Clochemerle Read online

  The Curé Ponosse enjoyed this soothing kindliness, this watchful care, and rendered thanks to Heaven. But he felt sad, tormented by hallucinations which left him no peace and against which he fought like St. Anthony in the desert. It was not long before Honorine began to realize the cause of these torments. It was she who first alluded to it, one evening when the Curé Ponosse, having finished his meal, was gloomily filling his pipe.

  “Poor young man,” she said, “you must find it very hard at your age, always being alone. It’s not human, that sort of thing. After all, you are a man!”

  “Oh dear, oh dear, Honorine!” the Curé Ponosse answered with a sigh, turning crimson, and suddenly attacked by guilty inclinations.

  “It’ll end by driving you silly, you may depend on it! There have been people who’ve gone off their heads from that.”

  “In my profession, one must mortify oneself, Honorine!” the unhappy man replied, feebly.

  But the faithful servant treated him like an unruly child:

  “You’re not going to ruin your health, are you? And what use will it be to God if you get a bad illness?”

  With eyes cast down, the Curé Ponosse made a vague gesture implying that the question was beyond him, and that if he must go mad from excess of chastity, and such were God’s will, he would resign himself accordingly. That is, if his strength held out, which was doubtful. Thereupon Honorine drew nearer to him and said in an encouraging tone:

  “Me and the other poor gentleman—such a saintly man he was, too—we fixed it up together. . . .”

  This announcement brought peace and balm to the heart of the Curé Ponosse. Slightly raising his eyes, he looked discreetly at Honorine, with completely new ideas in his mind. The servant was indeed far from beautiful, but nevertheless she bore—though reduced to their simplest expression and consequently but little suggestive—the hospitable feminine protuberances. Dismal though these bodily oases might be, their surroundings unflowered and bleak, they were none the less oases of salvation, placed there by Providence in the burning desert in which the Curé Ponosse felt as though he were on the point of losing his reason. A flash of enlightenment came to him. Was it not a seemly act, an act of humility, to yield, seeing that a priest of great experience, mourned by the whole of Clochemerle, had shown him the way? He had only to abandon false pride and follow in the footsteps of that saintly man. And this was made all the easier by the fact that Honorine’s rugged form made it possible to concede to Nature only a necessary minimum, without taking any real delight in such frolics or lingering over those insidious joys wherein lies the gravity of the sin.

  The Curé Ponosse, having mechanically uttered a prayer of thanksgiving, allowed himself to be led away by his servant, who took pity on her young master’s shyness. Rapidly and in complete obscurity came the climax, while the Curé Ponosse kept his thoughts far, far away, deploring and bewailing what he did. But he spent later so peaceful a night, and awoke so alert and cheerful, that he felt convinced that it would be a good thing to have occasional recourse to this expedient—even in the interests of his ministry. As regards frequency, he decided to adhere to the procedure laid down by his predecessor; and in this, Honorine would be able to instruct him.

  However, be that as it might, sinning he undoubtedly was, and confession became a necessity. Happily, after making inquiries, he learned that at the village of Valsonnas, twenty kilometers distant, lived the Abbé Jouffe, an old theological college chum of his. The Curé Ponosse felt that it would be better to make confession of his delinquencies to a genuine friend. On the following day, therefore, he tucked the end of his cassock into his belt and mounted his priest’s bicycle (a legacy from the departed) and by a hilly route, and with much labor, he reached Valsonnas.

  For some little time the two priests were entirely absorbed by their pleasure at meeting again. But the Curé of Clochemerle could not indefinitely postpone his confession of the object of his visit. Covered with confusion, he told his colleague how he had been treating Honorine. Having given him absolution, the Abbé Jouffe informed him that he himself had been behaving in a similar manner towards his servant, Josépha, for several years past. The visitor then remembered that the door had, in fact, been opened by a dark-haired person who, though she squinted, had a nice, fresh appearance and a pleasant sort of dumpiness. He felt that his friend Jouffe had done better than himself in that respect, for, so far as his own taste was concerned, he could have wished that Honorine were less skimpy. (When Satan sent him voluptuous visions, it was always in the form of ladies with milk-white skins, of liberal charms, and limbs of splendidly generous proportions.) But he banished this envious thought, stained as it was with concupiscence and lacking in charity, in order to listen to what Jouffe was explaining to him. This is what he was saying:

  “My dear Ponosse, as we cannot entirely detach ourselves from matter, a favor which has been granted only to certain saints, it is fortunate that we both have in our own homes the means of making an indispensable concession to it secretly, without causing scandal or disturbing the peace of souls. Let us rejoice in the fact that our troubles do no injury to the Church’s good name.”

  “Yes,” answered Ponosse, “and moreover, is it not useful that we should have some competency in all matters, seeing that we are often called upon to give decisions and advice?”

  “Indeed I think so, my good friend, to judge by cases of conscience that have been laid before me here. It is certain that without personal experience I should have stumbled over them. The sixth commandment is the occasion of much disputation and strife. If our knowledge on this point were not, I will not say profound, at least sufficient, we should find ourselves directing some of the souls under our care into a wrong path. Between ourselves, we can say this—complete continence warps judgment.”

  “It strangles the intelligence!” said Ponosse, remembering his sufferings.

  As they drank the wine of Valsonnas, which is inferior to that of Clochemerle (in this respect Ponosse was better off than Jouffe), the two priests felt that an unforeseen similarity in their respective problems could only strengthen the bonds of a friendship which dated from their early youth. They then decided upon certain convenient arrangements, as, for example, to make their confessions to each other in future. In order to spare themselves numerous and fatiguing journeys, they agreed to synchronize their carnal lapses. They allowed themselves, as a general principle, the Monday and Tuesday of each week, as being unoccupied days following the long Sunday services, and chose the Thursday for their confessions. They agreed further to take equal shares in the trouble involved. One week the Abbé Jouffe was to come to Clochemerle to make his own confession and receive that of Ponosse, and the following week it would be the Curé Ponosse’s turn to visit his friend Jouffe at Valsonnas for the purpose of their mutual confession and absolution.

  These ingenious arrangements proved completely satisfactory for a period of twenty-three years. Their restricted employment of Honorine and Josépha, together with a fortnightly ride of forty kilometers, kept the two priests in excellent health, and this in turn procured them a breadth of view and a spirit of charity which had the very best effects, at Clochemerle as at Valsonnas. Throughout this long period there was no accident of any kind.

  It was in 1897, in the course of a very severe winter. One Thursday morning the Curé Ponosse awoke with the firm intention of making the journey to Valsonnas to obtain his absolution. Unfortunately there had been a heavy fall of snow during the night, which made the roads impassable. The Curé of Clochemerle was anxious to start off in spite of this, and refused to listen to his servant’s crier and reproaches; he considered himself to be in a state of mortal sin, having taken undue advantage of Honorine for some days past as the result of idleness during the long winter evenings. In spite of his courage and two falls, the Curé Ponosse could not cover more than four kilometers. He returned on foot, painfully, and reached home with chattering teeth. Honorine had to put him to bed and m
ake him perspire. The wretched man became delirious on account of his mortal sin, a condition in which he felt it impossible to remain. In the meantime the Abbé Jouffe, looking out in vain for Ponosse, was in a state of deadly anxiety. He had High Mass the following day and was wondering whether he would be able to celebrate it. Happily, the Abbé of Valsonnas was a man of resource. He sent Josépha to the post with a reply-paid telegram addressed to Ponosse: Same as usual. Miserere mei by return. Jouffe. The Curé of Clochemerle replied immediately: Absolvo te. Five paters five aves. Same as usual plus three. Deep repentance. Miserere urgent. Ponosse. The absolution reached him by telegram five hours later, with “one rosary” as a penance.

  The two priests were so delighted with this expeditious device that they considered the possibility of using it constantly. But a scruple held them back: it meant giving too much facility for sin. Further, the dogma of confession, down to its smallest details, goes back to a time when the invention of the telegraph was not even a matter of conjecture. The use they had just made of it raised a point of canon law which would have needed elucidation by an assembly of theologians. They feared heresy, and decided to use the telegraph only in cases of absolute necessity, which arose on three occasions in all.

  Twenty-three years after Ponosse’s first visit to his friend, the Abbé Jouffe had the misfortune to lose Josépha, then sixty-two years of age. She had kept herself until the end in a good state of bodily preservation, even though her stoutness had increased her weight to over twelve stone, a great one for a person whose height did not exceed five feet two inches. The necessity of dragging about this massive frame had caused her legs to swell, and the growth of fat over her heart prevented that organ from functioning freely. She died of a species of angina pectoris. The Abbé Jouffe did not replace her. To mold a new servant to his habits appeared to him a task beyond his strength. Arrival at an age well past fifty brought peace and calm in its train. He contented himself with a charwoman who came to tidy up the vicarage and prepare his midday meal. In the evening some soup and a piece of cheese were all that he needed. No longer requiring absolution for sins that were hard to confess, he refrained from coming to Clochemerle. This abstention brought disorder into the life of the Curé Ponosse.

  Ponosse was now approaching the age of fifty. For a long time past he could quite comfortably have dispensed with Honorine. The faithful servant had reached an age when she might well have retired from service. Unlike Josépha, she had grown continually leaner until she was as thin as a rake. But the Curé Ponosse, always a shy man, was afraid of offending the poor woman by putting an end to relations which he no longer felt to be an overmastering necessity. The example given him by Jouffe decided him. And there was this too—that the journey to Valsonnas was a prolonged agony for the Curé of Clochemerle, who had become very stout and suffered from emphysema. He had to dismount at the bottom of each hill, and the descents made him giddy. So long as his colleague returned his visits he did not lose heart. But when he saw himself condemned to bear alone the burden of all those journeys, he said to himself that the remnants of a former Honorine were not worth all those hours of superhuman effort. He told his servant of his difficulties. She took it very badly, and thought that she had been insulted; which was what the Curé Ponosse had feared. She hissed at him:

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting young girls now, Monsieur Augustin?”

  She called him “Monsieur Augustin” in times of crises. Ponosse set out to calm her.

  “As for young girls,” he said, “Solomon and David needed them. But the matter is a simpler one for me. I need nothing more, my good Honorine. After all, we are now of an age to lead peaceful lives, to live, in fact, without sin.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Honorine retorted sharply; “I’ve never sinned.”

  In the mind of the faithful servant, that was the truth. She had always considered as a kind of sacrament anything that her curés had thought fit to administer to her. She continued in a tyrannical tone of voice that made the good priest tremble:

  “Do you think I did that because I was a wicked woman, like some low creatures I know at Clochemerle might have done? Like the Putet kind of women with their nasty hanging around? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Monsieur Augustin, and I don’t mind telling you so even if I am a poor nobody. I did it for your health . . . for your health, you understand, Monsieur Augustin?”

  “Yes, I know, my good Honorine,” the curé answered, falteringly. “Heaven will reward you for it.”

  For the Curé of Clochemerle that day was a difficult one, and it was followed by weeks during which he lived in a state of persecution and surrounded by suspicion. At last, when she had become satisfied that her privilege was not being taken from her in order to be bestowed elsewhere, Honorine grew calm. In 1923 the relations between the Curé of Clochemerle and his servant had been irreproachable for a period of ten years.

  Every age makes its own demands, has its own joys. For the past ten years, the Curé Ponosse had found solace in his pipe, and above all in wine, the excellent wine of Clochemerle, which he had learned how to use to advantage. This knowledge had gradually come to serve as a reward for his apostolic devotion. Let us explain.

  On his arrival at Clochemerle thirty years before, the young priest Augustin Ponosse found a church well attended by women, but with rare exceptions deserted by men. Burning with youthful zeal, and very anxious to please the Archbishop, the new priest, thinking to improve on his predecessor (that eternal presumption of youth), began a campaign of recruitment and conversion. But he soon realized that he would have no influence over the men so long as he was not a good judge of wine, that being the overwhelming interest at Clochemerle. There the delicacy of the palate is the test of intelligence. A man who, after three gulps and turning the wine several times round in his mouth, cannot say whether it is Brouilly, Fleurie, Morgon, or Juliénas, is looked upon by these ardent winegrowers as an imbecile. Augustin Ponosse was no judge of wine at all. He had drunk nothing all his life but the unspeakable concoctions of the seminary, or else, in Ardèche, very thin, inferior wine which you would swallow without noticing it. For some time after his arrival, the strength and richness of the Beaujolais wine completely overcame him. It was neither a gentle potion suggesting a baptismal font, nor a soft drink for dyspeptic sermonmongers.

  The sentiment of duty sustained the Curé Ponosse. Defeated so far as actual competence was concerned, he swore that his drinking capacity should astonish the natives of Clochemerle. Filled with the fervor of the evangelist, he became a frequent visitor at the Torbayon Inn, where he hobnobbed with all and sundry, capping their stories with others of his own; and there were often spicy ones about the behavior of the priestly fraternity.

  The Curé Ponosse took it all in good part, and Torbayon’s customers never ceased filling his glass. They had made a vow to see him take his departure some day “completely bottled.” But Ponosse’s guardian angel watched over him so that he might retain a spark of decent sanity and a deportment consistent with ecclesiastical dignity. This guardian angel was assisted in his task by Honorine who, whenever she had missed her master for some time, left the presbytery, which was just opposite, crossed the street, and planted herself at the entrance to the inn, a stern figure suggestive of Remorse.

  “Monsieur le Curé,” she would say, “you are wanted at the church. Come along now!” Ponosse would finish his drink and get up immediately. Letting him go ahead, Honorine then closed the door, casting a look of thunder at the loafers and tipplers who were corrupting her master and taking advantage of his credulous and gentle nature.

  These methods did not win over a single soul to God. But Ponosse acquired a genuine competence in the matter of wines, and thus won the esteem of the vinegrowers of Clochemerle, who spoke of him as a man who didn’t give himself airs, was not a half-baked sermonizer, and was always ready for a good honest drink. Within the space of fifteen years Ponosse’s nose blossomed superbly; it became a real Beaujol
ais nose, huge, with a tint that hovered between the Canon’s violet and the Cardinal’s purple. It was a nose that inspired the whole region with confidence.

  No one can acquire competence in anything unless he has a taste for it, and taste induces need. This is exactly what happened to Ponosse. His daily consumption reached about three and a half pints, deprivation of which would have caused him suffering. This large quantity of wine never affected his head, but it kept him in a state of somewhat artificial beatitude which became more and more necessary to him for the endurance of the vexations of his ministry, to which were added domestic worries caused by Honorine.

  Advancing years had greatly altered the servant. And this is a curious fact—at the time when the Curé Ponosse was leading a strictly celibate life, Honorine no longer gave him the same attention and respect, and her feelings of piety appeared suddenly to leave her. Instead of saying her prayers she took to snuff, which seemed to procure her a deeper satisfaction. A little later on, taking advantage of reserves of old bottles of wine, a priceless possession resulting from gifts of the faithful, which had accumulated in the cellar, she began helping herself, and helping herself with such entire lack of discrimination that she might sometimes be found tippling out of her own pans. She became cross-grained and peevish, her work was neglected, and her sight deteriorated. In the solitude of her kitchen, whither Ponosse no longer ventured, she gave vent to strange mutterings with a vague menace about them. The priest’s cassocks were spotted, his linen lacked buttons, his bands were badly ironed. He lived in a state of fear. If in the past Honorinc had given him satisfaction and served him well, it is certain that in later life she caused him great trouble and vexation. That the precious flavor of a rare vintage should have become more than ever an indispensable consolation for the Curé of Clochemerle will be easily understood.