The Wicker Work Woman: A Chronicle of Our Own Times. Anatole FranceЧитать онлайн книгу.

      At six o’clock in the evening Abbé Guitrel got out of the train in Paris and called a cab in the station-yard. Then, driving in the dusk through the murky, rain-swept streets, dotted with lights, he made for Number 5, Rue des Boulangers. There, in a narrow, rugged, hilly street, above the coopers and the cork-dealers, and amidst a smell of casks, lived his old friend Abbé Le Génil, chaplain to the Convent of the Seven Wounds, who was a popular Lenten preacher in one of the most fashionable parishes in Paris. Here Abbé Guitrel was in the habit of putting up, whenever he visited Paris in the hope of expediting the progress of his tardy fortunes. All day long the soles of his buckled shoes tapped discreetly upon the pavements, staircases and floors of all sorts of different houses. In the evening he supped with M. Le Génil. The two old comrades from the seminary spun each other merry yarns, chatted over the rates charged for mass and sermon, and played their game of manille. At ten o’clock Nanette, the maid, rolled into the dining-room an iron bedstead for M. Guitrel, who always gave her when he left the same tip—a brand-new twenty-sou piece.

      On this occasion, as in the past, M. Le Génil, who was a tall, stout man, smacked his great hand down on Guitrel’s flinching shoulder, and rumbling out a good-day in his deep organ note, instantly challenged him in his usual jolly style:

      “Well, old miser, have you brought me twelve dozen masses at a crown each, or are you, as usual, going to keep to yourself the gold that your pious provincials swamp you with?”

      Being a poor man, and knowing that Guitrel was as poor as himself, he regarded this sort of talk as a good jest.

      Guitrel went so far as to understand a joke, though, being of a gloomy temperament, he never jested himself. He had, he explained, been obliged to come to Paris to carry out several commissions with which he had been charged, more especially the purchase of books. Would his friend, then, put him up for a day or two, three at the most?

      “Now do tell the truth for once in your life!” answered M. Le Génil. “You have just come up to smell out a mitre, you old fox! To-morrow morning you will be showing yourself to the nuncio with a sanctimonious expression. Guitrel, you are going to be a bishop!”

Hereupon the chaplain of the Convent of the Seven Wounds, the preacher at the church of Sainte-Louise, made a bow to the future bishop. Mingled with his ironic courtesy there was, perhaps, a certain strain of instinctive deference. Then once more his face fell into the harsh lines that revealed the temperament of a second Olivier Maillard.[1]

      [1] An eccentric priest of the fifteenth century. His sermons were full of denunciations against his enemies. He once attacked Louis XI, who threatened to throw him into the Seine. Maillard replied: “The King is master, but tell him that I shall get to heaven by water sooner than he will by his post-horses.”

      “Come in, then! Will you take some refreshment?”

      M. Guitrel was a reserved man, whose compressed lips showed his determination not to be pumped. As a matter of fact, it was quite true that he had come up to enlist powerful influence in support of his candidature, but he had no wish to explain all his wily courses to this naturally frank friend of his. For M. Le Génil made, not only a virtue of his natural frankness, but even a policy.

      M. Guitrel stammered:

      “Don’t imagine … dismiss this notion that …”

       M. Le Génil shrugged his shoulders, exclaiming, “You old mystery-monger!”

      Then, conducting his friend to his bedroom, he sat down once more beneath the light of his lamp and resumed his interrupted task, which was that of mending his breeches.

      M. Le Génil, popular preacher as he was both in Paris and Versailles, did his own mending, partly to save his old servant the trouble and partly because he was fond of handling a needle, a taste he had acquired during the years of grinding poverty that he had endured when he first entered the Church. And now this giant with lungs of brass, who fulminated against atheists from the elevation of a pulpit, was meekly sitting on a rush-bottomed chair, occupied in drawing a needle in and out with his huge red hands. In the midst of his task he raised his head and glancing shyly towards Guitrel with his big, kindly eyes, exclaimed:

      “We’ll have a game of manille to-night, you old trickster.”

      But Guitrel, hesitating, yet firm, stammered out that he would be obliged to go out after dinner. He was full of plans, and after pushing on the preparations for a meal, he gobbled down his food, to the great disgust of his host, who was not only a great eater, but a great talker. He refused to wait for dessert, but, retiring to another room, shut himself in, drew a layman’s suit from his portmanteau and put it on.

      When he appeared again, his friend saw that he was dressed in a long, severe, black frock-coat, which seemed to have the drollery of a disguise. With his head crowned by a rusty opera-hat of prodigious height, he hastily gulped down his coffee, mumbled a grace and slipped out. Leaning over the stair-rail, Abbé Le Génil shouted to him:

      “Don’t ring when you come in, or you’ll wake Nanette. You’ll find the key under the mat. One moment, Guitrel, I know where you’re going. You old Quintilian, you, you’re just going to take an elocution lesson.”

      Through the damp fog, Abbé Guitrel followed the quays along by the river, passed the bridge of Saint-Pères, crossed the Place du Carrousel, unnoticed by the indifferent passers-by, who scarcely took the trouble even to glance at his huge hat. Finally he halted under the Tuscan porch of the Comédie-Française. He carefully read the playbill in order to make sure that the arrangements had not been changed, and that Andromaque and the Malade Imaginaire would be presented. Then he asked at the second pay-box for a pit ticket.

      The narrow seats behind the empty stalls were already almost filled when he sat down and opened an old newspaper, not to read, but to keep himself in countenance,