‘My son,’ she said, looking upon me with reproving eyes, ‘what have the good Sisters done to thee? Why is it that you look so unfavourably upon everything that comes from the community of St. Jean?’
‘What have I to do with the community?’ I cried—‘when I tell thee, Maman, that this Pierre Plastron knows nothing! I heard it from the fellow's own lips, and M. le Curé was present and heard him too. He had seen nothing, he knew nothing. Inquire of M. le Curé, if you have doubts of me.’
‘I do not doubt you, Martin,’ said my mother, with severity, ‘when you are not biassed by prejudice. And, as for M. le Curé, it is well known that the clergy are often jealous of the good Sisters, when they are not under their own control.’
Such was the injustice with which we were treated. And next day nothing was talked of but the revelation of Pierre Plastron. What he had seen and what he had heard was wonderful. All the saints had come and talked with him, and told him what he was to say to his townsmen. They told him exactly how everything had happened: how St. Jean himself had interfered on behalf of the Sisters, and how, if we were not more attentive to the duties of religion, certain among us would be bound hand and foot and cast into the jaws of hell. That I was one, nay the chief, of these denounced persons, no one could have any doubt. This exasperated me; and as soon as I knew that this folly had been printed and was in every house, I hastened to M. le Curé, and entreated him in his next Sunday's sermon to tell the true story of Pierre Plastron, and reveal the imposture. But M. le Curé shook his head. ‘It will do no good,’ he said.
‘But how no good?’ said I. ‘What good are we looking for? These are lies, nothing but lies. Either he has deceived the poor ladies basely, or they themselves—but this is what I cannot believe.’
‘Dear friend,’ he said, ‘compose thyself. Have you never discovered yet how strong is self-delusion? There will be no lying of which they are aware. Figure to yourself what a stimulus to the imagination to know that he was here, actually here. Even I—it suggests a hundred things to me. The Sisters will have said to him (meaning no evil, nay meaning the edification of the people), “But, Pierre, reflect! You must have seen this and that. Recall thy recollections a little.” And by degrees Pierre will have found out that he remembered—more than could have been hoped.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ I cried, out of patience, ‘and you know all this, yet you will not tell them the truth—the very truth.’
‘To what good?’ he said. Perhaps M. le Curé was right: but, for my part, had I stood up in that pulpit, I should have contradicted their lies and given no quarter. This, indeed, was what I did both in my private and public capacity; but the people, though they loved me, did not believe me. They said, ‘The best men have their prejudices. M. le Maire is an excellent man; but what will you? He is but human after all.’
M. le Curé and I said no more to each other on this subject. He was a brave man, yet here perhaps he was not quite brave. And the effect of Pierre Plastron's revelations in other quarters was to turn the awe that had been in many minds into mockery and laughter. ‘Ma foi,’ said Félix de Bois-Sombre, ‘Monseigneur St. Lambert has bad taste, mon ami Martin, to choose Pierre Plastron for his confidant when he might have had thee.’ ‘M. de Bois-Sombre does ill to laugh,’ said my mother (even my mother! she was not on my side), ‘when it is known that the foolish are often chosen to confound the wise.’ But Agnès, my wife, it was she who gave me the best consolation. She turned to me with the tears in her beautiful eyes.
‘Mon ami,’ she said, ‘let Monseigneur St. Lambert say what he will. He is not God that we should put him above all. There were other saints with other thoughts that came for thee and for me!’