Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

“I must obey,” he answered in a low voice, shuddering while he spoke. “I must obey, I know, readily, willingly. Alas! Malletort, there is my unforgiven sin, my mortal peril. Too willingly do I undertake the task. It is my dearest wish to find myself addressed to it—that is why I entreat not to be sent—that is why I implore them to spare me. It is my soul that is in danger. Heart, hope, happiness, home, liberty, identity, are all gone from me, and now I shall lose my soul.”

“Your soul!” repeated the other, again repressing a sneer. “Do not distress yourself, my son, about your soul. It is in very safe keeping, and your superiors are, doubtless, the best judges of its value and eventual destination. In the meantime, do not give way to a far-fetched casuistry, or a morbid delicacy of sentiment. If your heart is in your task, and you go to it willingly, it will be the more easily and the more effectually accomplished. Congratulate yourself, therefore, that your penance is not distasteful as well as dangerous, a torture of bodily weakness, rather than a trial of spiritual strength. Remember, there is no sin of action where there is none of intention. There can be none of intention where a deed is done simply in compliance with the superior’s will. If that deed be pleasurable, it is but so much gained on the chances of the service. Enjoy it as you would enjoy the sun’s rays if you were standing sentry on a winter’s day at the Louvre. It is not for you, a simple soldier of the Order, to speculate on your own merits or your own failures, those above you will take care that neither are overlooked. Eat your rations and be thankful. Your duty, first and last, is but to obey!”

It will be seen by these phrases, so carefully worded according to the rules of the Order, yet bearing the while a covert sarcasm for his own private gratification, that the real character of Malletort was but little changed, since he intrigued at the council table or drank at the suppers of the Regent.

He was a Jesuit priest now in garb and outward semblance; he was still the clever, unscrupulous, unbelieving, pleasure-loving Abbé at the core. So necessary had he become to the Regent as the confidant of his secret schemes, whether their object were the acquisition of a province or the dismissal of a mistress, that he would have found little difficulty in making his peace with his Prince, even after the untoward failure of the Montmirail Gardens, had he chosen to do so. The Regent, maddened with disappointment, and especially sore because of the ridicule created by the whole business, turned at first fiercely enough on his trusty adviser, but found, to his surprise, that the Abbé was beforehand with him. The latter assumed an air of high-minded indignation, talked of the honour of an ancient house, of the respect due, at least in outward courtesy, to a kinswoman of his own, hinted at his fidelity and his services, protested against the ingratitude with which they had been requited, and ended by tendering his resignation, with a request for leave to absent himself from Paris. The result, as usual with the Duke of Orleans, was a compromise. His outraged servant should quit him for a time, but would remain at least faithful in heart to the master who now entreated his pardon. In a few weeks the matter, he thought, would be forgotten, and for those few weeks he must manage his own affairs without the Abbé’s assistance.

Malletort had several good reasons for thus detaching himself from the Court. The first, and most important, was the state of the Duke’s health. The Abbé had not failed to mark the evil effects produced even by so slight an excitement as the affair at the Hôtel Montmirail. He perceived the Regent’s tendency to apoplexy growing stronger day by day; he observed that the slightest emotion now caused him to flush a dark red even in the morning, and he knew that at supper his fulness of habit was so obvious as to alarm the very roués, lest every draught should be his last. If sudden death were to carry off the Regent, Malletort felt all his labour would have been thrown away, and he must begin at the lowest round of the ladder again.

His connection with the Jesuits, for he had long ago enlisted himself as a secret member of that powerful Order, was now of service to him. They had influence with the advisers of the young king, they were ardent promoters of the claims to the British crown, laid by that James Stuart, whom history has called the Old Pretender. It was quite possible that under a new state of things they might hold some of the richest rewards in France and England to bestow on their adherents. Above all, the very keystone of their system, the power that set all their machinery in motion, was a spirit of busy and unremitting intrigue. Abbé Malletort never breathed so freely as in an atmosphere of plots and counterplots. With all the energy of his nature, he devoted himself to the interests of the Order, keeping up his connection with the Court, chiefly on its behalf. He was as ready now to betray the Regent to his new allies, as he had been a few months before to sacrifice honour and probity for the acquisition of that prince’s good-will.

There are few men, however, who can thoroughly divest themselves of all personal feelings in pursuit of their own interest. Even Malletort possessed the weaknesses of pride, pique, and certain injudicious partialities which he could not quite overcome. He hated his late patron for many reasons of his own, for none more than that his persecution had compelled Madame de Montmirail and her daughter to leave France and seek a refuge beyond the sea. If he cared for anything on earth, besides his own aggrandisement, it was his kinswoman; and when he thought of the Marquise, a smile would overspread his features that denoted anything but Christian charity or good-will to her royal admirer.

He spent much of his time at St. Omer now, where several provincials and other influential members of the Order were assembled, organising a movement in favour of the so-called James III.; these were in constant correspondence with the English Jacobites, and according to their established principle, were enlisting every auxiliary, legitimate or otherwise, for the furtherance of their schemes. They possessed lists of surprising accuracy, in which were noted down the names, resources, habits, and political tendencies of many private gentlemen in remote countries, who little dreamed they were of such importance.

An honest squire, whose ideas scarcely soared beyond his harriers, his claret, and his fat cattle, would have been surprised to learn that his character, his income, his pursuits, his domestic affections, and his habitual vices were daily canvassed by a society of priests, numbering amongst them the keenest intellects in Europe, who had travelled many hundred leagues expressly to meet in a quiet town in Artoise, of which he had never heard the name, and give their opinions on himself. Perhaps his insular love of isolation would have been disgusted, and he might have been less ready to peril life and fortune, had he known the truth.

But every landholder of importance was the object of considerable discussion. It was Abbé Malletort’s familiarity with previous occurrences, and the characters of all concerned, that led him now to put the pressure on the renegade who had lost his rank with his desertion, and returned in the lowest grade as a novice, to make his peace with the Order.