Gide The Vatican Cellars

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-418-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 275 Seiten

Could the Pope have been secretly abducted?When nineteen-year-old Lafcadio Wluiki learns he is to inherit a French aristocrat's fortune, he heads to Rome, where a plot is afoot: ingenious fraudsters have set about convincing their wealthy victims that the pontiff has been imprisoned by freemasons at Castel Sant'Angelo.Saving toddlers from burning buildings one minute and committing a shocking, motiveless crime the next, the amoral Lafcadio is one of Nobel-winner André Gide's most original creations, and a model for later fictional anti-heroes such as Sartre's Meursault and Highsmith's Ripley. A send-up of conventional morality, The Vatican Cellars also carries an enduring warning about how easily we are duped by charming rogues.

André Gide was a giant of twentieth-century French literature. An innovator of the novelistic form, he undertook a life-long exploration of morality in his work, and was a major influence on the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Gide was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gide, André

Weitere Mitwirkende

Evans, Julian

Leseproben

III
The Baraglioul family – the gl is pronounced palatally, Italian-style, as in Broglie (duke of ) – are originally from Parma. It was a Baraglioul – Alessandro – who became the second husband of Filippa Visconti in 1514, a few months after the annexation of the duchy of Parma to the Papal States. Another Baraglioul – also Alessandro – distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto and was then murdered in 1580, in circumstances that are mysterious to this day. It would be straightforward, but not very interesting, to follow the family’s fortunes until 1807, around the time Parma was annexed by France and Robert de Baraglioul, Julius’s grandfather, moved to Pau in south-west France. In 1828 Charles X granted him a count’s coronet – a title that his third son, Juste-Agénor (the elder brothers having died in their youth), was later to bear so nobly in his diplomatic career, where his sharp intelligence shone and his negotiating skills bore triumphant fruit. Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul’s second son Julius, who had lived a blameless life since his marriage, had had several passionate affairs in his youth. At least he could honestly claim that he had never ignored the urgings of his heart, although the basic virtue of his nature, and a kind of moral elegance that pervaded everything he wrote, had always stopped his desires leading him down a slope on which his novelist’s curiosity would undoubtedly have allowed them free rein. His blood ran placidly though not coldly in his veins, as a number of aristocratic beauties could have testified … And I would not touch on it here if his first novels had not clearly hinted at it, which was one of the factors responsible for their widespread fashionable success. Their appeal to ‘people of quality’ had led to one of them being serialised in Le Correspondant and two others in La Revue des Deux Mondes. This was how, as though in spite of himself and at an absurdly young age, he had found himself swept towards the doors of the Académie: with his distinguished good looks, profoundly earnest expression and contemplative pallor he seemed made for it. As for Anthime, he professed a deep scorn for the advantages of rank, wealth and looks that never ceased to distress Julius, but he did acknowledge that his brother-in-law possessed both a vein of natural goodness and a great lack of skill at discussion, which often let free thought win the day.   Sometime after six o’clock Anthime heard his guests’ carriage stop at the door. He went to meet them on the landing. Julius came up first. In his Cronstadt hat and long overcoat with its silk lapels, he looked dressed for social calls rather than travelling. Only the tartan shawl draped over his forearm hinted otherwise. The long journey did not seem to have tired him at all. Marguerite de Baraglioul on the other hand, who was following him on her sister’s arm, gave every appearance of exhaustion. Her bonnet and chignon were awry, her feet stumbled on the steps, her face was half hidden by the handkerchief she was holding like a compress to her face. As she reached Anthime Véronique whispered, ‘Marguerite has some coal dust in her eye.’ Their daughter Julie, a gracious little girl of nine, and the maid brought up the rear, keeping an anxious silence. Marguerite’s character being what it was, everyone knew it was not a good idea to make light of the situation. Anthime suggested that they send for an ophthalmologist but Marguerite, who knew the reputation of so-called Italian ‘doctors’, would not hear of it ‘for the world’, piping in a languishing whisper, ‘Cold water. Just cold water. Oh!’ ‘Of course, my dear Marguerite,’ Anthime went on, ‘cold water will get rid of the irritation for a few seconds by rinsing your eye, but it won’t get rid of the problem.’ Then, turning to Julius: ‘Did you see what it was?’ ‘Not terribly well. As soon as the train stopped and I suggested looking at her eye, she got awfully tense—’ ‘Don’t say that, Julius! You were awfully clumsy. The first thing you did when you tried to lift up my eyelid was bend all my eyelashes back …’ ‘Would you like me to try?’ Anthime said. ‘Perhaps I’ll be better at it.’ A porter was bringing up their trunks. Caroline lit a mirrored lamp. ‘Well, my dear, you’re not going to perform the operation in the hall, are you?’ Véronique said, and led the Baragliouls to their room. The Armand-Dubois apartment was laid out around the building’s inner courtyard, overlooked by the windows of the corridor that led from the entrance hall to the orangery. Along this corridor doors gave onto the dining room, then the sitting room (an enormous ill-furnished corner room that the Armand-Dubois did not use), and two guest rooms that had been arranged, one for Julius and Marguerite de Baraglioul and the other, smaller one for Julie, next to the last bedroom, which was for the Armand-Dubois. Every room had a communicating door. The kitchen and two maids’ rooms were off the other side of the landing and entrance hall … ‘Please don’t all crowd round me,’ Marguerite wailed. ‘Julius, will you do something about the luggage?’ Véronique persuaded her sister to sit in an armchair. She held the lamp while Anthime examined her. ‘The problem is that it’s inflamed. Do you think you could take your hat off?’ But Marguerite, possibly afraid that her disarranged hair would reveal a number of artificial aids, insisted she would take it off later: an ordinary carriage bonnet would not stop her from leaning her head against the back of the armchair. ‘So, you’d like me to remove the mote in your eye before I take the plank out of mine?’ Anthime said with a half-snigger. ‘That sounds rather at odds with the teaching of the Scriptures to me.’ ‘Oh, please don’t make me pay too dearly for your kindness.’ ‘I shan’t say another word … Here, the corner of a clean handkerchief … I see what it is … Keep calm … good heavens! Look up! … Got it.’ With the corner of his handkerchief Anthime removed an almost invisible piece of grit. ‘Thank you! Thank you. Now can you leave me alone? This has given me the most awful migraine.’   While Marguerite was resting, Julius unpacking with the maid, and Véronique taking care of the dinner preparations, Anthime was looking after Julie in her bedroom. The last time he had seen his niece she had been very small, and he hardly recognised this tall young girl whose smile was already one of solemn innocence. As he sat trying to entertain her, talking to her as interestingly as he could about trivial and childish things, his attention was caught by a thin silver chain she wore around her neck. He immediately suspected that it had religious medallions attached to it, and, slipping his fat index finger indiscreetly inside her blouse, he hooked them out. Hiding his pathological dislike behind a display of astonishment, he said, ‘Well now, what are these little things all about?’ Julie knew perfectly well that his question was not serious, but why should she be offended? ‘What, Uncle? Haven’t you ever seen medallions before?’ ‘Now you come to mention it, no, dear little one,’ he lied. ‘I must say they’re not exactly pretty-pretty, are they, but I suppose they’re for something?’ And because unquestioning piety is not incompatible with a touch of innocent mischief, in response the little girl pointed her finger at a photograph of herself tucked into the mirror above the fireplace and said, ‘Look, Uncle, you’ve got a picture of a little girl who isn’t pretty-pretty either. What’s that for?’ Surprised to find such an impish sense of repartee, and with it clearly an equal dose of common sense, in a child he had hitherto thought of as a zealot, Uncle Anthime was briefly disconcerted. But he could hardly embark on a metaphysical discussion with a nine-year-old girl! He smiled. Julie seized her opportunity, holding out the holy tokens. ‘This one,’ she said, ‘is St Julia, my patron saint, and this one is the Sacred Heart of Our—’ ‘You haven’t got one of the Good Lord, then?’ Anthime broke in, absurdly. The child answered matter-of-factly, ‘No, they don’t make them of the Good Lord … But this is the prettiest one: it’s Our Lady of Lourdes, which Aunt Fleurissoire gave me. She brought her from Lourdes. I started wearing her the day Papa and Maman offered me to the Blessed Virgin.’ This was too much for Anthime. Utterly ignoring the indescribable charm that such images summoned up – the month of May, the procession of children in white and blue – he gave way to a manic urge to blaspheme. ‘So the Blessed Virgin didn’t want you, then, since you’re still here with us?’ Julie said nothing. Had she already understood that the wisest response to some kinds of bad manners was not to respond at all? In any case, what could she say? In the silence that followed his taunting question it was not Julie but her freemason uncle who reddened – out of slight confusion, an unadmitted qualm that goes hand in hand with rudeness, a short-lived turmoil that he hid with a respectful kiss on his niece’s innocent forehead to make amends. ‘Why do you pretend to be so naughty, Uncle Anthime?’ Julie’s instincts were entirely right: deep down, her learned, unbelieving uncle was a gentle, kind-hearted person. So...