At the very mention, however, of a little man in grey, the good landlady burst forth in such a torrent of invective that she went well nigh to exhaust her copious vocabulary of epithets and expletives; while the Norman, taken by surprise, stood gazing and shrugging his shoulders, wondering at her facility of utterance, and the vast rapidity with which she concatenated her hard names. The little man in grey, who had been there precisely ten days before, was, according to her opinion, a liar, and a rogue, and a cheat; a conjuror, a Huguenot, and a vagabond; a man without honour, principle, or faith; a maraud, a matin, a misérable; together with a great many other titles the enumeration of which she summed up with “et s’il n’est pas le Diable, le Diable l’emporte!”
“C’est vrai,” cried the Norman every time she paused to take breath; “C’est vrai. But how came you to find out he was so wicked?”
The lady’s reply was not of the most direct kind; but from it the Norman gathered, with his usual acuteness, that after our friend Gaultier had pointed out to Fontrailles the road to the old Castle of St. Loup, he returned home, his mind oppressed with the consciousness of being the confidant of a Sorcerer. He laboured under the load of this terrific secret for some days; and then, his constitution not being able to support his mental struggles, he sickened and took to his bed, where he still lay in a deplorable state, talking in his sleep of the conjuror in grey, and of Père Le Rouge, and the Devil himself, and sundry other respectable people of the same class. But when awake, it must be remarked, the aubergiste never opened his lips upon the subject, notwithstanding all the solicitations which his better half, being tempted by the curiosity of her sex, did not fail to make. From all this the good dame concluded that the little man in grey had bewitched her husband and driven him mad, causing him to lie up there upon his bed like a hog, neglecting his business and leaving her worse than a widow.
All this was corn, wine and oil to the mind of the Norman, who, wisely reserving his opinion on the subject, retired to consult with Louise, having a great esteem for woman’s wit in such cases. After some discussion, a plan was manufactured between them, which, though somewhat bold in conception, was happily brought to issue in the following manner.
During the dinner, at which the bourgeoise waited herself, she was not a little surprised to hear Louise more than once call Marteville by the reverend appellation of mon père; and if this astonished, how much was her wonder increased when afterwards, during a concerted absence of the Norman, the fair lady informed her, under a promise of profound secrecy, that the goodly cavalier, whose blue velvet doublet she had so much admired, was neither more nor less than the celebrated Père Alexis, directeur of the Jesuits of Alençon, who was travelling in disguise in order to place her (one of his penitents) in a monastery at Rome.
True, Louise either forgot or did not know that they were not precisely in the most direct road to Rome, but she was very safe in the person she spoke to, who had even less knowledge of where Rome stood than herself. Now the story of Louise was a very probable one in every other respect, considering the manners of the day; for les bons pères Jesuites very often travelled about in disguise for purposes best known to themselves, and very few of the bons pères, whether Jesuits or not, were averse to a fair penitent. Be that as it may, the simple bourgeoise never doubted it for a moment, and casting herself at the feet of Louise, she entreated her, with tears in her eyes, to intercede with the reverend directeur to confess and absolve her sinful husband, who lay up-stairs like a hog, doing nothing.
Just at this moment the Norman re-entered the room; and though his precise object, in the little drama they had got up, was neither more nor less than to confess the unhappy aubergiste, yet, as a matter of form, he made some difficulty to meddling with the penitent of another; but after faintly advising that the Curé of the village should be sent for, he agreed, as the case was urgent, to undertake the office of confessor himself, though he mildly reproached Louise, in presence of the hostess, for having betrayed his real character, and bade her be more careful in future.
As soon as he had signified his consent, the bourgeoise ran to tell her husband that the very reverend Père Alexis, directeur of the Jesuits of Alençon, had kindly consented to hear his confession and absolve him of his sins; and in the mean while the Norman gave directions to Louise, whose adroitness had often served him in discovering the secrets of the Palace, while she had remained with Madame de Beaumont, to gain, in the present instance, all the information she could from the wife, while he went to interrogate the husband.
This being settled, as a blue velvet pourpoint was not exactly the garb to play a confessor in, Louise ran in all haste to strip the Astrologer’s robe we have already mentioned of all its profane symbols, and the Norman, casting its shadowy folds over his lusty limbs, and drawing the hood over his head, appeared to the eye as goodly a friar as ever cracked a bottle. No great regard to costume was necessary, for the landlady took it all for granted; and when she beheld the Norman issue forth from the room in which the valise had been placed, clothed in his long dark robes, she cast herself at his feet in a transport of reverence and piety.
Monsieur Marteville, otherwise the Père Alexis, did not fail to give her his blessing with great gravity, and with a solemn demeanour and slow step followed to the chamber of the sick man.