The Vatican Cellars E-Book

André Gide

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 386

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Could the Pope have been secretly abducted?When nineteen-year-old Lafcadio Wluiki learns he is to inherit a French aristocrat's fortune, he heads to Rome, where a plot is afoot: ingenious fraudsters have set about convincing their wealthy victims that the pontiff has been imprisoned by freemasons at Castel Sant'Angelo.Saving toddlers from burning buildings one minute and committing a shocking, motiveless crime the next, the amoral Lafcadio is one of Nobel-winner André Gide's most original creations, and a model for later fictional anti-heroes such as Sartre's Meursault and Highsmith's Ripley. A send-up of conventional morality, The Vatican Cellars also carries an enduring warning about how easily we are duped by charming rogues.

Leseprobe

The Vatican Cellars

André Gide

An allegorical satire

translated from the French by Julian Evans

Pushkin Press

Introduction

Les Caves du Vatican, first published in French in 1914 around the mid-point of André Gide’s writing career, was banned by the Roman Catholic Church along with Gide’s other works in 1952 – a year after the author’s death, and five years after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

To those familiar with the austere tone and intense moral explorations of Gide’s earlier récits (short narratives), opening The Vatican Cellars to find a sprawling, rattling yarn may come as something of a surprise, as it did to many readers at the time. The book’s satirical treatment of the credulity of believers, whether reliant on religion or other doctrine, shocked many critics, while its existential questions and especially the concept of the gratuitous act inspired the likes of the Surrealists and Sartre and Camus. Yet for all the book’s perceived daring modernity, what is really striking looking back is just how funny it is.

Though it has continued to be available in the United States, where it is best known by the title Lafcadio’s Adventures after one of its most memorable characters (though by no means the only one to have adventures), the 1925 English translation by Gide’s contemporary and friend Dorothy Bussy has not been widely distributed in the UK for 25 years. This new translation, which deliberately modernises the text in line with Gide’s own decision to adopt a more straightforward, vigorous style for the writing of the book, aims to bring this overlooked – and refreshingly light-hearted – classic to a larger audience in its centenary year.

Contents

Title PageIntroductionBOOK ONE:ANTHIME ARMAND-DUBOISIIIIIIIVVVIVIIBOOK TWO: JULIUS DE BARAGLIOULIIIIIIIVVVIVIIBOOK THREE: AMÉDÉE FLEURISSOIREIIIIIIIVBOOK FOUR: THE MILLIPEDEIIIIIIIVVVIVIIBOOK FIVE: LAFCADIOIIIIIIIVVVIVIINotesPostfaceAbout the AuthorCopyright

BOOK ONE

ANTHIME ARMAND-DUBOIS

‘Speaking for myself, my decision is made.

I have opted for social atheism, the atheism

that I have been expressing for the last

fifteen or so years in a series of works …’

Georges Palante, from his column about philosophy

in the Mercure de France, December 1912

I

In 1890, in the papal reign of Leo XIII, the reputation of Dr X——, a specialist in rheumatic diseases, persuaded Anthime Armand-Dubois, freemason, to travel to Rome.

‘What?’ his brother-in-law, Julius de Baraglioul, exclaimed. ‘You’re going all the way to Rome to get your body looked after! I just hope that when you get there you’ll realise how much sicker your soul is!’

To which Armand-Dubois replied, in a theatrically sorrowful voice, ‘My poor dear friend, will you just look at my shoulders?’

Julius liked to oblige, and, despite his disapproval, looked up at his brother-in-law’s shoulders. They were racked by spasms, as though shaken by deep, irrepressible laughter, and it was undeniably poignant to see Anthime’s burly, half-crippled frame using up what was left of his physical strength in such a grotesque parody. Too bad! Both men had clearly made up their minds, and de Baraglioul’s eloquence was not going to change anything. Perhaps time would? The whispered counsel of holy places …

Looking profoundly discouraged, Julius said simply, ‘Anthime, you cause me great sorrow.’ The shoulders suddenly stopped jiggling, because Anthime was very fond of his brother-in-law. ‘I shall just have to hope that in three years’ time, when the pope has his jubilee, I shall come and find you improved in every way!’

At least Véronique would be accompanying her husband in an entirely different frame of mind. Every bit as devout as her sister Marguerite and Julius, she was looking forward to her extended stay in Rome as the fulfilment of one of her most cherished wishes. As one of those people who fill their flat, disappointed lives with countless small devotions, in her sterility she offered up to the Lord every attention that a baby would have demanded from her. Sadly she entertained almost no hope of leading her Anthime back to Him. She had known for a long time how much stubbornness that broad brow, knitted in perpetual denial, was capable of. Father Flons had warned her.

‘The most unswerving resolves, Madame,’ he had said to her, ‘are the worst. You must hope for nothing less than a miracle.’

She had even stopped letting it depress her. Within days of moving to Rome, husband and wife had, singly and separately, arranged their lives: Véronique around the household and her religious devotions, Anthime around his scientific research. And that was how they lived, side by side, disagreeing about everything, tolerating each other by turning their backs on one another. As a result, a kind of harmony reigned between them and an almost-happiness enveloped them, both finding in their toleration of the other’s faults an unobtrusive outlet for their virtue.

The apartment they had rented with an agency’s help offered, like most Italian accommodation, unforeseen advantages along with several remarkable drawbacks. Occupying the whole of the first floor of the Palazzo Forgetti, in Via in Lucina, it had an attractive terrace on which Véronique was instantly inspired to grow aspidistras, which were generally so unsuccessful in apartments in Paris, but in order to get to this terrace she had to go through the orangery that Anthime had immediately taken over as his laboratory. They therefore agreed that Anthime would allow his wife free passage at certain hours of the day.

As quietly as she could, Véronique would push open the door and tiptoe furtively through, staring at the floor like a lay sister hurrying past a wall daubed with obscene graffiti, as she refused point-blank to contemplate the far end of the room where Anthime’s enormous back, dwarfing an armchair against which he had leant his crutch, was hunched over heaven knows what evil experiment. Anthime pretended not to hear a thing. But as soon as his wife had walked back through the room he hoisted himself heavily out of his chair, dragged himself to the door and, full of spite, with his lips pressed tightly together, clack! he flipped the lock shut with an autocratic snap of his index finger.

It would soon be time for Beppo, his procurer, to come in by the other door and be given his instructions.

A boy of twelve or thirteen, dressed in rags and without parents or a fixed address, the urchin had come to Anthime’s notice a few days after his arrival in Rome. Outside the hotel in Via di Bocca di Leone where the Armand-Dubois had first stayed, he had found Beppo trying to attract the attention of passers-by with a grasshopper nestling under a few blades of grass in a small fishing basket. Anthime had given him ten lire for the insect, then, using the tiny amount of Italian at his command, somehow let the boy know that he would soon be needing some rats at the apartment in Via in Lucina to which he was moving the next day. And not just rats: every crawling, swimming, scurrying, flying thing was a candidate to be documented. He worked on live animals.

Beppo, a born procurer, would happily have stolen the eagle or the she-wolf off the Capitol for him. His new job, indulging his appetites for roaming and petty larceny, delighted him. He was paid ten lire a day, and for that he also helped with domestic tasks. Véronique at first took a dim view of him, but the moment she saw him cross himself as he passed the Madonna at the building’s north corner, she forgave him his rags and started to allow him to bring the water and coal, firewood and kindling through to the kitchen. She even let him carry her basket when he accompanied her to the market – that was on Tuesdays and Fridays, the days when Caroline, the maid they had brought with them from Paris, was too busy with the housework.

Beppo disliked Véronique but slavishly adored Anthime, who quickly allowed the boy to come up to his laboratory instead of painfully going down to the courtyard himself to take delivery of his victims. The laboratory could be reached directly via the terrace and a hidden staircase that led down to the courtyard. Surly and reclusive, Anthime felt his heart beat a little faster as he heard the light slap of bare feet on the tiles. He showed no sign: nothing was allowed to divert him from his work.

The boy did not knock on the glass-panelled door but pawed at it and then, as Anthime stayed hunched over his table without answering, took a few steps forward and piped in his clear voice a ‘Permesso?’ that filled the room with a sound like blue sky. His voice made you think of an angel – yet he was an executioner’s assistant. What new victim had he brought with him in the bag he put down carefully on the sacrificial slab? Anthime, too engrossed, often did not open the bag immediately, merely giving it a quick glance. As soon as he saw it move, he was satisfied. Rat, mouse, songbird, frog, they were all grist to this Moloch’s mill. Sometimes Beppo did not bring anything, but he came in anyway because he knew Armand-Dubois would be waiting for him even if he was empty-handed. And as the silent boy at the scientist’s side craned forward to witness some appalling experiment, I should like to reassure the reader that the said scientist experienced no false god’s glow of vanity at feeling the boy’s astonished gaze settle, in turn, full of horror on the animal and then full of admiration on himself.

In preparation for his assault on Homo sapiens itself, Anthime Armand-Dubois was developing a theory in which all animal activity could be reduced to ‘tropisms’. Tropisms! No sooner had the word been coined than no one talked about anything else. Whole swathes of psychologists acknowledged no higher power than tropisms. Tropisms! What sudden enlightenment burst forth from those syllables! Of course: animals were subject to exactly the same stimuli as the heliotrope whose flowers turn spontaneously towards the sun (a phenomenon easily reduced to a few simple laws of physics and thermochemistry). At last the cosmos was revealing a reassuring benevolence. A human being’s most unexpected behaviour could now be explained solely in terms of total obedience to the new law.

To achieve his ends – to extract from his helpless creatures the proof of their simplicity – Armand-Dubois had invented a complicated arrangement of boxes containing tunnels, trapdoors, mazes and compartments: in some of these there was food, in others nothing or some respiratory irritant, and they had doors of different colours and shapes. These diabolical contraptions were soon to become all the rage in Germany and, known as Vexierkasten1, would enable the new discipline of psychophysiology to take a further step towards unbelief. In order to target a particular sense, or a part of an animal’s brain, Armand-Dubois blinded some of them, deafened others, castrated, dissected, removed sections of grey matter and extracted this or that organ that you might have sworn was indispensable but which, for Anthime’s edification, the animal had to go without.

His Report on ‘Conditional Reflexes’ had recently electrified Uppsala University. Bitter discussions had raged, in which top scientists from all over the world had taken part. But new questions had started filling Anthime’s  mind, and, leaving his colleagues to squabble, he was pursuing his investigations in new directions, ambitiously aiming to back God further and further into a corner.

Not content with accepting that all activity incurred a physical cost as a general principle, nor that an animal expended energy merely by the exertion of its muscles and senses, the question he strove to answer after each exercise was, how much? And so, as the ravaged creature attempted to recover, Anthime, instead of feeding it, weighed it. Any extra elements (such as feeding) would overcomplicate his experiments. Take for example this one: six rats – two blind, two one-eyed, two sighted – were kept without food, immobile, and weighed daily (the two sighted ones having their eyes strained continuously by a small mechanical mill). Having starved them for five days, what would their respective weight loss be? Each day at midday, Anthime Armand-Dubois triumphantly entered a new set of figures in the tables he had designed himself.

II

The jubilee was imminent. The Armand-Dubois were expecting the Baragliouls any day. On the morning the telegram came announcing their arrival that evening, Anthime went out to buy a necktie.

He did not go out often. In fact he went out as little as possible, because he was unable to move around easily. Véronique was happy to do his shopping for him or bring tradespeople to him to take orders from his selections. He no longer worried about fashion but, as simple as he wanted his new tie to be (a restrained bow of black silk), he still wished to choose it. The light-brown satin cravat he had bought for the journey and worn during their stay at the hotel kept escaping from his waistcoat (which he liked to wear cut low), and Marguerite de Baraglioul would think that the cream-coloured scarf he had replaced it with, held in place by a big old worthless cameo set on a pin, was far too casual. It had been a serious error to give up the small black ready-made bows he wore in Paris, and especially not to have kept one as an example. What styles would Rome have to offer? He decided not to choose until he had been to several shirtmakers on the Corso and the Via dei Condotti. Rounded ends were too informal for a man of fifty. No, what he needed was a nice straight bow in dull black silk …

Lunch was not until one. He came back around midday with his shopping, in time to weigh his animals.

He was not vain, but he felt the need to try on his necktie before settling down to work. There was a piece of a looking-glass lying there, which he had used for some of his tropism experiments. He propped it on the floor, against a cage, and bent over to see his reflection.

His hair was still thick and he kept it cut short. It had been ginger once, but now it was that variable greyish yellow of old silver-gilt. He had bushy eyebrows and a look in his eyes that was greyer and colder than the sky in winter. His whiskers, shaved high and cut short, had the same reddish tinge as his stiff moustache. He ran the back of his hand over his cheeks and under his big square chin and muttered, ‘All right, all right, I’ll shave this afternoon.’

He took the necktie out of its paper and placed it in front of him, unpinned his cameo and unwound his scarf. His powerful neck was confined by a medium-height collar cut low at the front, whose corners he turned down. And here, in spite of my earnest desire to describe only what is essential, I cannot pass over Anthime Armand-Dubois’s cyst in silence. Until I have learnt to distinguish more skilfully between what is incidental and what is necessary, what else can I demand from my pen except accuracy and scrupulousness? In any case, who can say for certain that Anthime’s cyst had never played any part in, or influenced in any way, the decisions that he collected together under the heading of free thinking? He was willing to disregard his sciatica, but he could not forgive the Good Lord for the petty meanness of inflicting a cyst on him.

It had appeared out of nowhere shortly after he got married, and to begin with had been nothing more than an insignificant wart south-east of his left ear, on his hairline. For a long time he had been able to conceal the growth beneath his abundant hair, which he brushed over it in a curl. Even Véronique had not noticed it until one night, as she stroked his head, her hand had suddenly come up against it.

‘Heavens! What have you got there?’ she had exclaimed.

And almost as if, once identified, it had no reason to restrain its expansion, within a few months the cyst had become as big as a partridge’s egg, then a guinea fowl’s egg, then a hen’s egg, where it paused as Anthime’s receding hairline, struggling to perform its task, left it increasingly exposed. At the age of forty-six Anthime Armand-Dubois no longer needed to worry about looking appealing. He cut his hair short, and started to wear a style of detachable medium-height collar in which a kind of pocket hid and exposed the cyst at the same time. But enough about Anthime’s cyst.

He put the necktie around his neck. In its middle there was a fastening ribbon that was supposed to be threaded through a small metal tube and clipped in place with a tiny lever. It was an ingenious device, but it took only the first poke of the ribbon for it to become detached from the tie, which slithered off his neck onto the table. He was forced to call Véronique, who came running.

‘Be kind and sew this thing back on for me, will you?’

‘Machine-made,’ she muttered, ‘awfully trashy.’

‘It’s true it wasn’t sewn on at all well.’

Véronique always carried two needles, threaded with white and black respectively, pinned to the left breast of her tailored blouse. Standing by the French window, not bothering to sit down, she started the repair. Anthime watched her. She was a biggish woman with strong features and as stubborn as he was, but cheerful and smiling most of the time, so that even a faint moustache had not hardened her looks.

She’s a good woman, Anthime reflected. I could have married a tease who cheated on me, a flibbertigibbet who ran out on me, a gasbag who drove me mad, a goose who infuriated me, or a shrew like my sister-in-law …

And in a less irritable voice than usual he said, ‘Thank you,’ as Véronique, her work done, handed him back his tie.

His new necktie around his neck, Anthime is finally fully applied to his thoughts. No other voices can be heard, either outside or in his soul. He has weighed his blind rats. What is there to say? The one-eyed rats have not moved. He weighs the sighted pair – and jumps so sharply that his crutch clatters to the floor. Shock horror! His sighted rats … he weighs them a second time, but no, there is no getting away from it: since yesterday his sighted pair have put on weight!

A light suddenly goes on in his head.

‘Véronique!’

Laboriously, having retrieved his crutch, he hastens to the door.

‘Véronique!’

She runs to him again, ready to help. He stands in the doorway and asks grimly, ‘Who has been interfering with my rats?’

No answer. He speaks slowly, enunciating each word, as though Véronique has lost the ability to understand plain French.

‘While I was out, someone fed them. Was it you?’

Regaining some of her courage, she turns to face him, almost aggressively.

‘You were letting those poor creatures starve. I didn’t upset your experiment, I just gave—’

But he has grabbed her by the sleeve and, hobbling, he leads her over to the table and points to his pages of figures and observations.

‘You see these pieces of paper – on which for the last fortnight I’ve been collecting my remarks on these animals: the same ones that my colleague Potier is waiting to read out at the Académie des Sciences at its session on 17 May next. And on 15 April, that is, today, at the bottom of my columns of figures, what can I write? What am I to write?’

As she does not say a word, using the flat tip of his index finger like a pointer he prods the blank space on the paper.

‘On this day,’ he repeats, ‘Madame Armand-Dubois, the researcher’s wife, listening only to the urgings of her heart, committed the … what would you like me to put? Blunder? Reckless act? Folly?’

‘You should write: had pity on these poor creatures, victims of a perverse curiosity.’

He draws himself up, mustering all his dignity.

‘If that is the way you feel about it, Madame, you’ll understand that I must ask you in future to use the courtyard staircase to go and look after your pot plants.’

‘Do you think I ever come into your squalid room because I want to?’

‘Then spare yourself the distress of entering it in future.’

And matching the act to his words as expressively as he can, he sweeps up his pages of records and rips them into small pieces.

‘For the last fortnight’ he said – although if we are honest, his rats have only been fasting for four days. But his exaggeration of his grievance must somehow have placated his anger, because at lunch he appears looking entirely untroubled and even sets aside his principles to the extent of holding out a hand of reconciliation to his other half. Possibly because he does not want to offer, any more than his wife does, a spectacle of discord to their invariably right-thinking Baraglioul guests, for which they would immediately hold Anthime’s opinions responsible.

At about five o’clock Véronique exchanges her blouse for a tailored jacket of black cloth and leaves to meet Julius and Marguerite, due at Rome station at six. Anthime goes to shave. He has made the effort to replace his scarf with a formal necktie, and that ought to be enough. He recoils from ceremony and sees no reason why his sister-in-law’s arrival should make him give up his alpaca jacket, his white waistcoat flecked with blue, and his drill trousers and comfortable black leather slippers that he wears everywhere, even to go out, his limp providing him with the perfect excuse.

III

The Baraglioul family – the gl is pronounced palatally, Italian-style, as in Broglie (duke of ) – are originally from Parma. It was a Baraglioul – Alessandro – who became the second husband of Filippa Visconti in 1514, a few months after the annexation of the duchy of Parma to the Papal States. Another Baraglioul – also Alessandro – distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto and was then murdered in 1580, in circumstances that are mysterious to this day. It would be straightforward, but not very interesting, to follow the family’s fortunes until 1807, around the time Parma was annexed by France and Robert de Baraglioul, Julius’s grandfather, moved to Pau in south-west France. In 1828 Charles X granted him a count’s coronet – a title that his third son, Juste-Agénor (the elder brothers having died in their youth), was later to bear so nobly in his diplomatic career, where his sharp intelligence shone and his negotiating skills bore triumphant fruit.

Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul’s second son Julius, who had lived a blameless life since his marriage, had had several passionate affairs in his youth. At least he could honestly claim that he had never ignored the urgings of his heart, although the basic virtue of his nature, and a kind of moral elegance that pervaded everything he wrote, had always stopped his desires leading him down a slope on which his novelist’s curiosity would undoubtedly have allowed them free rein. His blood ran placidly though not coldly in his veins, as a number of aristocratic beauties could have testified … And I would not touch on it here if his first novels had not clearly hinted at it, which was one of the factors responsible for their widespread fashionable success. Their appeal to ‘people of quality’ had led to one of them being serialised in Le Correspondant and two others in La Revue des Deux Mondes. This was how, as though in spite of himself and at an absurdly young age, he had found himself swept towards the doors of the Académie: with his distinguished good looks, profoundly earnest expression and contemplative pallor he seemed made for it.

As for Anthime, he professed a deep scorn for the advantages of rank, wealth and looks that never ceased to distress Julius, but he did acknowledge that his brother-in-law possessed both a vein of natural goodness and a great lack of skill at discussion, which often let free thought win the day.

Sometime after six o’clock Anthime heard his guests’ carriage stop at the door. He went to meet them on the landing. Julius came up first. In his Cronstadt hat and long overcoat with its silk lapels, he looked dressed for social calls rather than travelling. Only the tartan shawl draped over his forearm hinted otherwise. The long journey did not seem to have tired him at all. Marguerite de Baraglioul on the other hand, who was following him on her sister’s arm, gave every appearance of exhaustion. Her bonnet and chignon were awry, her feet stumbled on the steps, her face was half hidden by the handkerchief she was holding like a compress to her face.

As she reached Anthime Véronique whispered, ‘Marguerite has some coal dust in her eye.’

Their daughter Julie, a gracious little girl of nine, and the maid brought up the rear, keeping an anxious silence.

Marguerite’s character being what it was, everyone knew it was not a good idea to make light of the situation. Anthime suggested that they send for an ophthalmologist but Marguerite, who knew the reputation of so-called Italian ‘doctors’, would not hear of it ‘for the world’, piping in a languishing whisper, ‘Cold water. Just cold water. Oh!’

‘Of course, my dear Marguerite,’ Anthime went on, ‘cold water will get rid of the irritation for a few seconds by rinsing your eye, but it won’t get rid of the problem.’

Then, turning to Julius: ‘Did you see what it was?’

‘Not terribly well. As soon as the train stopped and I suggested looking at her eye, she got awfully tense—’

‘Don’t say that, Julius! You were awfully clumsy. The first thing you did when you tried to lift up my eyelid was bend all my eyelashes back …’

‘Would you like me to try?’ Anthime said. ‘Perhaps I’ll be better at it.’

A porter was bringing up their trunks. Caroline lit a mirrored lamp.

‘Well, my dear, you’re not going to perform the operation in the hall, are you?’ Véronique said, and led the Baragliouls to their room.

The Armand-Dubois apartment was laid out around the building’s inner courtyard, overlooked by the windows of the corridor that led from the entrance hall to the orangery. Along this corridor doors gave onto the dining room, then the sitting room (an enormous ill-furnished corner room that the Armand-Dubois did not use), and two guest rooms that had been arranged, one for Julius and Marguerite de Baraglioul and the other, smaller one for Julie, next to the last bedroom, which was for the Armand-Dubois. Every room had a communicating door. The kitchen and two maids’ rooms were off the other side of the landing and entrance hall …

‘Please don’t all crowd round me,’ Marguerite wailed. ‘Julius, will you do something about the luggage?’

Véronique persuaded her sister to sit in an armchair. She held the lamp while Anthime examined her.

‘The problem is that it’s inflamed. Do you think you could take your hat off?’

But Marguerite, possibly afraid that her disarranged hair would reveal a number of artificial aids, insisted she would take it off later: an ordinary carriage bonnet would not stop her from leaning her head against the back of the armchair.

‘So, you’d like me to remove the mote in your eye before I take the plank out of mine?’ Anthime said with a half-snigger. ‘That sounds rather at odds with the teaching of the Scriptures to me.’

‘Oh, please don’t make me pay too dearly for your kindness.’

‘I shan’t say another word … Here, the corner of a clean handkerchief … I see what it is … Keep calm … good heavens! Look up! … Got it.’

With the corner of his handkerchief Anthime removed an almost invisible piece of grit.

‘Thank you! Thank you. Now can you leave me alone? This has given me the most awful migraine.’

While Marguerite was resting, Julius unpacking with the maid, and Véronique taking care of the dinner preparations, Anthime was looking after Julie in her bedroom. The last time he had seen his niece she had been very small, and he hardly recognised this tall young girl whose smile was already one of solemn innocence. As he sat trying to entertain her, talking to her as interestingly as he could about trivial and childish things, his attention was caught by a thin silver chain she wore around her neck. He immediately suspected that it had religious medallions attached to it, and, slipping his fat index finger indiscreetly inside her blouse, he hooked them out. Hiding his pathological dislike behind a display of astonishment, he said, ‘Well now, what are these little things all about?’

Julie knew perfectly well that his question was not serious, but why should she be offended?

‘What, Uncle? Haven’t you ever seen medallions before?’

‘Now you come to mention it, no, dear little one,’ he lied. ‘I must say they’re not exactly pretty-pretty, are they, but I suppose they’re for something?’

And because unquestioning piety is not incompatible with a touch of innocent mischief, in response the little girl pointed her finger at a photograph of herself tucked into the mirror above the fireplace and said, ‘Look, Uncle, you’ve got a picture of a little girl who isn’t pretty-pretty either. What’s that for?’

Surprised to find such an impish sense of repartee, and with it clearly an equal dose of common sense, in a child he had hitherto thought of as a zealot, Uncle Anthime was briefly disconcerted. But he could hardly embark on a metaphysical discussion with a nine-year-old girl! He smiled. Julie seized her opportunity, holding out the holy tokens.

‘This one,’ she said, ‘is St Julia, my patron saint, and this one is the Sacred Heart of Our—’

‘You haven’t got one of the Good Lord, then?’ Anthime broke in, absurdly.

The child answered matter-of-factly, ‘No, they don’t make them of the Good Lord … But this is the prettiest one: it’s Our Lady of Lourdes, which Aunt Fleurissoire gave me. She brought her from Lourdes. I started wearing her the day Papa and Maman offered me to the Blessed Virgin.’

This was too much for Anthime. Utterly ignoring the indescribable charm that such images summoned up – the month of May, the procession of children in white and blue – he gave way to a manic urge to blaspheme.

‘So the Blessed Virgin didn’t want you, then, since you’re still here with us?’

Julie said nothing. Had she already understood that the wisest response to some kinds of bad manners was not to respond at all? In any case, what could she say? In the silence that followed his taunting question it was not Julie but her freemason uncle who reddened – out of slight confusion, an unadmitted qualm that goes hand in hand with rudeness, a short-lived turmoil that he hid with a respectful kiss on his niece’s innocent forehead to make amends.

‘Why do you pretend to be so naughty, Uncle Anthime?’

Julie’s instincts were entirely right: deep down, her learned, unbelieving uncle was a gentle, kind-hearted person. So why this stubborn resistance?

At that moment Adèle opened the door.

‘Madame is asking for Mademoiselle.’

It seemed that Marguerite de Baraglioul was wary of her brother-in-law’s influence and did not wish to leave her daughter alone with him for long. Anthime dared say as much to her in a murmured aside a while later, as the family sat down to dinner. Marguerite turned a still faintly red gaze on him.

‘Wary of you? My dear, Julie could convert a dozen cynics like you in less time than it would take you to make the tiniest impression on her soul. No. No, we’re more robust than that, we believers. All the same, do remember she’s a child … In an era as corrupt as this, and a country as shamefully governed as ours, she knows blasphemy is all she can expect to see around her. But it is sad that the first signs of impropriety she witnesses should come from her uncle, whom we should like to teach her to respect.’

IV

Would these words, so mild and wise, have the effect of calming Anthime?

Yes, during the first two courses (dinner, which was good but plain, was only three courses) and so long as the table talk ranged over uncontroversial subjects. Out of consideration for Marguerite’s eye they discussed, first, ophthalmology (the Baragliouls pretended not to see how much Anthime’s cyst had grown), then, out of kindness towards Véronique, Italian cuisine, with allusions to the excellence of her dinner. Then Anthime asked for news of the Fleurissoires, whom the Baragliouls had recently been to see at Pau, and of the Countess de Saint-Prix, Julius’s sister, who was holidaying in the area, and finally of Geneviève, the Baragliouls’ delightful older daughter, whom they would have liked to bring with them to Rome, but who steadfastly refused to take time off from the Hospital for Sick Children in Rue de Sèvres, where she went every morning to help heal the little ones’ suffering. At this point Julius broadened the discussion by raising the question of the expropriation of Anthime’s assets. This concerned his purchase of some land in Egypt on his first visit to that country as a young man – land that until recently had been worth almost nothing as a result of its poor location. Now, however, there was the prospect of the new Cairo–Heliopolis railway line crossing his property. There was no question that the Armand-Dubois’s budget, which had been overstretched by risky speculation, badly needed such a windfall. Before leaving for Rome Julius had been able to speak to Maniton, the consulting engineer in charge of the project. He advised his brother-in-law not to get his hopes up too high: he might easily end up with nothing. Anthime listened. What he did not say was that he had placed the whole business in the hands of the Lodge, which never abandons its own.

Changing the subject, Anthime spoke to Julius about his candidature for the Académie and his chances. He smiled as he talked, finding the whole thing far-fetched, and for his part Julius also feigned a relaxed indifference, as if he had forgotten the whole idea. What was the point of mentioning that his sister, Countess Guy de Saint-Prix, had Cardinal André in her pocket and, ready to be called on, the fifteen Academicians who always voted with him? Anthime offered Julius a lukewarm compliment on his most recent novel, The Air on the Heights. To be honest, he had thought it was terrible, and Julius, who was not taken in, quickly said (to preserve his self-esteem), ‘I felt quite sure you wouldn’t like a book like that.’

Anthime, who had been ready to excuse the novel, was stung by Julius’s implied disdain for his opinions and protested loudly that whatever views he, Anthime, held on other matters they never influenced his judgment about works of art and about his brother-in-law’s novels in particular. Julius smiled with indulgent condescension and, to move the conversation on, asked how his brother-in-law’s sciatica was, calling it ‘lumbago’ by mistake. What? Could he not ask how Anthime’s scientific research was progressing instead? It would have been a pleasure to tell him. But no, he had to ask about ‘lumbago’! He would be asking about his cyst next! But not his scientific research. Oh no. Apparently his brother-in-law was unaware of it: he preferred to act as if it didn’t exist … Anthime, hot under the collar and tormented by the very ‘lumbago’ Julius had mentioned, laughed and answered unpleasantly, ‘Am I feeling better? … Oh yes. Yes, yes! You’d be quite upset if I was, wouldn’t you?’

Julius was bewildered. He earnestly asked his brother-in-law to tell him why he was suggesting he had such feelings.

‘Good grief! You lot want to call a doctor the minute one of you gets ill, but when you get better it’s nothing to do with medicine. It’s because of all the prayers everyone said for you while the doctor was looking after you. Anyone who got better but didn’t go to church, good grief… You’d think that was totally unfair and presumptious!’

‘Would you rather stay ill than pray?’ Marguerite asked pointedly.

And why was she poking her nose in? Usually she took no interest in conversations on general subjects: as soon as Julius opened his mouth she faded into the background. And this was man’s talk. Enough self-restraint! He turned to her sharply.

‘My dear woman, kindly understand that if there were a cure, there, there, can you see?’ – he waved wildly at the saltcellar – ‘right next to me, but that to make use of it I had to beg the Headmaster’ – his mocking name for the Supreme Being on the days when he felt particularly bad-tempered – ‘or pray for him to intercede, to overturn the established order of things, just for me – the natural order of causes and effects, the immemorial order – I wouldn’t want his cure. I’d tell him, “Headmaster, no! Leave me in peace, you and your miracle, I don’t want it.”’

Emphasising each word, each syllable, he had raised his voice to a crescendo of fury. He was an appalling sight.

‘You wouldn’t want it … Why not?’ Julius asked, with deliberate calm.

‘Because it would force me to believe in Him who does not exist!’

Saying it he crashed his fist onto the table.

Marguerite and Véronique exchanged an anxious glance, then both looked at Julie.

‘I think it’s your bedtime, darling,’ her mother told her. ‘Be quick. We’ll come and say goodnight to you in your bedroom.’

The little girl, scared stiff by her uncle’s devilish appearance and shocking talk, fled.

‘If I’m going to get better,’ Anthime went on, ‘I want it to be thanks to me and no one else. Full stop.’

‘Do you? And what about the doctor?’ Marguerite asked.

‘I pay him for his treatment, so we’re quits.’

In his most solemn voice Julius said, ‘Whereas gratitude to God would bind you …’

‘Yes, dear brother-in-law, and that’s why I don’t pray.’

‘Others have prayed for you, dearest.’

It was Véronique who said these words. She had been silent until now. At the sound of her gentle, familiar voice Anthime jumped and then lost control completely. Contradictory phrases poured out of him. To start with, no one had the right to pray for someone against their will or request a favour for them without them knowing: it was a betrayal. Véronique hadn’t gained anything from it. So much the better! It would show her exactly how much her prayers counted! It was something to be proud of, was it? … Then perhaps the problem was that she hadn’t prayed hard enough?

‘Don’t worry, I’m still praying,’ Véronique replied, as gently as before. Then, smiling steadily, as if she was out of range of the storm of his anger, she told Marguerite how each night without fail she lit two candles in Anthime’s name, one on each side of the Marian shrine on the north corner of the building, the shrine where she had once caught Beppo crossing himself. The boy had a sort of cubbyhole just nearby, in a deep recess in the wall, where he would curl up and Véronique could count on finding him when she needed him. She could not reach the shrine on her own: it had been placed out of the reach of passers-by. But by hanging on to the stonework and a metal ring, Beppo, now a slim boy of fifteen, was able to reach up and place her lit candles next to the Madonna … And imperceptibly the conversation flowed away from Anthime, closing over him as the two sisters began to talk about the touching piety of ordinary people, which could make the most roughly carved statue also the most revered … Anthime felt himself sinking without trace. Good grief! Was Véronique not content with feeding his rats behind his back? Now she was lighting candles for him too! His own wife! And dragging Beppo into her clumsy charade … Ah! We’ll soon see about that …

Blood rushed to his head. He felt he was suffocating. His temples pounded. With an immense effort he staggered to his feet, knocking over his chair. He emptied a glass of water over his napkin and mopped his forehead … Was he ill? Véronique ran to him. Brutally he fended her off and stalked to the door, slamming it behind him, and his uneven steps could be heard stamping down the corridor to the dull thump of his crutch.

His abrupt exit left our fellow diners saddened and bewildered. For a while they sat in silence.

‘My poor love!’ Marguerite said finally. But the occasion once more exposed the difference between the two sisters’ characters. Marguerite’s soul was carved of that admirable stuff from which God rightly makes his martyrs. She knew it and longed to suffer. Life, however, unfortunately refused to grant her very much in the way of pain. Her days tended to overflow with bounty, forcing her to look for Christian fulfilment in enduring the most minor annoyances of daily life. She silently put up with situations that others found painless, scratched herself on the smoothest surfaces, and always made the most of the mildest inconvenience. No one was better at feeling snubbed than she was. But Julius always seemed to be working to reduce her opportunities to display her virtue. Was it any wonder that her attitude towards her husband was constantly dissatisfied and moody? If, on the other hand, she had a husband like Anthime, what might she not achieve! It made her cross to see her sister taking so little advantage of her good luck. And she was right: Véronique disregarded every unkindness. Sarcasm and mockery made no impression on her unfailingly cheerful and placid nature. They were like water off a duck’s back – and she had probably come to terms with the solitude of her existence a long time before. As it happens, Anthime did not treat her badly and she did not mind him saying what he felt. She explained that the reason he spoke so loudly was because he was unable to move easily. He would get angry much less often if his legs were more mobile.

When Julius asked where he could have got to, she answered, ‘His laboratory.’

To Marguerite, who asked if they should not go and see that he was all right – he might be unwell after an angry outburst like that – Véronique promised that it would be much better to let him calm down on his own and not pay too much attention to his dramatic exit.

‘Let’s finish dinner in peace,’ she said.

V

But Uncle Anthime had not stopped at his laboratory.

Nor had he lingered on the terrace outside, bathed in the glow of a western sky. Why not? The evening’s ethereal radiance might have soothed his mutinous soul, led him towards … No. He was fleeing all persuasion. He had hobbled as fast as he could through the room where his six rats lay in the final stages of their suffering. Making his way awkwardly down the narrow spiral staircase, he reached the courtyard and lurched across it. To us, knowing how much effort each step cost him, and how much pain each effort, his unsteady haste seems tragic. Might we ever expect to see him expend his savage energy in a good cause, and if so when? Sometimes a groan escaped him through twisted lips, and his features convulsed. Where was his rebellious rage driving him?

The Madonna – from whose open hands grace and a reflection of celestial radiance streamed down to earth, who watched over the house and was even now perhaps interceding for the blasphemer – was not one of those modern statues moulded from Blafaphas’s recently invented ‘Roman plaster’2 and shipped by the ton by the so-called art house of Fleurissoire-Lévichon. Simply