The bronze door-handle is shaped like a lion’s head and is held in place by a big nail.... Ah! how clearly he remembers his sensations!... One night he is aroused from a deep sleep to see Uncle Wladimir—or is it a dream?—standing by his bedside, looking more gigantic even than usual—a very nightmare, draped in the fold of a huge rust-coloured caftan, with his drooping moustache, and an outrageous night-cap stuck on his head like a Persian bonnet, so that there seems no end to the length of him. He is holding in his hand a dark lantern, which he sets down on the table near the bed, beside Cadio’s watch, pushing aside a bag of marbles to make room for it. Cadio’s first thought is that his mother is dead or ill. He is on the point of asking, when Bielkowski puts his finger on his lips and signs to him to get up. The boy hastily slips on his bathing-wrap, which his uncle takes from the back of a chair and hands to him—all this with knitted brows and the look of a person who is not to be trifled with. But Cadio has such immense faith in Wladi that he hasn’t a moment’s fear. He pops on his slippers and follows him, full of curiosity at these goings-on and, as usual, all athrill for amusement.

They step into the passage; Wladimir advances gravely—mysteriously, carrying the lantern well in front of him; they look as if they are accomplishing a rite or walking in a procession; Cadio is a little unsteady on his feet, for he is still dazed with dreaming; but curiosity soon clears his brains. As they pass his mother’s room, they both stop for a moment and listen—not a sound! The whole house is fast asleep. When they reach the landing they hear the snoring of a footman whose room is in the attics. They go downstairs. Wladi’s stockinged feet drop on the steps as softly as cotton-wool; at the slightest creak he turns round, looking so furious that Cadio can hardly keep from laughing. He points out one particular step and signs to him not to tread on it, with as much seriousness as if they were really in danger. Cadio takes care not to spoil his pleasure by asking himself whether these precautions are necessary, nor what can be the meaning of it all; he enters into the spirit of the game and slides down the banister, past the step.... He is so tremendously entertained by Wladi that he would go through fire and water to follow him.

When they reach the ground floor, they both sit down on the bottom step for a moment’s breathing-space; Wladi nods his head and gives vent to a little sigh through his nose, as much as to say: ‘My word! we’ve had a narrow squeak!’ They start off again. At the drawing-room door, what redoubled precautions! The lantern, which it is now Cadio’s turn to hold, lights up the room so queerly that the boy hardly recognises it; it seems to him fantastically big; a ray of light steals through a chink in the shutters; everything is plunged in a supernatural calm; he is reminded of a pond the moment before the stealthy casting of a net; and he recognises all the familiar objects, each one there in its place—but for the first time he realises their strangeness.

Wladi goes up to the piano, half opens it and lightly touches two or three notes with his finger-tips, so as to draw from them the lightest of sounds. Suddenly the lid slips from his hand and falls with a terrific din. (The mere recollection of it made Lafcadio jump again.) Wladi makes a dash at the lantern, muffles it and then crumples up into an arm-chair; Cadio slips under the table; they stay endless minutes, waiting motionless, listening in the dark ... but no—nothing stirs in the house; in the distance a dog bays the moon. Then gently, slowly, Wladi uncovers the lantern.

In the dining-room, with what an air he unlocks the sideboard! The boy knows well enough it is nothing but a game, but his uncle seems actually taken in by it himself. He sniffs about as though to scent out where the best things lie hid; pounces on a bottle of Tokay; pours out two small glasses full for them to dip their biscuits in; signs to Cadio to pledge him, with finger on lip; the glasses tinkle faintly as they touch.... When the midnight feast is over, Wladi sets to work to put things straight again; he goes with Cadio to rinse the glasses in the pantry sink, wipes them, corks the bottle, shuts up the biscuit box, dusts away the crumbs with scrupulous care and gives one last glance to see that everything is tidy again in the cupboard.... Right you are! Not the ghost of a trace!

Wladi accompanies Cadio back to his bedroom door and takes leave of him with a low bow. Cadio picks up his slumbers again where he had left them, and wonders the next day whether the whole thing wasn’t a dream.

An odd kind of entertainment for a little boy! What would Julius have thought of it?...

Lafcadio, though his eyes were shut, was not asleep; he could not sleep.

“The old boy over there believes I am asleep,” thought he; “if I were to take a peek at him through my eyelids, I should see him looking at me. Protos used to make out that it was particularly difficult to pretend to be asleep while one was really watching; he claimed that he could always spot pretended sleep by just that slight quiver of the eyelids ... I’m repressing now. Protos himself would be taken in....”

The sun meanwhile had set, and Fleurissoire, in sentimental mood, was gazing at the last gleams of its splendour as they gradually faded from the sky. Suddenly the electric light that was set in the rounded ceiling of the railway carriage, blazed out with a vividness that contrasted brutally with the twilight’s gentle melancholy. Fleurissoire was afraid, too, that it might disturb his neighbour’s slumbers, and turned the switch; the result was not total darkness but merely a shifting of the current from the centre lamp to a dark blue night-light. To Fleurissoire’s thinking, this was still too bright; he turned the switch again; the night-light went out, but two side brackets were immediately turned on, whose glare was even more disagreeable than the centre light’s; another turn, and the night-light came on again; at this he gave up.

“Will he never have done fiddling with the light?” thought Lafcadio impatiently. “What’s he up to now? (No! I’ll not raise my eyelids.) He is standing up. Can he have taken a fancy to my portmanteau? Bravo! He has noticed that it isn’t locked. It was a bright idea of mine to have a complicated lock fitted to it at Milan and then lose the key, so that I had to have it picked at Bologna! A padlock, at any rate, is easy to replace.... God damn it! Is he taking off his coat? Oh! all the same, let’s have a look!”

Fleurissoire, with no eyes for Lafcadio’s portmanteau, was struggling with his new collar and had taken his coat off, so as to be able to put the stud in more easily; but the starched linen was as hard as cardboard and he struggled in vain.

“He doesn’t look happy,” went on Lafcadio to himself. “He must be suffering from a fistula or some unpleasant complaint of that kind. Shall I go to his help? He’ll never manage it by himself....”

Yes, though! At last the collar yielded to the stud. Fleurissoire then took up his tie, which he had placed on the seat beside his hat, his coat and his cuffs, and going up to the door of the carriage, looked at himself in the window-pane, endeavouring, like Narcissus in the water, to distinguish his reflection from the surrounding landscape.

“He can’t see.”

Lafcadio turned on the light. The train at that moment was running alongside a bank, which could be seen through the window, illuminated by the light cast upon it from one after another of the compartments of the train; a procession of brilliant squares was thus formed which danced along beside the railroad and suffered, each one in its turn, the same distortions, according to the irregularities of the ground. In the middle of one of these squares danced Fleurissoire’s grotesque shadow; the others were empty.

“Who would see?” thought Lafcadio. “There—just to my hand—under my hand, this double fastening, which I can easily undo; the door would suddenly give way and he would topple out; the slightest push would do it; he would fall into the darkness like a stone; one wouldn’t even hear a scream.... And off to-morrow to the East!... Who would know?”

The tie—a little ready-made sailor knot—was put on by now and Fleurissoire had taken up one of the cuffs and was arranging it upon his right wrist, examining, as he did so, the photograph above his seat, which represented some palace by the sea, and was one of four that adorned the compartment.

“A crime without a motive,” went on Lafcadio, “what a puzzle for the police! As to that, however, going along beside this blessed bank, anybody in the next-door compartment might notice the door open and the old blighter’s shadow pitch out. The corridor curtains, at any rate, are drawn.... It’s not so much about events that I’m curious, as about myself. There’s many a man thinks he’s capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point.... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!... And no more right to take back one’s move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there’d be no interest in the game!... Between the imagination of a deed and.... Hullo! the bank’s come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think; a river....”

The window-pane had now turned black and the reflections in it became more distinct. Fleurissoire leant forward to straighten his tie.

“Here, just under my hand the double fastening—now that he’s looking away and not paying attention—upon my soul, it’s easier to undo than I thought. If I can count up to twelve, without hurrying, before I see a light in the country-side, the dromedary is saved. Here goes! One, two, three, four (slowly! slowly!), five, six, seven, eight, nine ... a light!...”