Prie Dieux

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
She liked to catch Father Gallifrey as early in the day as possible, before too many of his other parishioners had taken the opportunity to burden him with their petty transgressions. It gave her a decidedly un-Christian little frisson to think of her own sins as being the freshest, and lying most near the handsome young priest’s heart. As if she believed that they would be the ones that he would touch most often during his day, and for which he would most frequently – and passionately – seek intercession with God. Though, truth be told, Cécie Fantègnant did not really believe that her sins required so very much in the way of forgiving. 
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
Cécie squirmed, straining to make out the face belonging to the shadowy presence on the opposite side of the screen. As well try and discern the face of God, she thought impatiently. Her attention was drawn instead to the intermittent sparkling of the small golden crucifix as it moved against the starless night of the curate’s vestments. 
“Twenty-one…no, wait…twenty-two hours, Father.”
There was an audible sigh from the other side of the ornately carved rosewood grating.
“Mlle. Fantègnant, I really think that it is unnecessary for you to make your confession so frequentl…”
“But Father, I don’t want my sins piling up! They become such a burden, and I’m afraid that if I neglect them, soon just the sheer number of them will serve to discourage me from making my Confession at all!”
Another sigh drifted through the wooden veil, this one more of resignation than exasperation.
“Oh, very well. Go on, my child.”
“Father, I have had impure thoughts…”
Twenty minutes later Cécie Fantègnant stepped lightly from the confessional box, fresh and sweet as a spring violet, with just the faintest hint of roses in her apple-round cheeks. Another minute passed, and a lanky young cleric emerged from the other side of the confessional, pale and wild-eyed, just in time to see the lady’s trim bustle disappearing through the massive doors of St. Jude’s. The priest crossed himself with a slightly unsteady hand, and made his way shakily toward the vestry. Perhaps the new  sacramental wine had not yet been blessed and put away by the Monseigneur.
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“And what does Pere Plus Saint que Vous tell you about your sins these days, ma fille douce?”
Cécie Fantègnant shared a bed-sitting room midway down the hill between St. Pierre de Montmartre and Place Pigalle with another girl, Lisette Marchemain. It was small, and had no convenience for cooking, but this did not matter very much to the two young women, as they took nearly all of their meals out. They had a small spirit stove to brew their tea, and a smaller wooden ice chest on their tiny veranda in which they kept their cream, and the odd pastry in cooler months. They did have a private bath, however, very much a luxury among young women in their line of work, and one of which they were inordinately proud. Most of the other girls that they knew who inhabited the seamy Parisien demimonde between Place Blanche and Boulevard Clichy were obliged to share their bath with an entire floor. Many of these same girls thought that Cécie and Lisette gave themselves airs on this account, and so treated the two young women with the natural disdain that the professional often harbors for the gifted amateur in any field of endeavor.
 “He thinks that I should give them up, of course.” Cécie sighed melodramatically, taking a sip of her tea.
“And what do you say to that?”
“What can I say? I tell him that it would inconvenience my landlady enormously were I to do so.” 
“To say nothing of Etienne,” Lisette observed, setting both women to giggling nervously.
The two were lounging about in their chemises, fanning themselves and waiting for the oppressive late-afternoon heat of August to abate enough so that they could begin their toilette for the evening. Although these were the dog days of summer, and most of the important people had fled the city for villas in Villefranche sur Mer or Cap d’Antibes, there were still one or two parties of some note for a girl to attend, if she had the right sort of connections. And Cécie’s roommate had just the kind of connections required to attend what promised to be ‘the’ fete of the late summer in Paris. In fact, Lisette’s aunt was hosting several of the artists of last spring’s Salon Refusés that very evening, and the crème de la crème of Left Bank society (such as it was) would be on display in Mme.Charteron’s sumptuous parlors. 
Lisette’s aunt took a kind of perverse pleasure in parading this less-than-acceptable element of Parisien society in her rooms from time to time, simply for the shock value that it had on the more staid members of her normal social circle. In this respect she resembled closely her niece Lisette. Unlike that impetuous young woman, however, she had the foresight to remove the finer pieces of furniture from her salon beforehand. She had seen these artists at work in a social milieu before, and had no desire to be put to the trouble and expense of having her Louis Quinze chairs and settees reupholstered.
Lisette suddenly puffed out her cheeks and stretched out on her back upon the small bedsitting room’s divan, striking a sultry pose as she opened her chemise and pushed forth her all-but-non-existent tummy.
“Look, I am ‘Olympia,’” she intoned gravely. 
The young women screamed with laughter at Lisette’s deft burlesque of M. Manet’s portrait of an anonymous courtesan. This shocking painting had all of Paris abuzz that summer, and seemed to confirm the worst suspicions of the surprisingly easily-shocked Parisien haute monde. To wit, that all French men and women fornicated whenever and wherever the opportunity presented itself, and, further, that the lower classes are particularly susceptible in such matters, and – further still – that all artists think of little else, and that all artists’ models are by and large available to anyone who asks in a reasonable fashion, or has the price of a meal. Cécie and Lisette were not disinclined to agree with such an assumption, so long as the definition of ‘reasonable’ was sufficiently broad, and included a good dinner at Le Coq d’Or or the Fleur de Lys.
 “La, they like to paint those sorts of women,” Cécie gasped, “but they prefer to go to bed with ones whose petite bourse de plaisir they can find without resorting to a Baedeker…”
They both dissolved again into shrieks of hysterical laughter.
“But seriously,” Cécie went on, dashing tears of mirth from her eyes. “What will your aunt say to your bringing me along to the party this evening? For that matter, what will she say about your attending?” Cécie choked back a fresh fit of giggling.
“Oh, bother Aunt Berthè! I had a lovely frock run up especially for the occasion, and I intend to dance until dawn in it! And who knows? Perhaps,” she added, with a gay twinkle in her eye, “we may have an opportunity to make a few sous that we shan’t have to share with that bastard Etienne, n’est pas?”
With that, the girls threw themselves into their preparations for the grand evening, chattering away like excited young magpies. For in truth, girls so young and heedless have very little patience with such complex concepts as actions, and their consequences.
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“Look, Cécie! Isn’t that Marie Dudevant with M. Hugo? You don’t suppose that she is trying to impress him with the extent of her knowledge on the social implications of the Commune, do you?”
Cécie glanced briefly in the direction Lisette was indicating with her Chinese silk fan, and dismissed the girl in question with a sniff. “More likely the extent of her knowledge of social infections. A subject upon which she is vastly qualified to discourse, or so I have heard.”
“You are wicked!” Lisette jabbed Cécie with an elbow as she scanned the room, then gestured with her fan again, this time in the direction of a small knot of people surrounding her Aunt Berthè at the far end of the long, candlelit salon.
“But isn’t that your precious Father Gallifray?”
It was, indeed. Cécie’s lovely porcelain-doll’s features softened as her eyes came to rest upon the tall, spare frame of the uncomfortable-looking cleric. He towered head and shoulders above the others, and his hands fluttered like frightened birds, as if seeking vainly for some occupation or other that would not draw attention to themselves, or to their owner.
“If he is not careful, he will fly away,” Lisette smirked. “And my aunt is not fond of guests who flit about among her chandeliers, even if they are curates!” 
Cécie smiled, watching the young priest. Lisette frowned sternly at her friend.
“Cécie, you really must give up this foolish flirtation! What possible good can come of it? After all, my darling, the man is a priest!”
“But he knows everything about me, Lisette. Everything. And still he pities me, and forgives me.” She gave a heartfelt sigh. “What purer or more blissful understanding than that could possibly exist between a man and woman?”
Lisette at once sensed the danger in that sigh.
“I think that you may be confusing the messenger with its author, cherie. Besides, I am not convinced that God has forgiven you your sins. Or Pere plus saint, for that matter.  Perhaps he has simply grown so weary of hearing your endless recitations of them, that he grants you a dispensation in order to get some peace from your chattering.”
“No, no, it is not like that at all, Lisette! I’m certain that I have touched his heart with my poor, simple girl’s search for God, and forgiveness for the sinful life I’ve led.”
The normally loquacious Lisette was so taken aback by this utterance, and by her friend’s almost comically pious expression, that for a moment she could think of no sensible reply to make to it at all.
“Hmmph!” she managed at last. “And I wonder what he has been touching, while he listens to your confessions?” 
“Lisette, hush! Here he comes!”
Cécie kept her gaze fixed resolutely on the golden crucifix moving lightly upon Father Gallifrey’s breast as he neared them, in order to keep from staring at his hands. Each time she saw the young priest’s hands, with their long, pale, almost effeminate fingers, she felt the most unusual stirrings in herself, and was filled with longings such as she had not felt since she and Hyacinthe Thierry had made intimate acquaintance of one another for the very first time by the mill pond back in Nohant. She had scarcely been thirteen at the time. Cécie struggled to hide her feelings, and cursed the blush she felt stealing up across her bosom to her neck, and thence to her cheeks.
“Good evening Mlle Marchemain, Mlle Fantègnant,” he began self-consciously, making a stiff little bow.
“Good evening, Father,” the girls chorused, each making him their prettiest courtesy. Cécie lingered in hers a heartbeat longer than did Lisette, and felt Father Gallifrey’s eyes linger in turn upon her. Her cheeks flamed.
“I must confess, I really am at a loss as to why Mme. Charteron invited me to this…this…affair,” he began, stammering as he gesticulated wildly with an arm, a movement that seemed to include both the shocking – to him – pictures that had been set up on temporary display along the walls of the salon, and the rather more shocking collection of décolleté flesh being displayed by not a few of the female guests. “I fear that works such as these are most injurious to the moral health and vigor of the general populace, and lead inevitably to the arousal of the senses by their crude and indecent realism. I admit I am quite incapable of hitting upon the proper note with which to respond to all of this...this…this…” his pale hand fluttered irresolutely before he allowed it to drop to his side once again, defeated.
“La, Father,” Lisette chided the young prelate, tapping him playfully on the shoulder with her fan. “Simply keep in the forefront of your mind Jonah in the belly of that great fish of his, and you shall not go far wrong here this evening. Or at least,” she passed a sly, conspiratorial look to her friend, “only as far wrong as Cécie shall allow you to go! And now, if you will excuse me, I see that M. Fantin-Latour has my aunt nearly in the throes of an apoplectic fit with his extemporizing. I must repair to her with the smelling salts, before he starts in on her about his latest painting. Father, Cécie…”
With another graceful courtesy Lisette departed, leaving the oddly-matched young couple suddenly and unexpectedly to their own devices. They were each silent for a time, the one carefully crafting her next move, while the other was unable to think of anything but his utter discomfiture, and the effect that the surroundings – and Cécie’s perfume – were having upon his ability to concentrate at all. 
Cécie Fantègnant was a young woman who, in fact, possessed those two qualities that inevitably seemed to attract gentlemen whose intentions were often less than honorable; she was very beautiful, and she was not really very hard to please. Unfortunately, another class of gentleman – one to which Father Gallifrey belonged by inclination if not by birth – only saw at first blush the obvious charms of the former, stumbling upon the latter after it was far too late to do anything about it.
“Mlle. Fantègnant, I hope that you will not think me terribly forward if I –”
“Father Gallifrey, please forgive my frankness but –“
They both burst into startled laughter, then paused to let the other continue.
“Mademoiselle Fantègnant…”
“Cécie, Father. Do please call me by my Christian name. After all,” she lowered her eyes coquettishly, “we are not in the Confessional here.”
“Indeed we are not,” Father Gallifrey hastened to concur somewhat stiffly. “If we were, what I wish to say to you would be quite impossible. And yet what I want to say – no, what I must say – can scarcely be disassociated from your confessions. My dear Mlle. Fantègnant, I must entreat you again to give some further consideration to the life that you have chosen to lead, and its inevitable consequences for not only your…”
Cécie began to lose the thread of this conversation almost immediately as the young priest droned on about sin, and redemption, and young ladies who lived in bedsits in Montmarte eating petit fours at all hours of the day and rouging their cheeks. Here she had been expecting a passionate declaration of his true feelings for her, and instead she was being subjected to a lengthy disquisition on some proverb or other of Solomon’s, one that seemed to credit women in general, and poor Cécie in particular, with being ‘the desolation of righteousness.’ She simply had to find some way to help the poor man express his true feelings! She was casting about feverishly for some method to assist him when the small chamber ensemble struck up a waltz.
 “Father, dance with me!”
The startled prelate took a step backwards, as if he had been struck a physical blow. But Cécie was not to be deterred. Taking his hand, she led him determinedly onto the polished floor as the other couples parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses. And in fact before very long, the assistant priest at St. Jude’s was whirling the young demimondaine about the floor in a quite skillful and accomplished rendition of the waltz. Cécie took a moment to thank God for the social graces that He had seen fit in His wisdom to confer upon her new paramour.
And so they danced, and were nearly indistinguishable from any other young couple in the first throes of romantic infatuation. Heads turned throughout the long gallery, and a kind of hush – not really a silence, but a sort of lowering of the volume of conversation – became evident as the two waltzed gracefully across the parquetry. Cécie had never felt such a transport of emotions in all of her young life, and at each flustered attempt by Father Gallifrey – who she thought of already as her ‘dear Juste’ – to pull her away from the dance floor, or to admonish her about her forwardness, she simply sighed, and clung all the more tightly to his broadclothed form, and his delicate, lovely hand. 
Cécie in fact remembered very little else about that evening, or the subsequent morning at all. Only the scent of her new lover’s cologne, and the texture of his garments beneath her fingertips, and the hypnotic sparkle of his crucifix flashing and dancing just at the level of her besotted eyes. 
And his beautiful, beautiful hands…
_____________

“It CANNOT be true! It CANNOT!!”
“I assure you that it is, however, cherie…”
Cécie strode agitatedly back and forth across the length of the tiny room, hands pulling at her lovely blonde curls as she uttered the most piteous of moans, interspersed occasionally with a string of oaths that would have made the most seasoned of Marseille dockhands blanch.
“Merde! He would NOT leave without speaking to me! Without SEEING me, Lisette! I know that he would not!”
Lisette sighed, and cast a knowing eye upon her distraught friend. “Nevertheless, Father Gallifrey is gone, and gone for good, my darling. So you may as well accept the fact and…”
“NO! Never!! Cécie balled her hands into tiny, defiant fists, whirling to confront Lisette. “I know that something dreadful has befallen him! That maudit Etienne has done him some harm! I knew he would, he is so jealous of me!
“And of the income which you provide him, cherie, let us not forget that,” Lisette pointed out, somewhat tactlessly. “But still, the good Father was seen to be leaving on the coach to Dole this morning, and by all accounts, he was in perfect health…save for a somewhat furtive look he had about the eyes, some observers say.”
Cécie wailed again, and resumed her distraught pacing, redoubling her efforts to snatch herself bald into the bargain.
“I shall take poison and join him! Then you will all be sorry that you have treated us so dreadfully, and told such lies about our love!”
Cécie did indeed briefly toy with the idea of quaffing a potion of matchstick heads crushed in milk (which she had learnt about in a romance she’d read involving a broken love affair and failed suicide attempt of the Empress Eugenie’s), thus putting an end to her torment once for all. But Lisette was able to deflect her from this drastic course of action with surprising ease, and she was restored in an astonishingly short space of time to her normal state – that is to say, one of extraordinary volatility and complete self-absorption. 
In fact, it was a measure of the self-centeredness of Cécie’s affections that she preferred her own explanation – that her pimp had set upon her priest-lover and murdered him in a fit of jealous rage – to that of her friend Lisette, that Father Gallifrey had simply fled in disgrace (if not outright terror) to some parish in the hinterlands. So comfortable did Cécie eventually become with this explanation of her own that by that same evening she had agreed to accept an invitation to dine at the Fleur de Lys with a gentleman of Etienne’s acquaintance, thus putting an end to what was surely one of the more abbreviated periods of mourning in recent recollection. After all, whether doomed to perpetual grief or no, a girl still must eat.
And what of poor Father Gallifrey?  Well it is perhaps for the best that his true fate be left to the reader to divine. Suffice it to say that the Monday next following the scandal of the dancing priest at Mme. Charteron’s found Cécie, redolent of rosewater and repentance, once again kneeling upon the padded prie dieux in the delicious, comforting coolness of the confessional box at St. Jude. Her half-hearted orisons were interrupted by the squeal of door hinges in the adjacent stall, and she crossed herself in a desultory manner as this new presence made itself felt behind the confessional screen. All at once the distinct – and disturbingly masculine – odors of tobacco and leather wafted through the grating, interrupting her pious reveries. She felt her heart begin to beat a bit more quickly in her breast.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
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