“Not in so many words, son Louis,” answered the chaplain. “But in very truth the Priory of St. Come remains to this day a body without a head. The severance, moreover, hath endured so long that I doubt if any reunion of the parts, were that conceivable, could restore its healthy circulation to the community. The good prior and his monks have become estranged in this dull interval. His authority is out of date. Were he yet to return—a wild hypothesis—he would think to take them up where he left them, and, being disillusioned, chaos would result.”
“You are convinced he is dead?”
“Either that, or held by the infidels in a captivity doomed to be perpetual. No reasonable man can doubt it.”
“Pasque-Dieu!” said Louis, “that same reason is a good servant to one’s interests. I myself am never so reasonable as when I cut off a head that annoys me.”
He glanced, rasping his frosted chin, at the chaplain and down. He could gauge this jocund suitor well enough; he knew him to be at heart a libertine and self-seeker; but, inasmuch as his own faith was a conglomeration of hypocrisy and abject superstition, he dreaded always to question the casuistries of its anointed ministers. One could never tell what might befall.
The matter under discussion turned upon the wisdom of appointing a new head to the Priory of St. Come, an important foundation in the southern quarters of the city. Long months past the King had granted a reluctant permission to its aged chief to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; and the old man had gone and he had not returned. Time went by; no news had ever been received of the wayfarer; by degrees it had come to be concluded that death or captivity had terminated his pious adventure. The young monks of St. Come, freed from his restraining hand, had begun to break bounds; scandals were getting rife; interested observers impressed upon the King the moral certainty of the old prior’s death, and the necessity of his bringing the monastery again under the disciplinary control of a head. Amongst these the most pertinacious, and, as possessing the royal ear, the most hopeful, was the Chaplain Père Bonaventure, who greatly coveted for himself the desirable office. It promised him almost illimitable opportunities for the sort of life he favoured.
“This dream, father, of which you spoke,” said the King, without raising his eyes—“it seemed to have its significance, you would imply—some bearing on the case?”
“I would imply nothing of the sort,” answered the chaplain. “We are expressly warned against attaching a prognostic value to these figments—though, to be sure, we might claim our justification in Holy Writ.”
“Given the seer,” said Louis. “Well, well; relate thy dream.”
“Methought,” said the priest, “that thou and I stood beside a church, in the walls of which hard by appeared a little threatening fissure. And the monks, instead of attending to their office, kept revelry; and always with the sound of their roystering the fissure extended. But thou, while I still urged upon thee the necessity of seeking and amending from within the ever-widening evil, would persist in holding me in converse, saying, ‘Patience yet a little, father, and we will enter.’ And suddenly there came a clap of song surmounting all in blasphemy, and with a roar the breach burst and the tower rocked and the walls sank down upon us both, crushing out our lives.”