Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1618 page)

The man thanked him, and withdrew. Jean followed, and satisfied himself that the workman had really left the house. He then returned, and sat down by the boiling cauldron.

Meanwhile, Louis and Thomas presented themselves at the priest’s house. He had not yet retired to bed, and he received them kindly — but with the same extraordinary agitation in his face and manner which had surprised all who saw him on the previous day. The brothers were prepared beforehand with an answer, when he inquired what they wanted of him. They replied immediately that the shock of their father’s horrible death had so seriously affected their aunt and their eldest sister, that it was feared the minds of both might give way, unless spiritual consolation and assistance were afforded to them that night. The unhappy priest — always faithful and self-sacrificing where the duties of his ministry were in question — at once rose to accompany the young men back to the house. He even put on his surplice, and took the crucifix with him, to impress his words of comfort all the more solemnly on the afflicted women whom he was called on to succor.

Thus innocent of all suspicion of the conspiracy to which he had fallen a victim, he was taken into the room where Jean sat waiting by the cauldron of oil; and the door was locked behind him.

Before he could speak, Thomas Siadoux openly avowed the truth.

“It is we three who want you,” he said — ”not our aunt, and not our sister. If you answer our questions truly, you have nothing to fear. If you refuse — ” He stopped, and looked toward Jean and the boiling cauldron.

Never, at the best of times, a resolute man; deprived, since the day before, of such resources of energy as he possessed, by the mental suffering which he had undergone in secret — the unfortunate priest trembled from head to foot, as the three brothers closed round him. Louis took the crucifix from him, and held it; Thomas forced him to place his right hand on it; Jean stood in front of him and put the questions.

“Our father has been brought home a murdered man,” he said. “Do you know who killed him?”

The priest hesitated; and the two elder brothers moved him nearer to the cauldron.

“Answer us, on peril of your life,” said Jean. “Say, with your hand on the blessed crucifix, do you know the man who killed our father?”

“I do know him.”

“When did you make the discovery?”

“Yesterday.”

“Where?”

“At Toulouse.”

“Name the murderer.”

At those words, the priest closed his hand fast on the crucifix, and rallied his sinking courage.

“Never!” he said firmly. “The knowledge I possess was obtained in the confessional. The secrets of the confessional are sacred. If I betray them, I commit sacrilege. I will die first!”

“Think!” said Jean. “If you keep silence, you screen the murderer. If you keep silence, you are the murderer’s accomplice. We have sworn over our father’s dead body to avenge him — if you refuse to speak, we will avenge him on you. I charge you again, name the man who killed him.”

“I will die first,” the priest reiterated, as firmly as before.

“Die then!” said Jean. “Die in that cauldron of boiling oil.”

“Give him time,” cried Louis and Thomas, earnestly pleading together.

“We will give him time,” said the younger brother. “There is the clock yonder, against the wall. We will count five minutes by it. In those five minutes, let him make his peace with God — or make up his mind to speak.”

They waited, watching the dock. In that dreadful interval, the priest dropped on his knees and hid his face. The time passed in dead silence.

“Speak! for your own sake, for our sakes, speak!” said Thomas Siadoux, as the minute hand reached the point at which the five minutes expired.

The priest looked up — his voice died away on his lips — the mortal agony broke out on his face in great drops of sweat — his head sank forward on his breast.

“Lift him!” cried Jean, seizing the priest on one side. “Lift him, and throw him in!”

The two elder brothers advanced a step — and hesitated.

“Lift him, on your oath over our father’s body!”

The two brothers seized him on the other side. As they lifted him to a level with the cauldron, the horror of the death that threatened him, burst from the lips of the miserable man in a scream of terror. The brothers held him firm at the cauldron’s edge. “Name the man!” they said for the last time.

The priest’s teeth chattered — he was speechless. But he made a sign with his head — a sign in the affirmative. They placed him in a chair, and waited patiently until he was able to speak.

His first words were words of entreaty. He begged Thomas Siadoux to give him back the crucifix. When it was placed in his possession, he kissed it, and said faintly, “I ask pardon of God for the sin that I am about to commit.” He paused; and then looked up at the younger brother, who still stood in front of him. “I am ready,” he said. “Question me, and I will answer.”

Jean repeated the questions which he had put, when the priest was first brought into the room.

“You know the murderer of our father?”

“I know him.”

“Since when?”

“Since he made his confession to me yesterday, in the cathedral of Toulouse.”

“Name him.”

“His name is Cantegrel.”

“The man who wanted to marry our aunt?”

“The same.”

“What brought him to the confessional?”

“His own remorse.”

“What were the motives for his crime?”

“There were reports against his character; and he discovered that your father had gone privately to Narbonne to make sure that they were true.”

“Did our father make sure of their truth?”

“He did.”

“Would those discoveries have separated our aunt from Cantegrel if our father had lived to tell her of them?”

“They would. If your father had lived, he would have told your aunt that Cantegrel was married already; that he had deserted his wife at Narbonne; that she was living there with another man, under another name; and that she had herself confessed it in your father’s presence.”

“Where was the murder committed?”

“Between Villefranche and this village. Cantegrel had followed your father to Narbonne; and had followed him back again to Villefranche. As far as that place, he traveled in company with others, both going and returning. Beyond Villefranche, he was left alone at the ford over the river. There Cantegrel drew the knife to kill him, before he reached home and told his news to your aunt.”

“How was the murder committed?”

“It was committed while your father was watering his pony by the bank of the stream. Cantegrel stole on him from behind, and struck him as he was stooping over the saddle-bow.”

“This is the truth, on your oath?”

“On my oath, it is the truth.”

“You may leave us.”

The priest rose from his chair without assistance. From the time when the terror of death had forced him to reveal the murderer’s name, a great change had passed over him. He had given his answers with the immoveable calmness of a man on whose mind all human interests had lost their hold. He now left the room, strangely absorbed in himself; moving with the mechanical regularity of a sleepwalker; lost to all perception of things and persons about him. At the door he stopped — woke, as it seemed, from the trance that possessed him — and looked at the three brothers with a steady changeless sorrow, which they had never seen in him before, which they never afterwards forgot.

“I forgive you,” he said, quietly and solemnly. “Pray for me, when my time comes.”

With those last words, he left them.

IV. THE END

The night was far advanced; but the three brothers determined to set forth instantly for Toulouse, and to place their information in the magistrate’s hands, before the morning dawned.

Thus far, no suspicion had occurred to them of the terrible consequences which were to follow their night-interview with the priest. They were absolutely ignorant of the punishment to which a man in holy orders exposed himself, if he revealed the secrets of the confessional. No infliction of that punishment had been known in their neighbourhood — for, at that time, as at this, the rarest of all priestly offenses was a violation of the sacred trust confided to the confessor by the Roman Church. Conscious that they had forced the priest into the commission of a clerical offense, the brothers sincerely believed that the loss of his curacy would be the heaviest penalty which the law could exact from him. They entered Toulouse that night, discussing the atonement which they might offer to Monsieur Chaubard, and the means which they might best employ to make his future life easy to him.

The first disclosure of the consequences which would certainly follow the outrage they had committed, was revealed to them when they made their deposition before the officer of justice. The magistrate listened to their narrative with horror vividly expressed in his face and manner.

“Better you had never been born,” he said, “than have avenged your father’s death, as you three have avenged it. Your own act has doomed the guilty and the innocent to suffer alike.”

Those words proved prophetic of the truth. The end came quickly, as the priest had foreseen it, when he spoke his parting words.

The arrest of Cantegrel was accomplished without difficulty, the next morning. In the absence of any other evidence on which to justify this proceeding, the private disclosure to the authorities of the secret which the priest had violated, became inevitable. The Parliament of Languedoc was, under these circumstances, the tribunal appealed to; and the decision of that assembly immediately ordered the priest and the three brothers to be placed in confinement, as well as the murderer Cantegrel. Evidence was then immediately sought for, which might convict this last criminal, without any reference to the revelation that had been forced from the priest — and evidence enough was found to satisfy judges whose minds already possessed the foregone certainty of the prisoner’s guilt. He was put on his trial, was convicted of the murder, and was condemned to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was rigidly executed, with as little delay as the law would permit.

The cases of Monsieur Chaubard, and of the three sons of Siadoux, next occupied the judges. The three brothers were found guilty of having forced the secret of a confession from a man in holy orders, and were sentenced to death by hanging. A far more terrible expiation of his offense awaited the unfortunate priest. He was condemned to have his limbs broken on the wheel, and to be afterwards, while still living, bound to the stake, and destroyed by fire.

Barbarous as the punishments of that period were, accustomed as the population was to hear of their infliction, and even to witness it, the sentences pronounced in these two cases dismayed the public mind; and the authorities were surprised by receiving petitions for mercy from Toulouse, and from all the surrounding neighbourhood. But the priest’s doom had been sealed. All that could be obtained, by the intercession of persons of the highest distinction, was, that the executioner should grant him the mercy of death, before his body was committed to the flames. With this one modification, the sentence was executed, as the sentence had been pronounced, on the curate of Croix-Daurade.

The punishment of the three sons of Siadoux remained to be inflicted. But the people, roused by the death of the ill-fated priest, rose against this third execution, with a resolution before which the local government gave way. The cause of the young men was taken up by the hot-blooded populace, as the cause of all fathers and all sons; their filial piety was exalted to the skies; their youth was pleaded in their behalf; their ignorance of the terrible responsibility which they had confronted in forcing the secret from the priest, was loudly alleged in their favor. More than this, the authorities were actually warned that the appearance of the prisoners on the scaffold would be the signal for an organized revolt and rescue. Under this serious pressure, the execution was deferred, and the prisoners were kept in confinement until the popular ferment had subsided.