style="font-size:15px;"> When the procession, at the passage of which the crowd prostrated itself religiously, completed the circuit of the church, the papal footmen who bore the banners grouped them as trophies upon the main altar, before which the stretcher, covered with gold cloth, the bull, and the big coffer were processionally borne. The Apostolic Commissioner with the cross of red wood in his hand placed himself near the coffer; the penitentiaries ranked themselves in front of several confessionals that were set up for the occasion near the choir, and all of which bore the pontifical arms.
The excitement and curiosity awakened by the procession together with the peals of the organ and the chant of the priests excited a considerable agitation in the church. By degrees quiet was restored, the kneeling faithful rose again to their feet, and all eyes turned impatiently towards the choir. Hervé, who had been one of the first to prostrate himself, was among the last to rise; the lad was a prey to profound agony; perspiration bathed his now livid face; he was hardly able to breathe. Turning his wandering eyes towards Fra Girard, he said to the monk in broken accents:
"Oh, if I only can rely upon your promises! The moment has arrived when I must believe. I tremble!"
"Oh, man of little faith!" answered the Franciscan with severity and pointing to the papal commissioner, who was preparing to speak; "listen—and repent that you doubted. Ask God to pardon you."
The silence became profound; the dealer in indulgences deftly rolled up the sleeves of his robe, just as a juggler in the market would have done in order not to be hindered in the tumultuous motions of his performance, and pointing to the red cross which he placed beside him, he cried in a stentorian voice fit to make the glass windows of the building rattle:
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen![5] You see this cross, my beloved brothers? Well, this cross is as efficacious as the cross of Jesus Christ! You will ask me, How so? My answer is that this is, so to speak, the symbol of the indulgences that our Holy Father has commissioned me to dispense. But what are these indulgences? you will then ask? What they are, my brothers? They are the most precious gift, the most miraculous, the most wonderful that the Lord has ever bestowed upon His faithful! Therefore, I say unto you—Come, come to me; I shall give you letters furnished with the seal of our Holy Father, and thanks to these letters, my brothers—would you believe it?—not only will the sins that you have committed be pardoned, but they will give you absolution for the sins that you desire to commit!"
"Did you hear that?" Fra Girard whispered to Hervé. "One can obtain absolution both for the sins that he has committed, and for the sins that he intends to commit!"
"But—there—are—things—crimes and outrages," stammered Hervé with secret horror, "that, may be, one can not obtain absolution for! Oh, woe is me! I feel myself sliding down a fatal slope!
"Listen," replied the Franciscan, "listen to the end; you will then understand."
The mass of people that were crowded in the church received with indescribable signs of satisfaction the words uttered by the Dominican seller of indulgences; especially did those whose purses were well lined hail with delight the prospect of their salvation if they but took the precaution of equipping themselves in advance with an absolution that embraced the past, the present and the future. The Apostolic Commissioner observed the magic effect that his words produced; in a jovial and familiar tone he proceeded to harangue the audience amidst violent contortions of both face and limbs:
"Now, let us have a heart-to-heart talk, my brothers; let us reason together. Let us suppose that you wish to undertake a voyage into some strange country that is infested with thieves; fearing that you will be rifled of all that you carry about you before you attain the end of your journey, you do not wish to take your money with you. What do you do? You take your money to a banker, do you not? You allow him a slight profit, and he furnishes you with a draft, by means of which the money that you deposited with him is paid over to you in the strange country, upon your arrival there. Do you understand me well, my beloved brothers?"
"Yes," answered several of the faithful; "we understand—proceed with your discourse."
"Miserable sinners!" replied the Dominican suddenly changing his jovial tone into a thundering voice. "Miserable sinners! You understand me, say you? and yet you hesitate to buy from me for the small price of a few crowns a draft of salvation! What! Despite all the sins that you may render yourselves guilty of during the voyage of life, infested as that road is with diabolical temptations that are infinitely more dangerous than thieves, this draft will be paid to you in paradise in the divine money of eternal salvation by the Almighty, upon whom we, the bankers of souls, have drawn in your name—and yet you hesitate to insure to yourselves at so small a cost your share of the celestial enjoyments reserved for the blissful! No! No! You will not hesitate, my brothers! You will buy my indulgences!" the Dominican now proceeded to say with a resumption of familiar and even paternal solicitude. "Nor is this all, my brothers; my indulgences do not save the living only, they redeem the dead! Aye, the dead, be they even as hardened as Lucifer himself! But, you may ask, how can your indulgences deliver the dead?" cried the merchant of salvation again shouting at the top of his voice, "How will my indulgences save the dead? Can it be that you do not hear the voices of your parents, your friends, even of strangers to you—but what does that matter, seeing that you are Christians?—can it be that you do not hear their frightful concert of maledictions, of groans, of gnashing of teeth which rises from the bottom of the abyss of fire, where those poor souls are writhing in the furnace of purgatory—where they writhe, waiting for the mercy of God or the pious works of man to deliver them from their dreadful tortures? Can it be that you do not hear those miserable sinners, the piteous meanings of those unhappy people, who from the bottom of the yawning gulf where the flames are devouring them cry out to you: 'Oh, ye stony hearts! we are enduring frightful torture! An alms would deliver us! You can give it! Will you refuse to give it?' Will you refuse, my brothers? No! I know you will give the alms. I know you will give it when you consider that the very instant your gold crowns drop into this trunk," (pointing to it) "crack—psitt—the soul pops out of purgatory and flies into heaven like a dove liberated from its cage! Amen! Empty your purses, empty your purses, my friends!"
The majority of the audience before the Dominican seemed little concerned about the deliverance of souls in pain. However blind their superstitious belief, it had a certain charitable side, but that side had no attraction whatever for the faithful ones who were attracted only by the expectation of being able, by means of indulgences, to give a loose, in perfect security of conscience, to whatever excesses or crimes they had in mind.
A man with a gallows-bird face named Pichrocholle, one of the Mauvais-Garçons who hired out their homicidal daggers to the highest bidder, said in a low voice to a Tire-Laine, another bandit, and one of the worst of his kind:
"As truly as the Franc-Taupin whom I was speaking about to you a short time ago saved my life at the battle of Marignan, I would not give six silver sous for the redemption of the souls in purgatory! Oh, if I only were rich enough to purchase a good letter of absolution—'sdeath!—I would pay for it gladly and spot-cash, too! Once the papal absolution is in your pocket, your hand is firmer at its work; it does not tremble when dispatching your man! With an absolution duly executed, you can defy the fork of Satan on the Judgment Day. But by St. Cadouin, what do I care for the souls in purgatory! I laugh at their deliverance! And you, Grippe-Minaud?"
"I confess," answered the Tire-Laine, "I bother as little about the souls in purgatory as about an empty purse. But tell me, Pichrocholle," added Grippe-Minaud with a pensive air, "letters of absolution are too dear for poor devils like ourselves—suppose we stole one of those blessed letters from the commissioner, would the theft be a sin?"
"'Sdeath! How could it be? Does it not give absolution in advance? But those jewels are kept too safely to be pilfered."
While
