VII
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 of it, but Carola’s attempt to reassure him had the contrary effect of filling him with alarm. For, indeed, directly she asserted that it was not it, 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 be it; it must be it. 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 of curé yesterday, 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, the abbé had 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 at once 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.
“...I have just heard from Valentine de Saint-Prix,” wrote Arnica, “that Julius is in Rome, too, where he has been summoned to a congress. I am so glad to think that you will meet him! Unfortunately Valentine was not able to give me his address. She thinks he is at the Grand Hotel, but she isn’t sure. She knows, however, that he is going to the Vatican on Thursday morning; he wrote beforehand to Cardinal Pazzi so as to be given an audience. He has just been to Milan, where he saw Anthime, who is in great distress because he can’t get what the Church promised him after his conversion; so Julius means to go and ask the Holy Father for justice; for of course he knows nothing about it as yet. He is sure to tell you about his visit and then you will be able to inform him.
“I hope you are being very careful to take precautions against the malaria and that you are not tiring yourself too much. I shall be so glad when you write to say that you are coming home....” Etc.
Then, scribbled in pencil across the fourth page, a few words from Blafaphas:
“If you go to Naples, you should take the opportunity of finding out how they make the hole in the macaroni. I am on the brink of a new discovery.”
Joy rang through Amédée’s heart like a clarion. But it was accompanied by a certain misgiving. Thursday, the day of the audience, was that very day. He had not dared send his clothes to the wash and he was running short of clean linen—at any rate, he was afraid so. That morning he had put on yesterday’s collar; but it suddenly ceased to seem sufficiently clean, now that he knew there was a chance of seeing Julius. The joy that this circumstance would otherwise have caused him was slightly dashed. As to returning to the Via dei Vecchierelli, it was not to be thought of if he intended to catch his brother-in-law on his way out from the audience—and this would be less agitating than looking up at the Grand Hotel. At any rate, he took care to turn his cuffs; as for his collar, he pulled his comforter up to cover it, which had the added advantage of concealing his pimple as well.
But what did such trifles matter? The fact is, Fleurissoire felt unspeakably cheered by his letter; and the prospect of renewing contact with one of his own people, with his own past life, abolished at one sweep the monsters begotten of his traveller’s imagination. Carola, Father Cave, the Cardinal, all floated before him like a dream which is suddenly interrupted by the crowing of the cock. Why had he left Pau? What sense was there in this absurd fable which had disturbed him in his happiness? There was a Pope, bless us! and he would soon be hearing Julius declare that he had seen him. A Pope—that was enough. Was it possible that God should have authorised such a monstrous substitution? Fleurissoire would certainly never have believed it if it had not been for his absurd pride in the part he had to play in the business.
Amédée was walking hurriedly; it was all he could do to prevent himself from running; at last he was regaining confidence, whilst around him once more everything recovered weight and size, and natural position and convincing reality. He was holding his straw hat in his hand; when he arrived in front of the basilica, he was in such a state of lofty exhilaration that he began to walk round the fountain on the right-hand side; and as he passed to the windward of the spray, allowing it to wet him, he smiled up at the rainbow.
Suddenly he came to an abrupt stop. There, close to him, sitting on the base of the fourth pillar of the colonnade, surely that was Julius he caught sight of? He hesitated to recognise him, for if his attire was respectable, his attitude was very far from being so; the Comte de Baraglioul had placed his black straw Cronstadt beside him on the crook of his walking-stick, which he had stuck into the ground between two paving-stones, and all regardless of the solemnity of the spot, with his right foot cocked up on his left knee (like any prophet in the Sixtine Chapel), he was propping a note-book on his right knee, while from time to time his pencil, poised in air, swooped down upon the pages, and he began to write; so absorbed was his attention, and the dictates of his inspiration so urgent, that Amédée might have turned a somersault in front of him without his noticing it. He was speaking to himself as he wrote; and though the splashing of the fountain drowned his voice, the movement of his lips was plainly visible.
Amédée drew near, going discreetly round by the other side of the pillar. As he was about to touch him on the shoulder:
“In that case, what does it matter?” declaimed Julius, and he consigned these words with a final flourish to his note-book; then, putting his pencil in his pocket and rising abruptly, he came nose to nose with Amédée.
“In Heaven’s name, what are you doing here?”
Amédée, trembling with emotion, began to stutter without being able to reply; he convulsively pressed one of Julius’s hands between both his own. Julius, in the meanwhile, was examining him:
“My poor fellow, what a sight you look!”
Providence had dealt unkindly with Julius; of the two brothers in-law who were left to him, one was a church mouse and the other a scarecrow. It was less than three years since he had seen Amédée—but he thought him aged by at least twelve; his cheeks were sunken; his Adam’s apple was protuberant; his magenta comforter enhanced the paleness of his face; his chin was quivering; his blear eyes rolled in a way which should have been pathetic, but was merely grotesque; his yesterday’s expedition had left him with a mysterious hoarseness, so that his voice seemed to come from a long way off. Full of his preoccupations:
“So you have seen him?” he said.
“Seen whom?” asked Julius.
This “whom” sounded in Amédée’s ears like a knell and a blasphemy. He particularised discreetly:
“I thought you had just come from the Vatican.”
“So I have. Excuse me, I was thinking of something else.... If you only knew what has happened to me!”
His eyes were sparkling; he looked on the verge of jumping out of his skin.
“Oh, please!” entreated Fleurissoire, “talk about that afterwards; tell me first of all about your visit. I’m so impatient to hear....”
“Does it interest you?”
“You’ll soon know how much. Go on, go on, I beg you.”
“Well, then,” began Julius, seizing hold of Fleurissoire by one arm and dragging him away from the neighbourhood of St. Peter’s, “perhaps you may have heard in what miserable poverty our poor brother Anthime has been living as a result of his conversion. He is still waiting in vain for what the Church promised to give him in order to make up for the loss inflicted on him by the freemasons. Anthime has been duped; so much must be admitted. I don’t know, my dear fellow, how this affair strikes you—as for me, I consider it an absolute farce ... but it’s thanks to it perhaps that I’m more or less clear as to the matter in hand, about which I’m most anxious to talk to you. Well, then—a creature of inconsequence! That’s going rather far perhaps ... and no doubt his apparent inconsequence hides what is, in reality, a subtler and more recondite sequence—the important point is that what makes him act should not be a matter of interest, or, as the usual phrase is, that he should not be merely actuated by interested motives.”
“I don’t follow you very well,” said Amédée.
“True, true! I was straying from the subject of my visit. Well, then, I had determined to take Anthime’s business in hand.... Ah, my dear fellow, if you’d seen the apartment in which he’s living in Milan! ‘You can’t possibly stay on here,’ I said to him at once. And when I think of that unfortunate Veronica! But he’s going in for asceticism—turning into a regular saint; he won’t allow anyone to pity him—and as for blaming the clergy! ‘My dear friend,’ I said to him, ‘I grant you that the higher clergy are not to blame, but it can only be because they know nothing about it. You must let me go and tell them how matters stand.’”
“I thought that Cardinal Pazzi....” suggested Fleurissoire.
“Yes, but it wasn’t any good. You see, these high dignitaries are all afraid of compromising themselves. It was necessary for someone who was quite an outsider to take the matter up. Myself, for instance. For just see in what a wonderful way discoveries are made!—I mean, the most important ones; the thing seems like a sudden illumination—but not at all—in reality one hasn’t ceased thinking of it. So with me; for a long time past I had been worrying over my characters—their excessive logic, and at the same time their insufficient definition.”
“I’m afraid,” said Amédée gently, “that you’re straying from the point again.”
“Nothing of the kind,” went on Julius; “it’s you who don’t follow my idea. In short, I determined to present the petition to the Holy Father himself, and I went this morning to hand it to him.”
“Well? Quick! Did you see him?”
“My dear Amédée, if you keep interrupting all the time.... Well, you can’t imagine how difficult it is to get to see him.”
“Can’t I?” said Amédée.
“What did you say?”
“I’ll tell you by and by.”
“First of all, I had entirely to give up any idea of presenting my petition myself; it was a neat roll of paper. But as soon as I got to the second antechamber (or the third, I forget which), a great big fellow, dressed up in black and red, politely removed it.”
Amédée began to chuckle like a person with private information who knows there is good reason to laugh.
“In the next antechamber, I was relieved of my hat, which they put on a table. In the fifth or sixth, I waited for a long time in the company of two ladies and three prelates, and then a kind of chamberlain came and ushered me into the next room, where as soon as I was in the presence of the Holy Father (he was perched, as far as I could see, on a throne with a sort of canopy over it) he instructed me to prostrate myself—which I did—so that I saw nothing more.”
“But surely you didn’t keep your head bowed down so low that....”
“My dear Amédée, it’s all very well for you to talk; don’t you know that one can be struck blind with awe? And not only didn’t I dare raise my head, but every time I tried to speak of Anthime, a kind of major-domo, with a species of ruler, gave me a little tap on the back of my neck, which made me bow it again.”
“But at any rate, did he speak to you?”
“Yes, about my book, which he admitted he hadn’t read.”
“My dear Julius,” said Amédée, after a moment’s silence, “what you have just told me is of the highest importance. So you didn’t see him! And from your whole account one thing stands out clear—that there’s a mysterious difficulty about seeing him. Alas! all my cruellest apprehensions are confirmed. Julius, I must now tell you ... but come along here—this street is so crowded....”
He dragged him into an almost deserted vicolo, and Julius, amused rather than otherwise, made no resistance.
“What I am going to confide to you is so grave.... Whatever you do, don’t make any sign. Let’s look as if we weren’t talking about anything important and make up your mind to hear something terrible.—Julius, my dear friend, the person you saw this morning....”
“Whom I didn’t see, you mean.”
“Exactly ... is not the real one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I tell you that you can’t have seen the Pope, for the monstrous reason that ... I have it from a secret and unimpeachable source—the real Pope has been kidnapped.”
This astonishing revelation had the most unexpected effect upon Julius. He suddenly let go Amédée’s arm, and running on ahead, he called out at the top of his voice right across the vicolo:
“Oh, no! no! Not that! Good God! No! Not that!”
Then, drawing near Amédée again:
“What! I succeed—with great difficulty—in clearing my mind of the whole thing; I convince myself that there’s nothing to be expected—nothing to be hoped for—nothing to be admitted; that Anthime has been taken in—that the whole thing is quackery—that there’s nothing left to do but to laugh at it—when up you come and say: ‘Hold hard! There’s been a mistake—a miscalculation—we must begin again.’ Oh, no! Not a bit of it! Never in the world! I shan’t budge. If he isn’t the real one, so much the worse.”
Fleurissoire was horrified.
“But,” said he, “the Church....” And he regretted that his hoarseness prevented any flights of eloquence. “But supposing the Church herself is taken in?”
Julius planted himself in front of him, standing crosswise so as almost to block up the way, and in a mocking, cutting voice which was not like him:
“Well! What the dickens does it matter to you?”
Then a doubt fell upon Fleurissoire—a fresh, formless, atrocious doubt which was absorbed in some indefinable way into the thick mass of his discomfort—Julius, Julius himself, this Julius to whom he was talking, this Julius to whom he clung with all the longing of his heart-broken faith—this Julius was not the real Julius either.
“What! Can it be you who say such things? You, Julius? On whom I was counting so? The Comte de Baraglioul, whose writings....”
“Don’t talk to me of my writings, I beg. I’ve heard quite enough about them this morning from your Pope—false or true, whichever he may be. Thanks to my discovery, the next ones will be better—you may count upon that. I’m anxious to talk to you now about serious matters. You’ll lunch with me, won’t you?”
“With pleasure; but I must leave you early. I’m expected in Naples this evening ... yes, on some business, which I’ll tell you about. You’re not taking me to the Grand, I hope?”
“No; we’ll go to the Colonna.”
Julius, on his side, was not at all anxious to be seen at the Grand Hotel in company with such a lamentable object as Fleurissoire; and Fleurissoire, who felt pale and worn out, was already in a twitter at being seated full in the light at the restaurant table, directly opposite his brother-in-law and exposed to his scrutinising glance. If only that glance had sought his own, it would have been more tolerable; but no, he felt it already going straight to the border line of his magenta comforter, straight to that frightful spot where the suspicious pimple was budding, hopelessly divulged. And while the waiter was bringing the hors-d’œuvre:
“You ought to take sulphur baths,” said Baraglioul.
“It’s not what you think,” protested Fleurissoire.
“I’m glad to hear it,” answered Baraglioul, who, for that matter, hadn’t thought anything; “I just offered the suggestion in passing.” Then, throwing himself back in his chair, he went on in a professorial manner:
“Now this is how it is, my dear Amédée. I contend that ever since the days of La Rochefoucauld we have all followed in his footsteps like blundering idiots; I contend that self-advantage is not man’s guiding principle—that there are such things as disinterested actions....”
“I should hope so,” interrupted Fleurissoire, naïvely.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, I beg. By disinterested I mean gratuitous. Also that evil actions—what are commonly called evil—may be just as gratuitous as good ones.”
“In that case, why commit them?”
“Exactly! Out of sheer wantonness—or from love of sport. My contention is that the most disinterested souls are not necessarily the best—in the Catholic meaning of the word; on the contrary, from the Catholic point of view, the best-trained soul is the one that keeps the strictest accounts.”
“The one that ever feels its debt towards God,” added Fleurissoire seraphically, in an attempt to keep up to the mark.
Julius was obviously irritated by his brother-in-law’s interruptions; he thought them ludicrous.
“A contempt for what may serve is no doubt the stamp of a certain aristocracy of nature.... So once a man has shaken free from orthodoxy, from self-indulgence and from calculation, we may grant that his soul may keep no accounts at all?”
“No! No! Never! We may not grant it!” exclaimed Fleurissoire vehemently; then suddenly frightened by the sound of his own voice, he bent towards Baraglioul and whispered:
“Let’s speak lower; we shall be overheard.”
“Pooh! How could anyone be interested in what we are saying?”
“Oh, my dear Julius, I see you have no conception what the people of this country are like. I’ve spent only four days here, but during those four days the adventures I’ve had have been endless, and of a kind to teach me caution—pretty forcibly too—though it wasn’t in my nature, I swear. I am being tracked!”
“It’s your imagination.”
“I only wish it were! But what’s to be done? When falsehood takes the place of truth, truth must needs dissemble. As for me, with this mission that has been entrusted to me (I’ll tell you about it presently), placed as I am between the Lodge and the Society of Jesus, it’s all up with me. I am an object of suspicion to everyone; everything is an object of suspicion to me. Suppose I were to confess to you, my dear Julius, that just now when you met my distress with mockery, I actually doubted whether it was really you to whom I was talking—whether you weren’t an imitation Julius.... Suppose I were to tell you that this morning before I met you, I actually doubted my own reality—doubted whether I was really here in Rome—whether I wasn’t just dreaming—and whether I shouldn’t wake up presently at Pau, lying peacefully beside Arnica, back again in my everyday life.”
“My dear fellow, you’ve got fever.”
Fleurissoire seized his hand and in a voice trembling with emotion:
“Fever!” he cried. “You’re right! It’s fever I’ve got—a fever that cannot—that must not be cured; a fever which I hoped would take you too when you heard what I had to reveal—which I hoped—yes, I own it—you too would catch from me, my brother, so that we might burn together in its consuming fires.... But no! I see only too clearly now that the path I follow—the dark and dangerous path I am called upon to follow—must needs be solitary too; your own words have proved it to me. What, Julius? Can it be true? He is not to be seen? No one succeeds in seeing him?”
“My dear fellow,” said Julius, disengaging himself from his clasp and in his turn laying a hand on the excited Amédée’s arm, “my dear fellow, I will now confess something I didn’t dare tell you just now. When I found myself in the Holy Father’s presence ... well, I was seized with a fit of absent-mindedness....”
“Absent-mindedness?” repeated Fleurissoire, aghast.
“Yes. I suddenly caught myself thinking of something else.”
“Am I really to believe you?”
“For it was precisely at that very moment that I had my revelation. ‘Well, but,’ said I to myself, pursuing my first idea, ‘supposing the evil action—the crime—is gratuitous, it will be impossible to impute it to its perpetrator and impossible, therefore, to convict him.’”
“Oh!” sighed Amédée, “are you at it again?”
“For the motive of the crime is the handle by which we lay hold of the criminal. And if, as the judge will point out, is fecit cui prodest.... You’ve studied law, haven’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Amédée, with the beads of perspiration standing on his brow.
But at that moment the dialogue was suddenly interrupted; the restaurant page-boy came up to them holding a plate on which lay an envelope inscribed with Fleurissoire’s name. Petrified with astonishment, he opened the envelope and found inside it these words:
“You have not a moment to lose. The train for Naples starts at three o’clock. Ask Monsieur de Baraglioul to go with you to the Crédit Industriel, where he is known and where he will be able to testify to your identity.”
“There! What did I tell you?” whispered Amédée, to whom this incident was a relief rather than otherwise.
“Yes. I admit it’s very odd. How on earth do they know my name and that I have an account at the Crédit Industriel?”
“I tell you they know everything.”
“I don’t much fancy the tone of the note. The writer might have at any rate apologised for interrupting us.”
“What would have been the use? He knows well enough that everything must give way to my mission. I’ve a cheque to cash.... No, it’s impossible to tell you about it here; you can see for yourself that we are being watched.” Then, taking out his watch: “Yes, there’s only just time.”
He rang for the waiter.
“No, no,” said Julius. “You’re my guest. The Crédit’s not far off; we can take a cab if necessary. Don’t be flurried. Oh, I wanted to say that if you’re going to Naples this evening you can make use of this circular ticket of mine. It’s in my name, but it doesn’t matter.” (For Julius liked to be obliging.) “I took it in Paris, thinking that I should be going further south; but I’m kept here by this congress. How long do you think of staying?”
“As short a time as possible. I hope to be back to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll expect you to dinner.”
At the Crédit Industriel, thanks to the Comte de Baraglioul’s introduction, Fleurissoire had no difficulty in cashing his cheque for six bank-notes, which he slipped into the inner pocket of his coat. In the meantime he had told his brother-in-law, more or less coherently, the tale of the cheque, the Cardinal and the abbé. Baraglioul, who went with him to the station, listened with only half an ear.
On their way, Fleurissoire went into a shirtmaker’s to buy himself a collar, but he didn’t put it on at once, so as not to keep Julius waiting outside the shop.
“Haven’t you got a bag?” he asked as Fleurissoire joined him.
Fleurissoire would have been only too glad to go and fetch his shawl and his night things; but own up to the Via dei Vecchierelli before Baraglioul? It couldn’t be thought of.
“Oh, only for one night!” he said brightly. “Besides, there isn’t time to go round by my hotel.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Oh, behind the Coliseum,” replied Amédée at a venture.
It was as if he had said: “Oh, under a bridge!”
Julius looked at him again:
“What a funny fellow you are!”
Did he really seem so queer? Fleurissoire mopped his brow. For a few moments they paced backwards and forwards in front of the station in silence.
“Well, we must say good-bye now,” said Baraglioul, holding out his hand.
“Couldn’t you ... couldn’t you come with me?” stammered Fleurissoire timidly. “I don’t exactly know why, but I’m a little nervous about going by myself.”
“You came to Rome by yourself. What can happen to you? Excuse me for not going with you on to the platform, but the sight of a train going off always gives me an inexpressible feeling of sadness. Good-bye. Good luck! And bring back my return ticket to Paris with you when you come to the Grand Hotel to-morrow.”
BOOK V: LAFCADIO
“There is only one remedy! One thing alone
can cure us from being ourselves! ...”
“Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not how
to get cured, but how to live.”
—Joseph Conrad,
Lord Jim, p. 225.