“But there are not many whites here?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “There are one hundred and twenty people in Tai-o-hae now, and but a few are whites. Alas, mon ami, they do not set a good example. They mean well; they are brave men, but they do not keep the commandments. Here is a chart I drew showing the rise of the church since Peter. It is divided into twenty periods, and I have allotted the fifteenth to Joan. She well merits a period.”
My mind continually harked back to the prompting of Père Victorien concerning the horse and the girl of the jubilee.
“There were signs at the commemoration?” I interposed.
Père Simeon glanced at me eagerly. His naivete was not of ignorance of men and their motives. He had confessed royalty, cannibals, pirates, and nuns. The souls of men were naked under his scrutiny. But his faith burned like a lambent flame, and to win to the standard of the Maid of Orleans one who would listen was a duty owed her, and a rare chance to aid a fellow mortal.
He rose and brushed the cigarette ashes down the front of his frayed cassock as an old native woman responded to his call and brought another bottle of Bordeaux. The nonos were incessantly active. I slapped at them constantly and sucked at the wounds they made. But he paid no attention to them at all except when they attacked him under his soutane; then he struck convulsively at the spot.
“God sends us such trials to brighten our crown,” he said comfortingly. “I have seen white men dead from the nonos. They were not here in the old days, but since the jungle has overrun us because of depopulation, they are frightful. During the mass, when the priest cannot defend himself, they are worst, as if sent by the devil who hates the holy sacrifice. But, mon vieux, you were asking about those signs. Alors, I will give the facts to you, and you can judge.”
He poured me a goblet of the wine; I removed my cotton coat, covered my hands with it, against the gadflies, and prepared to listen.
“Seven years before the great anniversary,” said Père Simeon, sipping his wine, “I thought out my plan. There would be masses, vespers, benedictions, litanies, and choirs. But my mind was set upon a representation of the Maid as she rode into Rheims to crown the king after her victories. She was, you will remember, clothed all in white armor and rode a white horse, both the emblems of purity. That was the note I would sound, for I believe too much had been made of Joan the warrior, Joan the heroine, and not enough of Joan the saint. Oh, Monsieur, there have been evil forces at work there!”
He clasped his thigh with both hands and groaned, and I knew that though a nono had bitten him there, his anguish was more of soul than body. I lighted his cigarette, as he proceeded: