Part 52

“You are not the prisoner; you are not here to plead your own cause. If the court thinks right to prosecute you for contempt you can see to your own defence; but there is no question of that now.”

“I beg your pardon. The question is for me to let the court see whether I am an honest man or a false witness. It would seem that this has something to do with the case; the prisoner’s life depends on it; the court cannot consider that a matter of indifference.”

“Proceed,” said the King’s advocate, “and try to remember the respect you owe to the court.”

“I have no wish to offend the court,” replied Patience. “I would merely observe that a man may refuse to submit to the orders of the court from conscientious motives which the court can legally condemn, but which each judge, personally, can understand and excuse. I say, then, that I could not persuade myself of Bernard de Mauprat’s guilt; my ears alone knew of it; this was not enough for me. Pardon me, gentlemen, I, too, am a judge. Make inquiries about me; in my village they call me ‘the great judge.’ When my fellow-villagers ask me to decide some tavern dispute or the boundary of some field, I do not so much listen to their opinions as my own. In judging a man one must take account of more than a single little act. Many previous ones will help to show the truth or falsity of the last that is imputed to him. Thus, being unable to believe that Bernard was a murderer, and having heard more than a dozen people, whom I consider incapable of giving false evidence, testify to the fact that a monk ‘bearing a resemblance to the Mauprats’ had been prowling about the country, and having myself seen this monk’s back and habit as he was passing through Pouligny on the morning of the event, I wished to discover if he was in Varenne; and I learnt that he was still there; that is to say, after leaving it, he had returned about the time of the trial last month. And, what is more, I learnt that he was acquainted with John Mauprat. Who can this monk be? I asked myself; why does the very sight of him frighten all the people in the country? What is he doing in Varenne? If he belongs to the Carmelite convent, why does he not wear their habit? If he is of the same order as John, why is he not staying with him at the Carmelites? If he is collecting money, why, after making a collection in one place, does he not move on to another, instead of returning and bothering people who have given him money only the day before? If he is a Trappist and does not want to stay with the Carmelites like the other, why does he not go back to his own convent? What is this wandering monk? And how does John Mauprat, who has told several people that he does not know him, know him so well that they lunch together from time to time in a tavern at Crevant? I made up my mind, then, to give evidence, though it might, in a measure, do harm to M. Bernard, so as to be able to say what I am now saying, even if it should be of no use. But as you never allow witnesses sufficient time to try to verify what they have reason to believe, I started off immediately for my woods, where I live like the foxes, with a determination not to quit them until I had discovered what this monk was doing in the country. So I put myself on his track and I have discovered who he is; he is the murderer of Edmee de Mauprat; his name is Antony Mauprat.”

This revelation caused a great stir on the bench and among the public. Every one looked around for John Mauprat, whose face was nowhere to be seen.

“What proof have you of this?” said the president.

“I am about to tell you,” replied Patience. “Having learnt from the landlady at Crevant, to whom I have occasionally been of some assistance, that the two Trappists used to lunch at her tavern from time to time, as I have said, I went and took up my abode about half a league from here, in a hermitage known as Le Trou aux Fades, situated in the middle of the woods and open to the first comer, furniture and all. It is a cave in the rock, containing a seat in the shape of a big stone and nothing else. I lived there for a couple of days on roots and bits of bread that they occasionally brought me from the tavern. It is against my principles to live in a tavern. On the third day the landlady’s little boy came and informed me that the two monks were about to sit down to a meal. I hastened back, and hid myself in a cellar which opens into the garden. The door of this cellar is quite close to the apple-tree under which these gentlemen were taking luncheon in the open air. John was sober; the other was eating like a Carmelite and drinking like a Franciscan. I could hear and see everything at my ease.

“‘There must be an end of this,’ Antony was saying--I easily recognised the man when I saw him drink and heard him swear--‘I am tired of playing this game for you. Hide me away with the Carmelites or I shall make a row.’

“‘And what row can you make that will not bring you to the gallows, you clumsy fool!’ answered John. ‘It is very certain that you will not set foot inside the monastery. I don’t want to find myself mixed up in a criminal trial; for they would discover what you are in an hour or two.’

“‘And why, I should like to know? You make them all believe that you are a saint!’

“‘Because I know how to behave like a saint; whereas you--you behave like a fool. Why, you can’t stop swearing for an hour, and you would be breaking all the mugs after dinner!’

“‘I say, Nepomucene,’ rejoined the other, ‘do you fancy that you would get off scot-free if I were caught and tried?’

“‘Why not?’ answered the Trappist. ‘I had no hand in your folly, nor did I advise anything of this kind.’

“‘Ha! ha! my fine apostle!’ cried Antony, throwing himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter. ‘You are glad enough about it, now that it is done. You were always a coward; and had it not been for me you would never have thought of anything better than getting yourself made a Trappist, to ape devotion and afterward get absolution for the past, so as to have a right to draw a little money from the “Headbreakers” of Sainte-Severe. By Jove! a mighty fine ambition, to give up the ghost under a monk’s cowl after leading a pretty poor life and only tasting half its sweets, let alone hiding like a mole! Come, now; when they have hung my pretty Bernard, and the lovely Edmonde is dead, and when the old neck-breaker has given back his big bones to the earth; when we have inherited all that pretty fortune yonder; you will own that we have done a capital stroke of business--three at a blow! It would cost me rather too much to play the saint, seeing that convent ways are not quite my ways, and that I don’t know how to wear the habit; so I shall throw the cowl to the winds, and content myself with building a chapel at Roche-Mauprat and taking the sacrament four times a year.’

“‘Everything you have done in this matter is stupid and infamous.’

“‘Bless my soul! Don’t talk of infamy, my sweet brother, or I shall make you swallow this bottle whole.’

“‘I say that it is a piece of folly, and if it succeeds you ought to burn a fine candle to the Virgin. If it does not succeed, I wash my hands of the whole business, do you hear? After I had been in hiding in the secret passage in the keep, and had heard Bernard telling his valet after supper that he was going out of his mind on account of the beautiful Edmee, I happened to throw out a suggestion that there might be a chance here of doing a good stroke of business; and like a fool you took the matter seriously, and, without consulting me or waiting for a favourable moment, you went and did a deed that should have been thought over and properly planned.’

“‘A favourable moment, chicken-heart that you are! How the deuce was I to get one? “Opportunity makes the thief.” I find myself surprised by the hunt in the middle of the forest; I go and hide in that cursed Gazeau Tower; I see my turtle-doves coming; I overhear a conversation that might make one die of laughing, and see Bernard blubbering and the girl playing the haughty beauty; Bernard goes off like an idiot without showing himself a man; I find on me--God knows how--a rascally pistol already loaded. Bang! . . .’

“‘Hold your tongue, you wild brute!’ said the other, quite frightened. ‘Do you think a tavern is the proper place to talk of these things? Keep that tongue quiet, you wretched creature, or I will never see you again.’

“‘And yet you will have to see me, sweet brother mine, when I go and ring the bell at the gate of the Carmelite monastery.’

“‘If you come I will denounce you.’

“‘You will not denounce me, for I know too much about you.’

“‘I am not afraid. I have given proofs of my repentance; I have expiated my sins.’

“‘Hypocrite!’

“‘Come, now, hold your tongue, you madman!’ said the other. ‘I must leave you. There is some money.’

“‘That all?’

“‘What do you expect from a monk? Do you imagine that I am rich?’

“‘Your Carmelites are; and you can do what you like with them.’