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Page 19
In France the church sacrament of marriage cannot be performed unless
both the contracting parties furnish certificates of having made
confession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would be
necessary for Pierre to confess to the _cur�_ of Saint-�tienne,
P�re Duhaut.
"_I_ confess to Duhaut!" he laughed in our house. "I'll
be--what's-his-named first. Old Duhaut might as well confess to me. I
shall simply give him six francs and get my certificate without any more
ado, just as the other fellows get theirs."
That very afternoon P�re Duhaut took tea with us, and �mile was mean
enough to betray Pierre's intentions.
"We'll see," said our _cur�_.
The next day Pierre passed our windows. He bowed gayly, and called up
that he was going for his six francs' worth of ante-nuptial absolution.
An hour later he passed again, but he did not look up. In the evening
P�re Duhaut came, bursting with laughter.
"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," he guffawed. Then he told us
the story. Pierre, it seems, had offered the six francs, which offer the
confessor had rejected with scorn.
"In to the confessional," he cried, "and make your confession like a
penitent!"
"I'll make it fifteen," grinned Pierre.
"Not for a thousand. In! _in_!"
"Come, now, Duhaut, this is all humbug. You know I'm not penitent, and
I'll be---- if I'll confess to you."
Without more words, the burly priest seized the recalcitrant and grabbed
him by the neck, trying to force him into the confession-box. Pierre
resisted, and, as the _cur�_ told us bursting with laughter, the
two wrestled and waltzed half around the church. Finally Pierre was
brought to his knees.
"_Eh bien, allez_! What am I to confess?" he grumbled.
"Every sin you have committed since your last confession."
How malicious was P�re Duhaut in this! for he knew Pierre had not kept
the observances of the Church since he left home at seventeen, and had
not been an anchorite either.
"I'll make it an even hundred," begged the now exasperated yet humbled
Pierre. "Come, now, do be reasonable; that's a jolly old boy."
"Confess! confess!" roared the confessor, dealing the kneeling
impenitent a sounding cuff on the ear.
"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," roared P�re Duhaut.
"_Demandez-lui! Demandez-lui!_"
But we never did.
Until his grave received him, only a few weeks ago, a marked character
of our ville was a stooping old man, of a ghastly paleness, noted
through all the region for avarice and for speaking every one of his
many languages each with worse accent than the other. His Spanish
sounded like German, his German had the strongest possible American
accent, his English was vividly Teutonic, and after forty years of
marriage his Norman wife never ceased to mock at his atrociously-mouthed
French. He was wine-merchant and banker combined, and, though his social
position was among the best in our bourgeoise ville, all the world
smiled with the knowledge that the rich old _banquier_, whose nose
had a strong Hebraic curve, delivered his own merchandise at night from
under his long coat, in order to escape the tax on every bottle of wine
transported from one domicile to another.
The stately gate-post of "P�re S----'s" pretentious and philistine
mansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations.
England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our own
Eagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly--4th
of July and 22d of February--our star-spangled banner floats from his
roof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville.
Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our home
government, and administrative changes there float over us like clouds
of heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus P�re S----,
though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long years
forgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of the
administration that appointed him our consul here has long since passed
away forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearly
eighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held it
through fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returning
to America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried in
the parish cemetery of Saint-L�onard by a Lutheran pastor brought over
for the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, and
the street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do,
to the sound of funeral bells.
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