Catherine, veiled in black, entered, preceded by the priest.

“Prepare!”

The priests uncovered the victim. Catherine, white-faced, her eyes tightly shut, tottered. The priests supported her.

“Woman, rejoice, for the Lord of Light has chosen you to bring truth into the world!”

The priests began disrobing Catherine, exposing the delicate curves of her motherhood to the gaze of the Satanists. She recoiled.

“Woman, do not hinder us!”

Catherine looked at Gilles, her eyes dimmed with tears. Her chest heaved a little, as if stifling a sob. Her lips moved. I knew she endeavored to pronounce his name. But Gilles did not hear. His face looked like the ruin of some magnificent castle.

I made a sign to Kotikokura. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

Catherine bent her head upon her chest, as if to cover her lovely nakedness. She raised the corners of her eyes a little and looked at me. I was on the point of calling out: “Fear not! Cartaphilus will not allow him to mutilate your body and to slaughter your child!”

She was stretched out upon a bench. The priest brought a gold basin and a long knife whose edge was sharpened to the thinness of a hair.

“Bring in the Child of Reason!” Gilles ordered.

The priest pushed forcibly the wall on the left which opened like a door. Now I understood the true geography of the place. The temple was adjacent to the cellar where I had seen the corpses of the children.

Meanwhile, the person whose sex was difficult to determine and who had scattered the strange incense, helped the Maréchal cover his head with a tallith upon which were embroidered formulæ from the Kabala and wound seven times about his waist a red girdle.

Would help come too late? Even if the hoofbeats that I now distinctly heard were those of our horsemen, it was doubtful whether they could reach us in time.

The priest brought a large glass jar in which a strange creature lay huddled together—something that resembled a human fœtus or the embryo of a monkey.

Was this the Child of Reason? I had long discovered that reason could not rule the universe, but I had never suspected the misshapen form of her progeny!

The Maréchal raised the knife and made an inverted cross upon his chest. The reflection glittered upon Catherine’s face.

The hoofbeats approached. If I could only delay the madman a little longer!

“Gilles,” I whispered, “the cross must be made three times or the result is frustrated.”

He looked at me. His eyes were two coals aflame.

He made the cross three times and bent over the body.

I heard drums and sharp words of command at a distance.

“Gilles! From left to right, not from right to left!”

Gilles repeated the gesture as I had told him.

“Gilles!” I said.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Do not delay me now!”

It was no longer Gilles who spoke. His voice was raucous and strained.

He touched the body with the point of the knife. One moment more, and it would have been too late!

I grasped his hand and threw the knife to the floor. My fingers closed on the mechanism releasing the poisonous vapor, when suddenly trumpets resounded and doors were broken in from all sides.

A thousand fighting men flooded the Black Temple.

Gilles stared at me. “Judas!” he shouted.

He was surrounded by soldiers. Two soldiers grasped the Maréchal’s arm.

“I am Gilles de Retz, Maréchal of France.”

“You are the Devil! You shall burn in your own hell-fire!” one of the brothers shouted, hewing his way to the altar.

Catherine jumped up, covered herself with a black veil, and kneeling before her brother, she sobbed.

“Spare him. He knew not what he was doing.”

I motioned to Kotikokura. In the fracas that ensued, we made our escape.

“Whatever happens, must, Kotikokura. From all eternity to all eternity things are destined to happen, but however exciting these escapades may be, we cannot afford to wait and see their dénouement. A hundred years from now they shall all be dust,—the good and the wicked, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, Bluebeard and Catherine—and Anne. At most, a legend may sprout out of the dung of Time.”

Kotikokura nodded.

“Before we leave, however, I must send Anne a present.”

I stopped at the next town and hired a messenger to deliver to Anne a box in which I placed a ruby as large as a pigeon’s egg and a letter.

“Wear this, my beautiful one, in the cool valley that separates the two hillocks of passion. Farewell. Cartaphilus.”

“Kotikokura,” I said, “I will have none of God, and I will have none of the Devil. Gods and Devils get along capitally for the reason that the existence of the one depends upon the other. Wherever heaven is, hell is not far off. The Prince of Darkness is also Lucifer, the Lord of Light. Man, however, is destined to suffer whether gods or devils rule. He is the sacrificial goat. From whatever tree he plucks the fruit—whether it grows in the Garden of Eden or in the Garden of the Other One—the taste is always ashes.”

LXII: THE CITY OF FLOWERS—LA FESTA DEL GRILLO—THE SANITARY EXPERT—THE INTOXICATION OF KOTIKOKURA—THE ADVENTURE OF TWO YOUTHS

FLOWERS hanging over the tall stone and iron fences; flowers at the windows; flowers in the hair of women, between the lips of merchants selling fish or fruit in the narrow tortuous streets; flowers over the ears of little boys and girls playing in the yards; flowers around the necks of donkeys and horses; flowers sailing over the yellowish waters of the Arno,—a carnival of flowers, an orgy of perfume!

“What an appropriate name for the city, Kotikokura,—Fiorenze—Florence, the City of Flowers.”

Kotikokura plucked several roses and placed them in the ribbon around his headgear.

“Kotikokura, you are the god of Spring.”

He grinned and began to dance.

“And the High Priest of the great god Ca-ta-pha.”

He bowed solemnly before me.

The sun barely showed above the hills, and a grayish fog, thin almost to extinction, rose slowly from the ground. A young shepherd urged his flock to cross the Arno, now almost dry, from one bank to another. An old woman beat a large hog that would not leave his puddle. A few dogs barked and their echoes, like small rocks, beat against the sides of the hills. Two crows dashed by, large worms in their beaks. Several sparrows bathed in the dust, chirping violently.

“Kotikokura, nothing changes. I saw these sparrows and crows and sheep and this old woman more than a thousand years ago. Here they are again! We are all enchanted. Every few centuries, we wake up for a moment, then fall asleep again. Things seem different only because our eyes are unaccustomed to the light.”

Kotikokura offered me a rosebud.

Wagons began to rumble and horses and donkeys and oxen to trot, each producing a different and peculiar harmony. The wagons were bedecked with flowers and ribbons, and filled with tiny cages of all materials—wood, iron, tin, porcelain. Within each cage, a grasshopper, still and motionless, and a small leaf of cabbage or lettuce.

The merchants descended, tied their animals to iron posts, and arranged their merchandise. Other merchants with various goods drove into the square and all along both banks of the Arno, sellers of spice breads, of sweets, of toys, of confetti; a merry-go-round with grotesque animals, turned by a small donkey as sad as a clown; games of chance, cards, dice, hoops to be thrown over iron spikes, wheels that stopped at lucky numbers, here and there an old man or woman selling crosses, candles, and amulets. Beggars led by dogs and playing on flutes or accordions or singing obscene parodies of current, sentimental ditties.

Inn keepers raised the iron shutters of their shops and placed tables and chairs on the sidewalks, shouting all the time to the merchants not to crowd too near their doors.