A case of curiosities by Allen Kurzweil Read Free Book Online Page B

a charcoal burner, offered his own version of events. The Abbe settled the bickering by replacing the charcoal with a cartload of wood from his own forests.
    "A full cartload?" The accountant's voice emerged from the sidelines. Petulance was detectable.
    "No. I do not think a full cartload appropriate." The Abbe wanted to put the accountant in his place. "Make it two/' The accountant went over to the Abbe and pressed the matter privately. After considerable discussion, the Abbe said, "Very well, one cartload it is." The accountant, who clearly held sway, then submitted the paver's estimates on necessary road repairs, itemizing each cost, including the tolls for the transport of the rolled stone. He ignored the Abbe's impatience and noted that the marsh was still in need of draining, that the intendant would arrive in four weeks to collect funds for real and imagined wars waged far from Tournay's borders, and that the bankers in Geneva wanted confirmation of contracts undertaken. The Abbe said, "Just pay what needs to be paid."
    The accountant sucked his teeth in frustration and noted the sanctioned expenditures. "We must be careful, sit. Investment demands return, after all." While he backed away to the sidelines to consult his profit tables, the Abbe continued his task of mediation, interceding in squabbles between husband and wife, bourgeois and natif, trying his best to settle the more complicated disputes involving competing versions of God. It was this last discordance that always gave him the most trouble. The Abbe was never too responsive in issues of faith. Absent from the great hall—absent, in fact, from the Abbe's world—was God in any recognizable form. This by itself would have enraged the more devout elements of the community. The Abbe made matters worse by being downright combative. His attitude found its clearest expression in the great hall's second piece of furniture, which stood beside the table. Even Pastor Bourget, who at times laughed at the ritual indulgence of the Papists, was ruffled by the Abbe's chair. To the Catholics—the Carmelites, especially—it was outright blasphemy.
    The Abbe had constructed the chair from a confessional booth he had cut down and affixed, through ingenious if mischievous rabbeting, to a fancifully engraved coffin. The carpentry allowed its occupant to sit, legs outstretched, protected on three sides. He justified the impiety by saying it kept away the crosscurrents of the Vengeful Widow. But he had had it built, truth be told, to thumb his nose at the religious representatives who stood before him: the assorted Calvinists, Capuchins, Sisters of Charity, Ursulines, and, of course, Carmelites.
    A particularly strong-willed member of the last group, Sister Constance, moved to the coffin-confessional to present her petitions, a richly documented cahier of complaints. The Abbe skimmed it and said, "Have you done nothing in the last three months but itemize your dissatisfactions? You treat the written word as if it were penance." He then appeased her by allocating the tongues of all slaughtered cattle to the parish house.
    The Calvinists, though fewer in number, were equally disgruntled by the Abbe, who was forever denying them funds they felt predestined to receive. They stood opposite the Catholics, on the other side of the pass line, near the tennis-court grille. Bourget, the Reform pastor, asked to have the temple's bell clapper repaired. Father Gamot piped in with a request for a relic.

    "This is not Geneva," the Abbe told the Calvinist. "And this is not Rome," he told the Catholic. "This is Toumay, and here we must live with the resources we have. Find help from your flock. Which brings me to the part of my authority that interests me most. Where is the cowherd?" He dismissed the complaining church fathers and announced that he would receive obligations, payment of which could be made in coin or kind. The Abbe, as one might expect, was partial to the latter.
    "What have