Saturday, December 11th
To-day I have been seeing the little old curé of Jadis-sur-Marne. I found out, after all this time, where he was; and went and sat with him for an hour, in a pleasant sunny room of the house where they take care of him. He did not know me at first, but afterwards he seemed quite pleased. I want to tell this story of him.
One Sunday, months and months and ages and ages and ages ago, Monsieur le Curé of Jadis-sur-Marne, began his discourse in a wrath righteous indeed. It was the Sunday that nobody knew was to be the last Sunday of peace.
"My dear brethren," began Monsieur le Curé, in his most angry voice. He snapped the words out, "Mes chers frères," as if each word were a little sharp stone shot out of a sling to sting the upturned faces of his listeners. "My dear brethren," he began in righteous wrath, and stopped short.
He stood in a bar of dust and sun motes, up in the old black carved pulpit, against the grey stone pillar. Then he was a round, jolly, rosy, busy old little curé, who got into a temper only reluctantly, after much goading.
His church was old and beautiful and quite large. There were twenty-one people in it: ten in the château chapel, opposite the pulpit, Madame la Marquise and Mademoiselle and two guests in the great red-velvet chairs, and six of the servants in the benches behind them; old Ernestine, the curé's bonne, in her round white cap, erect, determined to stop awake; another white cap or two, here and there, and Père Pate's black skull-cap; two secularized sisters from the Ecole Libre, awkward in their black hats and jackets; three little wriggling girls whom they had managed to capture and retain on the bench between them; some small boys down by the door; and Madelon, the twelve-year-old daughter of the château gardener, who forsook the château pew that she might sit nearer to Monsieur le Curé.
Madelon sat twisted round in her chair to look straight up at him and adore, her hands in their Sunday gloves clasped intensely upon her blueprint lap.
It was cool in the church after the last day's rain, and dark, except where bars of sunshine and dancing sun motes struck across, and where the altar candles were little stars.
One heard the chickens cackling in the curé's garden, and the locusts shrilling close at the windows in the acacia trees of the cemetery, and the children calling and laughing in the street.
"My dear brothers," began Monsieur le Curé, looking down into the round blue eyes of Madelon.
He clutched the edge of the pulpit in both hands and leaned forward. It was indeed tremendously that he was going to scold. He had a right to scold. All night, in his little brown room, under the snores of old Ernestine, he had been working himself up to the pitch for it.
Next Sunday was the Fête of the Patronage. The Grand Vicaire was to come, all the way from Meaux. Madame la Marquise was to present a banner.
The children romped in the street. The women put on hats and went and stood and gossiped in the market-place. The men went fishing; the boys went fishing.
Every Sunday it was the same thing.
In a high temper, Monsieur le Curé began, "My dear brothers," and stopped short.
He let go of the pulpit edge and stood straight and looked over the heads of the twenty-one of them. All the light there was in the deep old church seemed to be upon his face.
When he looked down at his people, it was with a lovely shining of kindliness. It was as if, suddenly, he realized how he loved them. He loved them too much to scold.
"My dear brothers," he said. All the words became little kind caresses. They were small humble words, poor little words, simple, like his listeners. They seemed to have the touch of many little wings across the faces lifted up, or to fall like showers of blossom petals.
One day, only so little a time afterwards, Monsieur le Curé stood among a heap of charred things and broken, blackened stones.
This is what used to be the pillar of the pulpit, and under all that, at the end there, must be buried the altar, with the cross and the candles that used to be stars. There are things that are burned, all black and charred, and things that are twisted. The curé cannot make out what they are. He had not known that there was iron in the church. Queer iron things are twisted and tortured. The new bright window he had thought so beautiful is all broken, the reds and blues and yellows sparkle among the stones.
There are men's boots. What are men's boots doing here, sticking up straight out of the ruins of altars?
They are the boots of the dead men. Those things among the stones are dead men. You go to see what the boots are doing here, and you find that the blue-and-red heaps are dead men.
How they sink into the earth! They are trying to get back into the earth, whence they came. They came from it and are trying to get back, as fast as they can, into it.
This was once a church. And once upon a time, ages and ages ago, or only some days and days ago, Monsieur le Curé stood against the pillar and began to scold.
The women used to stand and gossip in the market-place; the children used to romp in the cobbled street; the men used to go fishing.
The graveyard about this heap of stones, that once was a church, is a strange place, full of trampled straw, and of long heaps of red and blue, that end in boots. The walls of the graveyard are everywhere pierced with holes, that often those long heaps lie under. Monsieur le Curé does not know why the straw is there.
And so Monsieur le Curé has become a little mad.
In one of those days, it seems, he came across Madelon sitting against a wall, quite dead. It was in the rue du Château. Much of the wall was fallen down, but just where Madelon sat the bit of it standing was radiant with roses. Madelon sat on the grass against the wall, her legs stuck straight out, her hands on the grass, her head hanging forward, tangled hair over her staring eyes, and her mouth wide open.
The curé says he does not know what it was that happened to Madelon.
By the fire, in a bright room, Monsieur le Curé talked to me of the church that Sunday morning, and made me see it; and made me see, as if I stood there that other day with him, the broken things, and black, twisted things, and the things that the earth was taking back. He talked quietly, even of Madelon, and said he was so glad that, that last time, God had not let him scold.