"All the same, it's a mean subject to handle."
"It certainly is, but happily the documents are abundant. Satan was terrible to the Middle Ages-"
"And to the modern."
"What do you mean?"
That Satanism has come down in a straight, unbroken line from that age to this."
"Oh, no; you don't believe that at this very hour the devil is being evoked and the black mass celebrated?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?"
"Perfectly."
"You amaze me. But, man! do you know that to witness such things would aid me signally in my work? No joking, you believe in a contemporary Satanistic manifestation? You have proofs?"
"Yes, and of them we shall speak later, for today I am very busy. Tomorrow evening, when we dine with Carhaix. Don't forget. I'll come by for you. Meanwhile think over the phrase which you applied a moment ago to the magicians: 'If they had entered the Church they would not have consented to be anything but cardinals and popes,' and then just think what kind of a clergy we have nowadays. The explanation of Satanism is there, in great part, anyway, for without sacrilegious priests there is no mature Satanism."
"But what do these priests want?"
"Everything!" exclaimed Des Hermies.
"Hmmm. Like Gilles de Rais, who asked the demon for 'knowledge, power, riches,' all that humanity covets, to be deeded to him by a title signed with his own blood."
CHAPTER V
"Come right in and get warm. Ah, messieurs, you must not do that any more," said Mme. Carhaix, seeing Durtal draw from his pocket some bottles wrapped in paper, while Des Hermies placed on the table some little packages tied with twine. "You mustn't spend your money on us."
"Oh, but you see we enjoy doing it, Mme. Carhaix. And your husband?"
"He is in the tower. Since morning he has been going from one tantrum into another."
"My, the cold is terrible today," said Durtal, "and I should think it would be no fun up there."
"Oh, he isn't grumbling for himself but for his bells. Take off your things."
They took off their overcoats and came up close to the stove.
"It isn't what you would call hot in here," said Mme. Carhaix, "but to thaw this place you would have to keep a fire going night and day."
"Why don't you get a portable stove?"
"Oh, heavens! that would asphyxiate us."
"It wouldn't be very comfortable at any rate," said Des Hermies, "for there is no chimney. You might get some joints of pipe and run them out of the window, the way you have fixed this tubing. But, speaking of that kind of apparatus, Durtal, doesn't it seem to you that those hideous galvanized iron contraptions perfectly typify our utilitarian epoch?
"Just think, the engineer, offended by any object that hasn't a sinister or ignoble form, reveals himself entire in this invention. He tells us, 'You want heat. You shall have heat-and nothing else.' Anything agreeable to the eye is out of the question. No more snapping, crackling wood fire, no more gentle, pervasive warmth. The useful without the fantastic. Ah, the beautiful jets of flame darting out from a red cave of coals and spurting up over a roaring log."
"But there are lots of stoves where you can see the fire," objected madame.
"Yes, and then it's worse yet. Fire behind a grated window of mica. Flame in prison. Depressing! Ah, those fine fires of faggots and dry vine stocks out in the country. They smell good and they cast a golden glow over everything. Modern life has set that in order. The luxury of the poorest of peasants is impossible in Paris except for people who have copious incomes."
The bell-ringer entered. Every hair of his bristling moustache was beaded with a globule of snow. With his knitted bonnet, his sheepskin coat, his fur mittens and goloshes, he resembled a Samoyed, fresh from the pole.
"I won't shake hands," he said, "for I am covered with grease and oil. What weather! Just think, I've been scouring the bells ever since early this morning. I'm worried about them."
"Why?"
"Why! You know very well that frost contracts the metal and sometimes cracks or breaks it. Some of these bitterly cold winters we have lost a good many, because bells suffer worse than we do in bad weather.-Wife, is there any hot water in the other room, so I can wash up?"
"Can't we help you set the table?" Des Hermies proposed.
But the good woman refused. "No, no, sit down. Dinner is ready."
"Mighty appetizing," said Durtal, inhaling the odour of a peppery pot-au-feu, perfumed with a symphony of vegetables, of which the keynote was celery.
"Everybody sit down," said Carhaix, reappearing with a clean blouse on, his face shining of soap and water.
They sat down. The glowing stove purred. Durtal felt the sudden relaxation of a chilly soul dipped into a warm bath: at Carhaix's one was so far from Paris, so remote from the epoch…
The lodge was poor, but cosy, comfortable, cordial. The very table, set country style, the polished glasses, the covered dish of sweet butter, the cider pitcher, the somewhat battered lamp casting reflections of tarnished silver on the great cloth, contributed to the atmosphere of home.
"Next time I come I must stop at the English store and buy a jar of that reliable orange marmalade," said Durtal to himself, for by common consent with Des Hermies he never dined with the bell-ringer without furnishing a share of the provisions. Carhaix set out a pot-au-feu and a simple salad and poured his cider. Not to be an expense to him, Des Hermies and Durtal brought wine, coffee, liquor, desserts, and managed so that their contributions would pay for the soup and the beef which would have lasted for several days if the Carhaixes had eaten alone.
"This time I did it!" said Mme. Carhaix triumphantly, serving to each in turn a mahogany-colour bouillon whose iridescent surface was looped with rings of topaz.
It was succulent and unctuous, robust and yet delicate, flavoured as it was with the broth of a whole flock of boiled chickens. The diners were silent now, their noses in their plates, their faces brightened by steam from the savoury soup, soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert.
"Now is the time to repeat the chestnut dear to Flaubert, 'You can't dine like this in a restaurant,'" said Durtal.
"Let's not malign the restaurants," said Des Hermies. "They afford a very special delight to the person who has the instinct of the inspector. I had an opportunity to gratify this instinct just the other night. I was returning from a call on a patient, and I dropped into one of these establishments where for the sum of three francs you are entitled to soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert.
"The restaurant, where I go as often as once a month, has an unvarying clientele, hostile highbrows, officers in mufti, members of Parliament, bureaucrats.
"While laboriously gnawing my way through a redoubtable sole with sauce au gratin, I examined the habitués seated all around me and I found them singularly altered since my last visit. They had become bony or bloated; their eyes were either hollow, with violet rings around them, or puffy, with crimson pouches beneath; the fat people had become yellow and the thin ones were turning green.
"More deadly than the forgotten venefices of the days of the Avignon papacy, the terrible preparations served in this place were slowly poisoning its customers.
"It was interested, as you may believe. I made myself the subject of a course of toxicological research, and, studying my food as it went down, I identified the frightful ingredients masking the mixtures of tannin and powdered carbon with which the fish was embalmed; and I penetrated the disguise of the marinated meats, painted with sauces the colour of sewage; and I diagnosed the wine as being coloured with fuscin, perfumed with furfurol, and enforced with molasses and plaster.
"I have promised myself to return every month to register the slow but sure progress of these people toward the tomb."