Chapter 37
The letter to Father Cazin. Conversations and consultations.
I was at Prieur’s house before eight o’clock. He was not awake. I tried to get him moving, but having nothing new to say to him, he didn’t want to be bothered. He asked about how I’d spent the night. No relief, I told him, the same ordeal, the same resignation. The night had passed like any previous one, in restless contemplation of my prayers and torments and enemies. I didn’t have an hour of real sleep, despite all the work I’d put toward having even that small thing. With no response from Cazin, I asked him how long it would take. Perhaps a week, he said, seven days.. “Let’s write him again after eight then.” “My thoughts exactly,” he said.
And then the usual people came over, and I told them of our conversation. They all congratulated me on being so close to the end of my troubles, but at this point I was disillusioned with the lot of them, and even when I acted like I believed them, they laughed at me anyway. Madame Metra made an appearance, and everyone seemed as pleased to see her as if she was some new exciting guest. Lomini followed her in, close behind, and the assembled crowd asked if he was still tormenting me. Cutting the tail off of Berbigueir’s squirrel? How cruel? What kind of a friend are you, what kind of a person even?”
“If my cousin told you I did that, he’s wrong,” said Lomini.
“I’m telling the truth,” said Eteinne. “You’re on your excursions every night, flitting to wherever you think you’ll find our friend. You tell me everything he does, everything he eats or drinks. I told you, what you’re doing to him is unreasonable. You’re torturing him as if he’d committed some sort of capital offense. Look at what you’re doing to him. Look at his face, he’s practically ghostly. He’s like a spirit who’s risen from his grave to haunt his murderer. I hope you never have to face that sort of justice.
“Each night your twisted form appears to our friend here and deprives him of his peace, and it has gone on far too long. I order you to cease your spells and enchantments on this man, or I’ll bring down all the pain that you’ve caused him.”
He turned to his associates. “I’ve written to the priest, again, to bring Berbiguier some peace and healing. We’ve already rescued him from Pinel and Moreau and Vandeval. I’ll also remove him from the influence of my cousin,” he said, indicated Lomini, “who said he wouldn’t abuse the very limited power he had. But since he’s incapable of following my orders, I relieve him of his duties, though he can carry on with anyone other than Berbiguier, if it’s useful or amusing.”
There was a round of general agreement and applause, and I made a polite exit, saying I had some other business to attend to. I met Baptiste on his way up the stairs, who had come from a visit to his father, who was a doctor, hoping to restore his own health, with the help of his father and some time in his native land.
“That’s all good,” I said to him, “but you look so tired. Are you sure you shouldn’t get some rest before you go out relaxing? It looks like the coach might shake you apart before you get there.” Baptiste agreed to stay a few days before heading out, and we went our separate ways.
I asked myself who all these strange people were, why all the confusion? Why did they promise to ease my fate, then complain about the delays? Do I tell them I know they’re working together to deceive me? No, Etienne has to think I’m still under his control. It’s useful as long as he thinks I belong to him somehow. So, I must be patient, hope for the relief that I’ve been searching for for so long.
I had been lost in thought for so long that I didn’t see the goblins had brought the influence of a strange planetary power against me. A terrible wind was blowing, with a driving rain so intense that the farms would likely lose their crops, wasting the sweat and labor of the farmers. No one can escape the power of magicians and sorcerers…but the poor and unfortunate suffer so much more than those that fortune favored. I had to talk this over with Prieur.
As usual, Prieur came home and asked if I’d experienced anything unusual during the day. I asked him about the strange wind and rain, which reminded me of the planetary powers we had recently invoked. “You cannot escape the influence of the planets,” he said. “Sometimes, they’re necessary.”
“Why? Is it sometimes necessary to keep a farmer from plowing his field? Or keep a traveler from traveling, or give them both some disease that will send them to their graves?”
“You shouldn’t let these things worry you.”
“Forgive me, but they do worry me, and they’re very much my concern. You’re acting on the weather itself–thunder, rain, hail, snow–and you want me to stop worrying? I can’t. Why is there this ceaseless parade of animals through my house, all stirred up, singing, shouting, whistling, meowing, dancing, howling, and so on. Why did they come to wreak havoc in my room? Why do they jump on me, flap their wings, walk around on their hind legs? It’s as if they took my bed for a club and my body for a dance floor…and you tell me that it’s none of my concern?”
“Who taught you all this?” He looked at me for a good long time.
“He who is master of all, who gives strength and courage to the weak, and opens the eyes of those who love truth. He shows me how far you push your demonic cruelty. I know you can fly through the air with your witchcraft. I saw the dark cloud you flew in on, and saw the fires you called down. Everyone on the Pont-Neuf saw it, even if they didn’t know what they were seeing, even if they couldn’t understand my natural gifts of perception when I revealed the magicians behind the phenomenon, shaking the planet? The people on that bridge may have seen me as some kind of prophet, nothing will shake me until all the spells and curses on me are finally broken.
“Don’t you remember when you told me that you broke my umbrella with a foul wind? How you enjoyed frustrating me with rivers of rain, or thunder and lightning breaking over my head, when I went to my home of Avignon? Why do these things only happen to me? Answer me! There’s an evil spirit hounding me, you know it.”
“My friend, I have nothing I can tell you that you don’t know, and you know far more than I ever would have guessed. But of the comings and goings of sorcerers and magicians, I don’t understand a thing. It’s a mystery to me.”
“Only believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity,” I told him. And there, I had him. “Whatever you admire in me is an effect of Divine goodness, the grace God bestows on me in his pity of my suffering, my love of serving him, and the confidence I have in his ineffable goodness. From this, I have the enlightenment that another may have spent a lifetime studying for.”
“But in you,” Prieur said, “I find knowledge of all kinds, some which might lead the scholar away from Heaven, those things which distract from the salvation of the soul. There is something of the supernatural in you, some strange element. And I can see that God particularly favors you.”
“I believe that as well. And for that favor, for twenty years, I’ve suffered every thing that the wicked heart a man can invent. My torments chase me wherever I go, leave me no peace, night and day they pray on me. But I endure this with resignation, in prayer to God, in my love of the church, and in subduing my body with abstinence and fasting. But you see how great the goodness of God is. In the midst of my sufferings and loss, he preserves my health, and he has not made me suffer the inconveniences of the body the human species is so vulnerable to.”
Recent Comments