Angelique - Part 4. The Doomed Man of Notre Dame Chapter 10 - Read online

THEY FOUND THE LAWYER IN THE PALACE COURTYARD, in a small tavern kept by the hangman’s son-in-law and daughter.
The lawyer, with his wig awry, seemed very nervous.
“You saw how they put me out, taking advantage of the court’s absence! . . . I assure you, if I’d been there, I’d have made that demented creature spit out the piece of soap that she had put into her mouth! But never mind. The very excesses of those two witnesses will serve my case for the defence! . . . If only Father Kircher Weren’t keeping us waiting so long, it would put my mind at rest. Well, come and sit at this table near the fire, ladies. I ordered eggs and chitterlings from the hangman’s little wench. You didn’t put the juice of any dead man’s head into the gravy, I hope, my beauty?” “No, sir,” the young woman replied brightly, “we only use that in the soup for the poor.”
Angelique, her elbows propped on the table, had buried her head in her hands. Desgrez was glancing at her in perplexity. Then he noticed that she was shaking with nervous laughter.
“Oh, that Carmencita!” she gurgled, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “What an actress! I never saw anything so funny! Do you think she did it on purpose?”
“You never can tell with women!” growled the lawyer.
At a near-by table, a clerk was commenting on the scene for his colleagues.
“If it was an act that nun was playing, well, it was a good act. When I was young, I attended the trial of Abbe Grandier, who was burned for bewitching the nuns of Loudun. Things happened just like that. There weren't enough cloaks in the hall to cover all the pretty girls who kept stripping as soon as they set eyes on Grandier. You didn't even have time to turn round! What we saw today was nothing. At the hearings in Loudun, some of them, stark naked, rolled on the ground and . . .”
He bent forward to whisper some particularly scurrilous details.
Angelique regained control of herself gradually.
“Forgive me for laughing. I am all done in.”
“Laugh, poor girl, laugh,” Desgrez muttered gloomily. “There’s always time to weep. If only Father Kircher were here! What the devil has happened to him? . . .”
Hearing the cry of an ink-seller, who was roving through the court¬yard with his barrel slung over his shoulder and goose-quills in his hand, he called him and, scribbling a message on a table-comer, he summoned a clerk to carry it at once to the police Lieutenant, Monsieur Aubray.
“This Aubray is a friend of my father’s. I've told him that I'll pay whatever necessary if he gets his watchmen on the move and brings Father Kircher here to the Palace, by hook or by crook.”
“Did you send to the Temple for him?”
“Twice already I have sent young Rope-round-the-neck with a note. He came back empty-handed. The Jesuits he saw say the Father left for the Palace this morning.”
“What are you afraid of?” Angelique inquired, alarmed.
“Oh, nothing. I’d rather he were here, that’s all. In principle, the scientific demonstration of gold extraction ought to convince the magis¬trates, narrow-minded though they are. But convincing them isn’t every¬thing, we’ve got to defeat them. Only Father Kircher’s voice has enough authority to sway them to override the . . . royal preferences. Come on, now, for the hearing will be resumed and you might find the doors closed.”
The afternoon session opened with a declaration by President Massenau- He said that the judges* conviction, after hearing the various witnesses for the prosecution, had been sufficiendy enlightened on the diverse aspects of this difficult case, as well as on the peculiar character of the accused, and that the witnesses for the defence would now be heard.
Desgrez motioned to one of the guards, and a little Parisian ragamuffin with a smart face appeared. He gave his name as Robert Davesne and said he was a locksmith’s apprentice, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, at Maitre Dasron’s at the sign of the Copper Key. In a clear voice, he swore to speak the whole truth, invoking the name of Saint Eloi, patron of the lock¬smiths’ brotherhood. He then stepped towards President Massenau and passed him a small object, at which the latter peered with surprise.
“Now what may this be?”
“It’s a needle with a spring, Monsieur,” the child replied, unruffled. “As I am clever with my hands, my master ordered me to make an object just like it, which a monk had ordered from him.”
“What is this rigmarole?” the magistrate inquired, turning towards Desgrez.
“Monsieur le President, the prosecution has laid at the defendant’s charge his reactions to the exorcism performed in the prison of the Bastille by Conan B£cher, to whom I refuse, out of respect for the Church, to give his ecclesiastical rank. Conan Bucher has told us that the defendant reacted to the test of the ‘diabolical spots’ in a way that leaves no doubt of his relations with Satan. At each of the crucial points foreseen in the ritual of Rome, the defendant is said to have uttered such screams that the wardens themselves trembled. Now, I wish to point out that the probe with which the test was performed was manufactured on the same model as the one you are holding in your hands. Gentlemen, that bogus ‘exorcism’ on which this court of justice is in danger of basing its verdict was conducted with a faked probe. That is to say, under its harmless appearance, this probe hides a long spring-operated needle which, when released by an imperceptible pressure of the finger-nail, plunges into the flesh. I defy any self-possessed man to stand this test without screaming like a madman at times. Is any one of you, gentlemen of the jury, brave enough to offer himself up to the refined torture to which the defendant was subjected, and which now serves to accuse him of being possessed by the devil? . . .”
Fallot de Sance got up, very stiff and pale, and held out his arm.
But Massenau intervened impatiently.
“Enough play-acting! Is this probe the very one which was used for the exorcism?”
“It is an exact copy. The original was taken three weeks ago to the
Bastille by this very apprentice, and handed to Becher. The apprentice can bear witness to the fact.”
At that moment, the youngster roguishly released the instrument, and the needle shot out under the nose of Massenau, who jumped back.
“As President of this court, I object to this last-minute witness who does not even figure on the list of the registry. Moreover, he is a child, and his testimony is therefore unreliable. And lastly, this is most certainly not a disinterested testimony. How much were you paid for coming here?”
“Nothing yet, sir. But I was promised double what the monk already gave me, that is to say twenty livres.”
Massenau turned to the lawyer in a towering rage.
“I warn you that, if you insist on having such testimony recorded, I shall be obliged to forgo hearing the other witnesses for the defence.”
Dcsgrez lowered his head in token of submission, and the boy streaked through the door of the record-office as if the devil were after him.
“Have the other witnesses brought in,” the President ordered curtly.
There was a noise like the trampling of a strong team of furniture removers. Preceded by two sergeants, a curious procession filed in. First there came several porters from the central market, sweating and un¬kempt, who were carrying odd-shaped parcels, from which iron pipes, forge bellows and other odd contraptions could be seen sticking out. They were followed by two little street arabs, dragging baskets of charcoal and earthen jars with strange labels on them.
And finally, behind two guards, a misshapen gnome came in, whom the huge negro Kouassi-Ba seemed to push before him. The Moor, stripped to the waist, had daubed himself with stripes of white clay. Angelique recalled that he used to do this on festive days in Toulouse. But his appearance, like that of the whole weird procession, drew from the crowd a gasp, in which astonishment mingled with terror.
Angelique, however, heaved a sigh of relief. Tears welled up in her eyes.
‘Oh! what good people,’ she thought, looking at Fritz Hauer and Kouassi-Ba. ‘And yet they know what a risk they run by coming in aid of their master.’
As soon as they had put their parcels down, the porters left. The old Saxon and the Moor alone remained. They proceeded to unpack and set up the portable forge as well as die foot-worked bellows. They also in¬stalled two crucibles and a big bone-ash cupel. Then the Saxon opened two sacks. From one of them he extracted a heavy black slab that looked like slag; from the other an ingot of what seemed to be lead.
Desgrez's voice explained:
“In accordance with the court’s unanimously expressed desire to see and hear everything that concerns the charge of magical transmutation of gold, here are the witnesses and—in the terms of our justice—‘accom¬plices* of this allegedly magical operation. I would like you to note that their presence here is entirely voluntary. They have come in aid of their former master and not at all because their names were wrested by torture from the defendant, the Comte de Peyrac. . . . Now, Monsieur le President, will you allow the accused to demonstrate before you, with his customary helpers, the experiment which the bill of indictment calls ‘black magic* but which, according to the defendant, is but the extraction of invisible gold, revealed by a scientific process?**
Maitre Gallemand whispered to his neighbour:
“Those gentlemen are torn between their curiosity, the attraction of the forbidden fruit, and the stern orders from on high. If they were really astute, they’d refuse to let themselves be swayed.**
The young woman shivered, fearing lest the only visible evidence of her husband’s innocence be ruled out at the last moment. But curiosity, or perhaps the spirit of justice, carried the day. JofFrey de Peyrac was invited by Massenau to direct the operation and answer all necessary questions.
“But, before that, can you swear, Comte, that, with all this business of fulminant gold, neither the Palace nor the persons in it are in any way endangered?”
With her ever-present sense of irony, Angelique did not fail to remark that, under the stress of their fear of the mystery in preparation, these infallible judges rendered his rank to the man who had so high-handedly been deprived of it.
JofFrey assured them that there was no danger whatsoever. Judge Bourie asked that Father Becher be called back so as to be confronted with the accused during the alleged experiment and thus to avoid any trickery. Massenau gravely nodded his wig, and Angelique could not check a nervous tremor which always seized her at the sight of that monk, who was not only the principal tool of this trial, but who must also have been the inventor of the torturing needle and probably the instigator of Carmencita’s play-acting. Was he really monstrously lucid and merely trying to avenge his smarting failure in alchemy? Or was he a dim-witted visionary who, like certain madmen, had occasional moments of lucidity? Not that it really mattered. One way or the other, he was Friar Becher!
He represented everything that JofFrey de Peyrac had fought against;, the flotsam, the residue of a bygone world, of those Middle Ages which had rolled like a formidable ocean over Europe but which, as they receded, left in the hollow of the new century the stagnant scum of sophistry and dialectics.
His hands in the ample sleeves of his robe, with craning neck and glaring eyes, Becher was watching the Saxon and Kouassi-Ba, who, after putting up the forge and luting’ the joints of the pipes with day, were beginning to sdr up the fire.
Behind Angelique, a priest was saying to one of his colleagues:
“It is a fact that such a collection of human monsters, and in particular this Moor, smeared as if for a magical ceremony, are not designed to re¬assure faint hearts. Fortunately, our Lord will always be able to recognise His own. I have heard that a secret but regular exorcism, undertaken on orders of the Paris diocese, resulted in the conclusion that there was nothing diabolical about the accusation unjustly brought against this gentleman, who, perhaps, is being punished for his lack of piety. . . .”
Distress and comfort were contending in Angelique’s aching heart. The clergyman was surely right. But why did poor Fritz Hauer have to be hump-backed and blue-faced, and why did Kouassi-Ba have to look so terrifying? And when Joffrey de Peyrac stretched out his long, broken body and limped over to the glowing forge, he only added to the sinister picture.
The accused asked one of the sergeants to pick up the black, porous- looking block of dross and present it first to the President and then to the jury. Another sergeant handed them a strong magnifying-glass so that they might be able to examine the stone very closely.
“You see, gendemen, this is the matte of molten gold-bearing pyrite, extracted from my mine at Salsigne,” Peyrac remarked.
Becher confirmed:
“It’s the same black stuff which I ground and washed and in which I found no gold.”
“Well, Father,” the accused went on with a deference that Angelique admired, “you will be able to display once more your gold-washing talents. Kouassi-Ba, pass me a pesde.”
The monk turned up his wide sleeves and eagerly began to crush and pound the black stone, which was fairly easily reduced to powder.
“Monsieur le President, will you be good enough to send now for a big tub of water and a tin basin, well cleaned and scrubbed with sand.”
While two guards went to fetch what he required, the prisoner pro¬ceeded to show the judges a metal ingot.
“This is lead for making bullets or water-pipes, ‘poor* lead, as specialists call it, for it contains practically no gold or silver.”
“How can we be sure of it?” the Protestant Delmas remarkedjudidously.
“I can prove it to you by assaying.”
The Saxon handed his former master a big tallow candle and two small white cubes. With a penknife, Joffrey dug a small cavity out of the face of one of the cubes.
“What is this white stuff? Is it porcelain day?” inquired Massenau.
“It’s a cupel of bone-ash, those ashes that impressed you so much at the beginning of this hearing. Actually, you will see that this white stuff merely serves to absorb the scum of the lead when the latter is being heated by the flame of a tallow candle. . . .”
The candle was lit, and Fritz Hauer brought a small tube curved to form a right angle, into which the Comte began to blow in such a way that the candle-flame was directed on to the piece of lead inserted in the bone- cupel.
The flickering flame curved, touched the lead, which began to melt and give forth a greyish-blue smoke.
Conan Becher raised his finger with a pontifical air.
“Authorised scientists call this ‘blowing the Philosopher’s Stone*,” he commented in a croaking voice.
The Comte interrupted his operation for a moment.
“If one listened to this fool, all chimney flues would soon pass for Satan’s exhalation!”
The monk assumed a martyr’s face, and the President called the de¬fendant to order.
Joffrey de Peyrac began to blow. In the falling dusk, the molten lead could be seen to seethe at red heat, then cool, and finally darken, while the prisoner stopped blowing into his tube. Suddenly the small wisp of acrid smoke dissipated, and it could be seen that the molten lead had completely disappeared.
“It’s a piece of sleight-of-hand that proves nothing at all,” Massenau remarked. ,
“It merely shows that the bone-ash has absorbed or, if you like, imbibed all the oxydised poor lead. And this indicates that this lead contains no precious ore, which is what I wanted to show you by this operation, which the Saxon metal-workers call ‘blank assaying’. I shall now ask Father ВёсЬег to finish washing this black powder, which I say is gold-bearing, and we shall then proceed to extract the gold.”
The two guards were back with a tub of water and a basin. After wash¬ing by gyration the powder he had pounded, the monk triumphantly showed die court the very feeble residue of heavy elements that had formed at the bottom of the basin.
“It’s just as I contended,” he said. “Not the minutest trace of gold. You cannot produce any from it except by magic.”
“The gold is invisible,” Joffrey repeated. “My assistants will extract it from tliis pounded stone with the sole aid of lead and fire. I shall take no part in the operation. You can thus convince yourselves that I shall add no fresh element to it, nor accompany the process by any cabbalistic formulae, and that it is in fact an almost artisanal process, performed by workers who are as far removed from sorcery as any blacksmith or boiler-maker.”
Maitre Gallemand murmured:
“He talks too simply and too well. Presently they’ll accuse him of bewitching the jury and the entire audience.”
Kouassi-Ba and Fritz Hauer once again got busy. Becher, who was obviously reticent, but enthralled by his ‘mission* and the leading role he was gradually taking in this trial, followed without interference the pre¬parations of loading the furnace with charcoal.
The Saxon put the lead into a big terra-cotta crucible, then added die black powder of the crushed dross. He covered all this with a white salt which presumably was borax. Finally, some more charcoal was heaped on top, and Kouassi-Ba began to work the pedals of the two bellows.
Angelique admired the patience with which her husband, who had only a few moments ago been so proud and haughty, now lent himself to this comedy. He kept resolutely away from the furnace, near the stool of repentance, but the glow of the fire lit his lean, gaunt face buried under its heavy mane.
In the big fire in the furnace, the lump of lead and dross was melting. The air was permeated with smoke and an acrid smell of sulphur. Some people in the front rows began to cough and sneeze.
The entire court at times disappeared behind a screen of dark smoke. Angelique told herself that the judges had some merit after all in thus exposing themselves, if not to magic, at least to a most unpleasant ordeal.
Judge Bourie rose to ask permission to step closer. Massenau granted the request. He took up a position between the furnace, on which he turned his back, and the accused whom he kept watching unrelentingly. The fumes of the forge occasionally blew down on Bourie and made him cough, but he remained in this uncomfortable and exposed position . without taking his eyes off the Comte.
Judge Fallot, known as de Sance, seemed to be on tenterhooks. He avoided his colleagues’ eyes and kept nervously fidgeting in his big red velvet arm-chair.
‘Poor Gaston!’ Angelique thought. Then she stopped taking an interest in him.
The crucible, in the heat of the fire, which a guard was constantly feed¬ing with charcoal, was already turning red, then almost white.
“Halt!” the Saxon miner ordered. Covered with soot, sweat and bone- ash, he was looking more and more like some monster risen from hell.
He advanced towards one of the sacks and pulled from it a pair of big, bulging tongs, with which he seized the heavy crucible amidst the flames. With arched back and propped solidly on his bow-legs, he raised the crucible with no apparent effort. Kouassi-Ba held out a sand-cast. A brilliant, silver-like jet spurted and poured into the ingot-mould.
Comte Joffrey seemed to come out of his lethargy and commented in a tired voice:
“Here, then, we have the lead casting which has collected the precious ore of the gold-bearing matte. We shall break the mould and forthwith assay this lead on a ‘bed-plate* of ashes placed at the bottom of the furnace/*
Fritz Hauer held out this bed-plate, which was a big white brick in which a cavity had been dug. He put it on the fire, then, to remove the ingot from the crucible, he had to use an anvil, and the august Palace resounded with ringing hammer-blows for some moments. At last the lead was carefully deposited in the cavity and the fire was stirred up. When the brick and the lead were red-hot, Fritz stopped the bellows and Kouassi-Ba removed all the remaining charcoal from the furnace.
All that remained was the glowing brick filled with incandescent, molten lead which seethed and grew ever brighter. Kouassi-Ba seized a small pair of hand-bellows and directed them towards the lead. The cold air, far from extinguishing the incandescence, revived it and the bath became dazzlingly bright.
“Look at the magic !** Becher yapped. “There*s no more coal, but hell- fire is beginning to produce the Philosopher's Stone! Look! The three colours appear!**
The Moor and the Saxon took it in turns to go on blowing on the molten bath, which writhed and was seized by whirls and tremors like a will-o'-the-wisp. An egg of fire formed in the seething mass. Then, as the negro withdrew the bellows, the egg stood up on its large axis and, spinning like a top, began to lose its brightness and darken gradually.
But, suddenly, the egg fiercely lit up again, became white, quivered, slipped out of the cavity and, with a soft thud, rolled on to the ground, at the Comte's feet.
“Satan's egg has joined its creator!’* Becher shouted. “It's lightning! It's fulminant gold! It'll explode over us !**
The audience screamed. In the semi-darkness in which they found themselves Massenau called for candles. Amidst this pandemonium, Friar Becher kept babbling of the ‘Philosopher's Egg' and the ‘Sage's Chicken’, so much so that a facetious clerk climbed on to a bench and gave vent to a ringing ‘Cock-a-doodle-do.!'
'Oh, my God, they don’t understand anything!’ thought Angllique, wringing her hands.
At last, police constables appeared at various points of the hall with three-branched candelabra, and the tumult gradually died down. The Comte, who had not moved, touched the piece of metal with the tip of his crutch.
“Pick up that nugget, Kouassi-Ba, and take it to the Judge.” Unhesitatingly, the negro jumped to pick up the metallic egg and presented it, gleaming on his black palm.
“It is gold!” Judge Bourie gasped, and he stood as if turned to stone. He wanted to grab it, but no sooner had he touched it than he gave a dreadful scream and jerked his burned hand away.
“How is it, Comte,” Massenau asked, trying to steady his voice, “that the heat of this gold does not bum your black servant?”
“It is common knowledge that Moors can bear glowing embers in their hands, just like the charcoal-burners of the Auvergne.”
Becher appeared with bulging eyes and, uninvited, emptied a bottle of holy water over the incriminating piece of metal.
“Gendemen of the court, what you have seen here is the manufacture, against all ritual exorcisms, of the devil’s gold. Judge for yourselves the immense power of this magic!”
“Do you think this gold is real?” Massenau asked.
The monk grimaced and pulled from his inexhaustible pocket another little botde, which he unstoppered with care.
“This is an acid, which attacks not only brass and bronze, but also gold- silver alloys. However, I am convinced beforehand that this is purum aurum”
“Actually,” the Comte broke in, “the gold extracted from the rock before you is not absolutely pure. Otherwise the ore wouldn’t have pro¬duced the flash which lit up the metal at the end of the assay and which, accompanying a sudden change of state, produced that other phenomenon which made the nugget jump. Berzelius was the first scientist to describe this strange effect.”
Judge Bounds sullen voice asked:
“Is this Berzelius at least a Roman Catholic?”
“No doubt,” Peyrac replied placidly, “for he was a Swede who lived in the Middle Ages.”
Bouril gave a sarcastic laugh.
“The court will judge the value of so remote a testimony.” ,
There was a moment’s indecision, while the judges, leaning towards one another, debated the need of continuing the hearing or adjourning it to the next day. It was getting late. The audience was both tired and over-excited. But nobody wanted to leave.
Angfiique felt no fatigue whatsoever. She was as if detached from her¬self. At the back of her mind, a small feverish argument was in progress: she could only follow its meanderings without being able to direct it. It was not possible that the demonstration of gold extraction would be un¬favourably interpreted for the accused . . . Hadn’t Friar Becher’s very excesses displeased the judges? Massenau might affirm his neutrality as much as he liked, but it was obvious that he favoured his Gascon com¬patriot at heart. But, against this, wasn’t the whole court composed of rough, stiff men of the north? And in the audience it was only the truculent Maitre Gallemand who dared to display feelings of the least hostility towards the King’s decisions. As for the nun who was accom-panying Angelique, she was certainly helpful, but in the way a block of ice is when placed on the burning brow of a sick person.
Ah! if this had taken place at Toulouse! . . .
And this lawyer of hers, himself a child of the streets of Paris, unknown and poor into the bargain, when would they let him speak at last? . . . Wasn’t he trying to slink away? Why did he no longer speak up? And where was Father Kircher? Angelique vainly tried to distinguish, among the front-row spectators, the sly peasant face of the Grand Exorcist of France.
Hostile murmurs buzzed all around her.
“It seems that Bourie was promised possession of three dioceses if he obtains this man’s condemnation. Peyrac’s only fault is to be in advance of his century. You’ll see he’ll be sentenced. . . .”
President Massenau coughed.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the hearing continues. Accused, have you any¬thing to add to what we have seen and heard?”
The Great Lame Man of Languedoc drew himself up on his crutches, and his voice rang out, full and sonorous, and vibrant with a sincerity that made a quiver run through the ranks of the public.
“I swear before God, and on the blessed heads of my wife and my child, that I know neither the devil nor his magic, that I never performed the transmutation of gold nor created life according to satanic counsels, and that I have never sought to harm any fellow-creature by the effect of spells or charms.”
For the first time during this endless hearing, Angelique noticed a feeling of sympathy for the man who had just spoken. A clear, childish voice from the heart of the crowd cried:
“We believe you.”
Judge Bourie rose, waving his sleeves.
“Take care! This is the effect of a charm that we have not mentioned enough. Do not forget: the Golden Voice of the Kingdom . . . the redoubtable voice that enticed women. . .
The same childish voice rose:
“Let him sing! Let him sing Г
This time, President Massenau’s southern blood rushed to his face and he began to pound his desk with his fist.
“Silence! Or I’ll have the court-room cleared! Guards, remove the trouble-makers! . . . Monsieur Bourie, sit down. There* ve been enough interruptions. Let’s get it over! Maitre Desgrez, where are you?”
“I am here, Monsieur le President,” the lawyer replied.
Massenau stopped for breath and made an effort to control himself. He continued more calmly:
“Gentlemen, the King’s justice owes it to itself to take everything into consideration. Therefore, although the case is being heard in private, the King, in his magnanimity, did not wish to deprive the accused of all means of defence. It is in this spirit that I considered it my duty to consent to the accused’s producing even dangerous demonstrations, in order to throw light on the magical processes which he is accused of possessing. Finally— as supreme proof of princely clemency—he has obtained the assistance of a lawyer, whom I now call upon to speak.”