Everything seemed to work together to give me the greatest happiness. If fate had supplied me nicely with all the necessities, love gave me more than my salacious desires needed. I had every reason to be very content with my position. And I really was, till a confounded mix-up brought nothing but wild confusion into our little household. The court had been transferred to Fontainebleau and Monsieur de Mez… belonged to the detachment and had to stay in his quarters throughout the duration of the journey. My landlady, who counted upon his absence, asked me to give up my room for a private party and his wife who wanted to stay in Paris for a couple of days. I did not want to embarrass the dear lady and agreed to her request. We decided to sleep in her room as long as the two strangers used my bed. And that same evening those two good people took up lodging in my room in the hope that they could recoup some of their strength which they had lost during the many sleepless nights of their journey.
Monsieur de Mez…, who was obviously driven by a deep desire to spend the night with me, arrived at just about the time when we all had fallen asleep. He had the keys to the house and to the room. He entered very quietly, but his gentle soul was shaken to its very foundation when he heard a sonorous loud snoring. Overcome with fury he tiptoed toward my bed. Fumbling, he felt… two heads! Suddenly the demon of jealousy and the spirit of wrath took possession of his mind and he attacked the sleeping couple with terrible blows from his walking cane. He broke the arm of the poor devil of a husband who tried to protect his better half from this sudden onslaught. One can well imagine that this scene did not exactly unfold in deepest silence. Soon the entire household and neighborhood were awakened by the terrified screams of the unlucky couple. Everyone cried out, “Murder!” “Thieves!” Soon the guards arrived and Monsieur de Mez… who discovered his mistake too late, was arrested and taken to the City Hall. Since the whole uproar had broken out on account of me, I did not deem it advisable to remain and wait what turn the whole affair was going to take. I quickly grabbed my underwear and threw a house dress over my shoulders, and fled under the protection of the general turmoil to the home of the canon of the Saint-Nicolas church.
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE CANON
It had taken quite a while before this devout man had shown any desire for me. God knows, maybe it irritated him to find such a beautiful opportunity to release the lewdness which burned him up. However, he received me in a very Christian manner. And after he had made me drink a glass of delicious aquavit, from which he had also taken a hearty draught to appease his conscience, the old libertine laid me charitably in his canonical bed. It is certainly not without good reason that the particular talents of these eaters of Holy Water soup are so widely renowned. Compared to them, secular people are just plain, stunted, miserable wretches. That worthy priest performed, throughout the night and well into the day, true miracles of Nature. Whenever he threatened to wear out and be overcome with exhaustion, sheer desire made him go to pieces and his voluptuous fantasies — which were endless — gave him unending vigor. Every single area of my body was for him the object of adoration, devotion and sacrifice. Neither the writings of Aretino nor the immodest paintings of Clinchtel, despite the knowledge these gentlemen possessed, would have been capable f inventing even half of all the postures and positions into which the canon forced me.
The occasion did give me the opportunity though to become fully intimate with the canon, and he offered to share the fruits of his maintenance with me which, to tell the truth, were not too large. But the distressing situation in which I found myself did not allow me to be too choosy and so I accepted his offer wholeheartedly.
That same evening, at dusk, he loaned me an old pair of trousers in which his venerable reproductive tools must have dangled for at least ten years. And after he had thrown an old short cassock of about the same age around me and made me put on a woolen jacket with holes in it and bands under my chin, we left the house without being challenged; without anybody even talking to us. The devil himself would not have recognized me in this farcical disguise. My girl's figure was hidden so completely that I looked less like a woman and more like one of those poverty-stricken, pockmarked Irishmen who earn their livelihood by celebrating Masses.
Dear reader, you will never guess whereto my new lord and master brought me: to the rue Champ-fleuri, up to the fifth floor where a woman named Thomas lived who dealt in old hats. A few years ago this venerable old lady had been the canon's housekeeper. She had left him to marry a water vendor who lived in this quartier. However, that poor man did not need much time to exchange this life for a better one soon after the wedding ceremonies. And since he did not leave the widow Thomas much more than the fog of the river which had been his only means of livelihood, the lady had become a member of the guild of secondhand dealers. My priest left me in the of this honorable burgess for the time being till he would be able to find a suitable hideout for us.
Madame Thomas was a strong, pug-nosed, fairly heavily built woman. Nevertheless, one could detect, despite her massive fullness, that once upon a time she had possessed a figure which made men take notice of her. The dear little old woman had a secret affair going with a mendicant friar of the seraphim order of St. Francis. He paid homage to her charms whenever the stimulus of the flesh became unbearable to her.
It is incomprehensible how fate uses peculiar means to work miracles and guide us poor mortals along the path which we are destined to walk. Could anyone ever get the notion that the imaginative God reached me with his blessings in the home of an old female dealer in secondhand hats? Yet nothing is more true than that.
Brother Alexis raised me up out of the dust and became the first source of the abundance which I enjoy today. But what is even more surprising, and eludes our mere human understanding, is that the chain of events which opens the gates of happiness is so frequently linked with unpleasant happenings. For instance: a poor stranger who feels completely secure in my bedroom gets caned so unmercifully that he breaks his arm. Because I am afraid that I will be held responsible for this tragic incident I flee to my neighbor, the canon of the cathedral, who brings me to the home of Madame Thomas. But that is not the last of it. Aside from the ill luck I just mentioned, I hear the next day that the dealer in simony was killed by the fragments of his own church and buried under the ruins. And because of this unexpected death I gain a place of refuge without any strings attached thanks to my new landlady.
The confusing emotions caused by my present situation released a flood of tears from which Madame Thomas assumed I mourned the dear departed. Thereupon we cried together for a few minutes. But then the good woman, who was a natural enemy of woe and sorrow, tried to console me. And she was more successful with her quaint suggestions than any doctor would have been with all the pathos of Christian morality.
“Come on now, Mademoiselle, keep your chin up,” she said. “Now you have to use your head. Even if we keep moaning and groaning till the Day of Judgment, it will do absolutely no good. God's will happens. And after all, we are still very much alive. It is his own fault that he is dead now. Yes, yes, I really mean that. What in the devil was the use of it to take this morning to go to an early mass. He does that at the most only four times a year and he had to pick the day that the cathedral collapsed. They would have sung the mass just as beautifully without him hanging around. That's what the singers are paid for. It is just like my cousin Michaut always says, 'You cannot trust death.' The very moment we think about it the least, it hits us. If we had told the dear departed yesterday, 'Dear canon, you don't have to squeeze and touch that beautiful goose we are going to eat tomorrow because you won't be invited to the meal!' he would have sworn upon his honor that no matter what happened he was going to have his share. You see, that's how easy it is to make a mistake. It is truly a pity, because the goose would successfully grace the table of a queen. Yes, yes, let us keep a happy heart. All the trouble in the world that we make for ourselves does not help us to pay a single penny of our debts. And — just between you and me — you haven't lost much. He was one who could talk girls into doing almost anything and he would promise more butter than bread. And then it would not bother his conscience at all to let the poor things wait till they were green in the face, after he had used and scolded them. And one of his greatest mistakes was that he always thought about his belly. He was drunk most of the time and owed everybody in the neighborhood money. You see, it does not even help to bring him back when I tell you the truth about him. Truly, he wasn't even worth the price of a sucked-out egg.”