The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

After the time allowed by Boiviel for the fluid gold to be fit for use had elapsed, the Abbé de Voisenon began his course of the medicine. He emptied the first, the second, and the third flask, awaiting the result with exemplary patience; but an asthma is not to be cured in a week, especially an asthma of forty years' standing.

Boiviel had not yet returned; he had now been four months in Flanders; to these four months succeeded another four, but no Boiviel; the year revolved, the flasks diminished, but still no Boiviel.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the Abbé Boiviel never reappeared, and that he was nothing better than a charlatan and a thief. But the singular part of the matter is, that the Abbé de Voisenon found his asthma considerably relieved after a course of the fluid gold composed by Boiviel; and his sole regret at the end of his days was, not having foreseen the death, or disappearance—a matter quite as disastrous—of his alchemist, who could have furnished him with the means of compounding the elixir for himself as it might be wanted.

In order to show himself superior to the assaults of his enemy, our Abbé would often endeavor to persuade himself that he was every whit as active as he had formerly been; more active even than he had been in his youth. On these occasions he would jump up from his easy-chair, where he had been sitting groaning under an attack of the asthma; he would cast his pillows on one side, his night-cap on the other, would pitch his slippers to the other end of the room, and call loudly for his domestics. In one of these deceitful triumphs of his will over his feeble constitution, he rang one cold winter's morning for his valet de chambre.

"My thick cloth trousers!" cried he, "my thick cloth trousers!"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbé," timidly objected his faithful servitor, "what can you be thinking of? you were very bad yesterday evening."

"That's very probable; I have nothing to do with what I was yesterday evening. My thick cloth trousers, I tell you—now, my furred waistcoat! Come, look sharp!"

"But, Monsieur l'Abbé, why quit your warm room, your snug arm-chair? You are so pale."

"Pale, am I! that's better than ever, for I have been as yellow as a quince all my life! Good, I have my trousers and waistcoat; fetch me my redingote!"

"Your redingote! that you only put on when you are going out?"

"And it is precisely because I am going out that I ask for it. You argue to-day like a true stage valet. Why should I not put on my redingote? Are you afraid of it becoming shabby? Do you wish to steal it from me while it is new?"

"I am afraid that you will increase your cough if you don't keep the house to-day. It is very cold this morning."

"Very cold, is it, eh? so much the better. I like cold weather."

"It snows even very much, Monsieur l'Abbé."

"In that case, my large Polish boots."

"Your large Polish boots! And for what purpose?"

"Not to write a poem in, probably; for if Boileau very sensibly remarked, that in order to write a good poem time and taste were necessary, he did not add that boots were indispensable. Once for all, I want my Polish boots to go out shooting in. Is not that plain enough, Monsieur Mascarille?"

"Cough shooting, Monsieur l'Abbé?"

"Maraud! wolf-shooting—in the wood. Come, quick, my boots, and no chattering."

"Here are your boots, Monsieur l'Abbé. Truly you have no thought for your health."

"Have you a design upon my boots, also? Be so good, most discursive valet, as to fetch me my deer-skin gloves, my hat, and gun."

The Abbé de Voisenon was soon equipped with the aid of his valet, who, during the operation of dressing, never ceased repeating to him:

"It is fearfully cold this morning. Dogs have been found frozen to death in their kennels, fish dead in the fish-ponds, cattle dead in the stables, birds dead on the trees, and even wolves dead in the forest."

"My good friend," replied the Abbé de Voisenon, "you have said too much; your story of the wolves prevents me believing the rest: upon this I start. Now listen to me. On my return from shooting I expect to find my poultices ready, my asses-milk properly warmed, and my tisanes mixed; give directions about all this in the kitchen."

"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé. He'll never return, that's certain," murmured the valet, as he packed up his master in his great-coat, and drew his fur cap well down over his ears.

Followed by three of his dogs, our abbé started on his shooting excursion. At the very first step he took on leaving the court-yard, he fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels, sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the direction of a flight of crows.

He had passed through the village of Voisenon, and had just gained the open country, when he was stopped at the entrance of a lane of small cottages by a young girl, who, the instant she perceived him, cried out,

"Ah, monseigneur" (for many people styled him monseigneur), "it is surely Providence that has sent you to us!"

"What is the matter?" inquired the abbé.

"Our grandfather is dying, and he is unwilling to die without confession."

"But I have nothing to do with that, my child; that is the priest's business."

"But are you not a priest, monseigneur?"

"Almost," replied our abbé, rather taken aback by this home-thrust, and in a very bad humor besides at the interruption, "almost; but address yourself in preference to the prior of the convent. Run to the château, ring at the convent-gate; ring loudly, and reserve me for a better occasion."

"Monseigneur," repeated the girl, "our grandfather has not time to wait; he is dying—you must come."

"I tell you," replied the abbé, confused within himself at his refusal, "I cannot go. I am, as you see, out shooting: the thing is utterly impossible."

With these words he sought to pursue his way; but the young girl, who could not comprehend the bad arguments made use of by the abbé, clung obstinately to his coat skirts, and compelled him to turn round. Aroused by the noise of this altercation, a few of the male population appeared on the thresholds of their doors, others at their windows; and as a village resembles a bundle of dry hay, which a spark will set in a blaze, the wives joined their husbands, the children their mothers, and soon the entire population flocked into the street to see what was the matter.

The Abbé du Jard, seigneur of Voisenon, king of the country, felt deeply humiliated amid the crowd which surrounded him, and which had already begun to murmur at this refusal, as irreligious as it was inhuman.

But our poor abbé was not inhuman. The fact was, he had completely forgotten the formula used on such occasions; and if the truth must be told, as he was careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional.

Necessity, however, prevailed over his just scruples; which scruples, however, be it said, could not be made use of as excuses to his vassals: so, with downcast eyes and his reversed fowling-piece under his arm, he permitted himself to be led to the cottage where lay the old man, who was unwilling to render his last sigh without having made the official avowal of his sins.

The villagers knelt in a circle before the door, whilst the abbé seated himself by the side of the dying man, in order the better to receive his confession.

Since the unlucky moment in which the Abbé de Voisenon had been balked of his morning's sport, he had lost—for he had at times his intervals of superstitious terror—the proud determination he had formed of not believing himself ill on that day. But then, what signs of evil augury had greeted him! He had tripped and fallen on leaving home; he had seen flocks of crows; a weeping girl had dragged him to the bedside of a terrified sinner—even now they were repeating the prayers for the dying around him. The Abbé de Voisenon was overcome; his former temerity oozed palpably away, he felt sick at heart, his ears tingled, his asthma groaned within his chest.

"I am ill," thought he. "I was in the wrong to come out; why did I not take my old servant's advice, and remain at home?"

Finally he lent an ear to the old man's confession.

"You were born the same day as myself!" exclaimed the abbé, at the patient's first confidential communication; "you were born the same day as myself!"

The old man continued, and here a new terror arose for our abbé.

"You have never heard mass to the end! And I," thought he, "have never heard even the beginning for these last thirty years!"

The penitent continued:—

"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."

"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbé. "What sin, my friend?"

"Yea, the great sin—although married—"