A Beleaguered City Part 8

Such was the injustice with which we were treated. And next day nothing was talked of but the revelation of Pierre Plastron. What he had seen and what he had heard was wonderful. All the saints had come and talked with him, and told him what he was to say to his townsmen. They told him exactly how everything had happened: how St. Jean himself had interfered on behalf of the Sisters, and how, if we were not more attentive to the duties of religion, certain among us would be bound hand and foot and cast into the jaws of h.e.l.l. That I was one, nay the chief, of these denounced persons, no one could have any doubt. This exasperated me; and as soon as I knew that this folly had been printed and was in every house, I hastened to M. le Cure, and entreated him in his next Sunday's sermon to tell the true story of Pierre Plastron, and reveal the imposture. But M. le Cure shook his head. 'It will do no good,' he said.

'But how no good?' said I. 'What good are we looking for? These are lies, nothing but lies. Either he has deceived the poor ladies basely, or they themselves--but this is what I cannot believe.'

'Dear friend,' he said, 'compose thyself. Have you never discovered yet how strong is self-delusion? There will be no lying of which they are aware. Figure to yourself what a stimulus to the imagination to know that he was here, actually here. Even I--it suggests a hundred things to me. The Sisters will have said to him (meaning no evil, nay meaning the edification of the people), "But, Pierre, reflect! You must have seen this and that. Recall thy recollections a little." And by degrees Pierre will have found out that he remembered--more than could have been hoped.'

'_Mon Dieu_!' I cried, out of patience, 'and you know all this, yet you will not tell them the truth--the very truth.'

'To what good?' he said. Perhaps M. le Cure was right: but, for my part, had I stood up in that pulpit, I should have contradicted their lies and given no quarter. This, indeed, was what I did both in my private and public capacity; but the people, though they loved me, did not believe me. They said, 'The best men have their prejudices. M. le Maire is an excellent man; but what will you? He is but human after all.'

M. le Cure and I said no more to each other on this subject. He was a brave man, yet here perhaps he was not quite brave. And the effect of Pierre Plastron's revelations in other quarters was to turn the awe that had been in many minds into mockery and laughter. '_Ma foi_,' said Felix de Bois-Sombre, 'Monseigneur St. Lambert has bad taste, mon ami Martin, to choose Pierre Plastron for his confidant when he might have had thee.' 'M. de Bois-Sombre does ill to laugh,' said my mother (even my mother! she was not on my side), 'when it is known that the foolish are often chosen to confound the wise.' But Agnes, my wife, it was she who gave me the best consolation. She turned to me with the tears in her beautiful eyes.

'Mon ami,' she said, 'let Monseigneur St. Lambert say what he will. He is not G.o.d that we should put him above all. There were other saints with other thoughts that came for thee and for me!'

All this contradiction was over when Agnes and I together took our flowers on the _jour des morts_ to the graves we love. Glimmering among the rest was a new cross which I had not seen before. This was the inscription upon it:--

a PAUL LECAMUS PARTI LE 20 JUILLET, 1875 AVEC LES BIEN-AIMeS

On it was wrought in the marble a little branch of olive. I turned to look at my wife as she laid underneath this cross a handful of violets.

She gave me her hand still fragrant with the flowers. There was none of his family left to put up for him any token of human remembrance. Who but she should have done it, who had helped him to join that company and army of the beloved? 'This was our brother,' she said; 'he will tell my Marie what use I made of her olive leaves.'

THE END