“Alas, mon pere,” Laurette sighed, “I tell myself this daily, but it does not seem to ease the pangs in my grieving heart. I still mourn my Pierre.”
“That is scandalous, my daughter. Satan himself lurks in the darkness, waiting to seize your mortal soul the moment you entertain thoughts of adulterous consorting. For such it is, and do not doubt it; now that you are wed in lawful estate to the good patron whose name you bear, it behooves you to remain as irreproachable as Caesar's wife herself. Try to remember that, my child.”
“I—I will, mon pere,” Laurette quavered. She had doubtless thought herself finished with this painful interrogation when suddenly Pere Mourier interposed: “Now, before I give you your penance, my daughter, you must tell me whether you have made every possible effort to be a good and obedient wife to your husband.”
“Yes, mon pere, I—I am sure that I have done my best,” was the tremulous answer.
“Well, then, that is virtue indeed if it is so. But I would have a strict accounting from you, Laurette, as to this vital question: Have you humbly and truly granted your husband his conjugal rights? By this I mean, of course, have you permitted him access to your body that he may cleave unto you, as is prescribed by all the tenets of a good marriage?”
“I—I have gone to bed with him when—when he has wished it, yes, mon pere,” Laurette's voice trembled even more now, “but, and I do not know why, he—he has been unable to make love to me.”
“What is this?” thundered the fat priest. “Do you mean that he has not yet taken your-maidenhead?” »N—no, mon pere. But it was not for want of trying, I swear to you.”
“That makes no difference. If you are still virgin, it could only be because of your wicked resentment of the worthy patron and your clandestine and unholy lust for that scoundrel Pierre Larrieu whom you yearn to put in your husband's rightful place. This is sinfulness, my daughter, and must be chastised severely. I exhort you to see to it, this very night—aye, mark my words, Laurette!—that you bring your husband to a consummation of this marriage. Do you understand me? He is to take your hymen in the nuptial bed before the sun rises on the morrow. Then I bid you come to confessional tomorrow at one in the afternoon, to relate to me whether you have fulfilled my ordainment. And woe betide your bottom, my rebellious child, if I find that you have not heeded my counsel. Now go back to the house of your husband and recite a hundred Hail Marys.”
Laurette emerged from the confessional booth, her face streaked with tears, her eyes downcast, and she did not even give Father Lawrence a second glance as she left the rectory, her mind full of poignant anguish at the thought of the edict which the fat French priest had laid upon her.
I had decided to remain in the salon to find out the reaction of these two worthy ecclesiasts, for I suspected that they themselves had designs upon this delicious virgin. Pere Mourier had already shown as much in his lascivious scourging of her naked bottom. And after having witnessed Father Laurence's lusty fomicatory antics with the two beautiful widows Desiree and Hortense, I felt him made of the same cloth as Pere Mourier.
“You see, Father Lawrence, how stubborn the child is?” Pere Mourier wagged a fat reproving finger, then shook his head with a doleful sigh. “Lucifer wages a frightful struggle with me for the possession of her tender soul. If the two of us do not prevent her from casting aside her marital obligations and fleeing to the arms of that good-for-nothing, she will be damned to eternal perdition. And I do not mind telling you, in all confidence, Father Lawrence, that the worthy Monsieur Claude Villiers will at once cease his contributions to my little parish, which would leave me impoverished and unable to carry out the good works of faith which this so often sinful village so desperately needs.”
“I see your predicament, my confrere,” the English ecclesiast gravely agreed. “You shall have my aid, I pledge it. But how shall we constrain Laurette to keep her vows?”
“I have in mind a scheme that, while it is somewhat audacious, will surely prove successful. You overheard me telling the wench to see to it that her husband deflowered her this very night? Well, why should we not make sure of this ourselves? He has been out to the vineyards all this week and will come home late in the evening. Let us therefore go to his abode and secrete ourselves in the closet of his bedchamber. Thence we can watch to behold Laurette's obedience or lack of it. And should she seek, once he falls asleep, to steal out of the house to her wretched lover, we shall be there to enforce her righteousness. You, being a foreign priest, will terrify her all the more by your authority, since she now knows that you and I are in league together against the demon which seeks to seduce her soul.”
“A master stroke, Pere Mourier! I could not have thought of a better one myself. Well, then, let us go quickly and take our place without danger of discovery.”
“There will be no need to worry about our presence in the closet,” Pere Mourier winked at his English colleague. “The good Victorine, whom I have known for many years, is a pious soul. Moreover, she is spited because the patron did not wed her instead of Laurette, and it is human nature that she will try vindictively to make certain that the girl, once having snared the prize of marriage, lives up to it most strictly!”
I took this for an invitation for myself as well, and hopped upon the broad black hat of Pere Mourier, which protected his florid face from the hot Provence sun.
When they arrived at the home of Monsieur Claude Villiers, Pere Mourier had a whispered conversation with Victorine while Father Lawrence pretended not to listen. I, at my ease on Pere Mourier's black hat, heard everything. The French holy man had, it seemed, consoled Victorine on many a previous occasion when her grief for having lost two husbands (one from death by natural causes, the other because the man had run away with a young serving wench) became too much for her to bear alone. Hence there was a sympathetic bond between them, and out of memory of this, the patron's housekeeper agreed to say nothing to her master and to hide them both in the spacious closet of his bedchamber. The patron, she believed, would return by seven that evening, would dine and then summon his tender young bride to bed. At the moment, she informed them, Laurette was napping in her own room.
So the two cassocked ecclesiastics secreted themselves in the closet, while she brought them a sausage, bread, cheese and a half-bottle of good Anjou wine to quell their hunger—though I might have told her that their real hunger was for the white, soft flesh of gentle Laurette. And when they had made their meal, they drowsed. But I remained vigilant, for I wished to learn what mischief they intended to the lovely golden haired virgin.
Sure enough, as Victorine had predicted, the senile old fool came back to the house shortly after the grandfather's clock in the hallway had struck seven, and, after performing his ablutions and changing his earthstained garments, seated himself at the table and dined. Victorine informed him that the charming Laurette was feeling out of sorts, had napped much of the afternoon and begged his indulgence to permit her to take her evening repast in her own chamber. “So be it,” he snapped, “but you will tell Milady Villiers that she is to attend me in my bedchamber directly I have finished. If she demurs, remind her that she is my wife and that I have the right to thrash her with a switch if she does not obey in all things!”
Smirking at his own self-importance and the feeling of power it had given him to have such an autocratic order transmitted by the woman who had been his mistress to her far younger, more beautiful rival who was now his wife, scrawny old Claude Villiers ate a hearty supper, fortified by several glasses of Burgundy, and with his coffee had two glasses of cognac and then a cheroot. Finally, about eight-thirty, he got up rather unsteadily from the table and made his way to his bedchamber, his ugly features flushed and contorted with inflamed desire. He meant, this night, once and for all, to make Laurette his.