A Christmas Tale
Doctor Bonenfant was searching his memory, saying, half aloud: “A Christmas story—some remembrance of Christmas?”
Suddenly he cried: “Yes, I have one, and a strange one too; it is a fantastic story. I have seen a miracle! yes, ladies, a miracle, and on Christmas night.”
You are astonished to hear me speak thus, a man who does not believe in much. Nevertheless, I have seen a miracle! I have seen it, I tell you, seen with my own eyes, that is what I call seeing.
Was I very much surprised, you ask? Not at all; because if I do not believe in your beliefs, I believe in faith, and I know that it can remove mountains. I could cite many examples; but I might make you indignant, and I should run the chance of lessening the effect of my story.
In the first place, I must confess that, if I have not been convinced and converted by what I have seen, I have at least been strongly moved; and I am going to strive to tell it to you naively, as if I had the credulity of an Auvergnat.
I was then a country doctor, living in the town of Rolleville, in the centre of Normandy. The winter that year was terrible. By the end of November the snow came after a week of frost. One could see from afar the great snow clouds coming from the north, and then the white flakes began to fall. In one night the whole plain was buried. Farms, isolated in their square enclosures, behind their curtains of great trees powdered with hoarfrost, seemed to sleep under the accumulation of this thick, light covering.
No noise was heard in the still countryside. The crows alone in large flocks outlined long festoons in the sky, seeking their livelihood to no purpose, swooping down upon the pale fields and picking at the snow with their great beaks. There was nothing to be heard but the vague, continuous rustle of this white powder as it persistently fell. This lasted for eight full days and then stopped. The earth had on its back a mantle five feet in thickness. And, during the next three weeks, a sky as clear as blue crystal by day spread itself out over this smooth, white mass, hard and glistening with frost, and at night all studded with stars, that looked as if they were made of hoarfrost.
The plain, the hedges, the elms of the enclosures, all seemed dead, killed by the cold. Neither man nor beast went out. Only the chimneys of the cottages, clothed in a white shift, revealed concealed life by the fine threads of smoke which mounted straight into the frosty air. From time to time one heard the trees crack, as if their wooden limbs were breaking under the bark; and sometimes a great branch would detach itself and fall, the resistless cold petrifying the sap and breaking the fibres. Dwellings set here and there in fields seemed a hundred miles away from one another. One lived as one could. I alone endeavoured to go to my nearest patients, constantly exposing myself to the danger of remaining buried in some hole.
I soon perceived that a mysterious terror had spread over the country. Such a plague, they thought, was not natural. They pretended that they heard voices at night, sharp whistling and passing cries. These cries and the whistling came, without doubt, from migratory birds which travelled at twilight and flew in flocks toward the south. But it was impossible to make frightened people listen to reason. Fear had taken possession of their minds, and they were expecting some extraordinary event.
The forge of old Vatinel was situated at the end of the hamlet of Épivent, on the main road, now invisible and deserted. As the people needed bread, the blacksmith resolved to go to the village. He remained some hours chattering with the inhabitants of the six houses which formed the centre of the district, took his bread and his news and a little of the fear which had spread over the region and set out before night.
Suddenly, in skirting a hedge, he believed he saw an egg on the snow; yes, an egg was lying there, all white like the rest of the world. He bent over it, and in fact it was an egg. Where did it come from? What hen could have gone out there and laid an egg in that spot? The smith was astonished; he could not understand it; but he picked it up and took it to his wife.
“See, wife, here is an egg that I found on the road.”
The woman shook her head:
“An egg on the road? In this kind of weather! You must be drunk, surely.”
“No, no, woman, it certainly was at the foot of the hedge, and not frozen but still warm. Take it; I put it in my bosom so that it wouldn’t cool off. You shall have it for your dinner.”
The egg was soon shining in the iron pot where the soup was simmering, and the smith began to relate what he had heard around the country. The woman listened, pale with excitement.
“Of course I have heard some whistling,” said she, “but it seemed to come from the chimney.”
They sat down to table, ate their soup first and then, while the husband was spreading the butter on his bread, the woman took the egg and examined it with suspicious eye.
“And if there should be something in this egg,” said she.
“What could there be in it?”
“How do I know?”
“Go ahead and eat it. Don’t be a fool.”
She opened the egg. It was like all eggs, and very fresh. She started to eat it but hesitated, tasting, then leaving, then tasting it again. The husband said:
“Well, how does that egg taste?”
She did not answer, but finished swallowing it. Then, suddenly, she stared at her husband, with fixed, haggard, terrified eyes, raised her arms, turned and twisted them, convulsed from head to foot, and rolled on the floor, sending forth horrible shrieks. All night she struggled in these frightful spasms, trembling with fright, deformed by hideous convulsions. The smith, unable to restrain her, was obliged to bind her. And she screamed without ceasing, untiringly:
“I have it in my body! I have it in my body!”
I was called the next day. I ordered all the sedatives known, but without effect. She was mad. Then, with incredible swiftness, in spite of the obstacle of deep snow, the news, the strange news ran from farm to farm: “The smith’s wife is possessed!” And they came from everywhere around, not daring to go into the house; from a safe distance they listened to the cries of the frightened woman, whose voice was so strong that one could scarcely believe it belonged to a human creature.
The village priest was sent for. He was a simple old man. He came in surplice, as if to administer comfort to the dying, and pronounced with extended hands some formulae of exorcism, while four men held the foaming, writhing woman on the bed. But the spirit was not driven out.
Christmas came without any change in the weather. On Christmas Eve morning the priest came for me.
“I wish,” said he, “to have this unfortunate woman at Mass, tonight. Perhaps God will work a miracle in her favour at the same hour that he was born of a woman.”
I replied: “I approve heartily. If she can be touched by the sacred service (and nothing could be more likely to move her), she can be saved without other remedies.”
The old priest murmured: “You are not a believer, Doctor, but you will help me, will you not?” I promised him my help.
The evening came, and then the night. The bell of the church was ringing, throwing its plaintive voice across the dreary waste, the vast extent of white, frozen snow. Some black figures were wending their way slowly in groups, obedient to the call from the bell. The full moon shone with a strong, pale light on the horizon, rendering more visible the desolation of the fields. I had taken four robust men with me, and with them repaired to the forge.
The possessed woman was bound to her bed, and was shouting continually. They clothed her properly, in spite of her violent resistance, and carried her out. The church, illuminated but cold, was now full of people, the choir chanted their monotonous notes; the serpent hummed; the little bell of the acolyte tinkled, regulating the movements of the faithful.
I had shut the woman and her guards into the kitchen of the parish house and awaited the moment that I believed favourable.
I chose the time immediately following communion. All the peasants, men and women, had received their God, to soften His rigour. A great silence prevailed while the priest finished the divine mystery. Upon my order, the door opened and the four men brought in the mad woman.
When she saw the lights, the crowd on their knees, the choir illuminated, and the gilded tabernacle, she struggled with such vigour that she almost escaped from us, and she gave forth cries so piercing that a shiver of fright ran through the church. All bowed their heads; some fled. She had no longer the form of a woman, as she writhed and twisted in our grasp, her countenance drawn, her eyes mad. They dragged her up to the steps of the choir, and then she was firmly held squatting on the floor.
The priest arose; he was waiting. When there was a moment of quiet, he took in his hands the monstrance, bound with bands of gold, in the middle of which was the white wafer, and, advancing some steps, extended both arms above his head and presented it to the frightened stare of the maniac. She continued to howl, with eyes fixed upon the shining object. And the priest remained so motionless that he looked like a statue.
This lasted a long, long time. The woman seemed seized with fear, fascinated; she looked fixedly at the monstrance; she was still seized with terrible shivering fits, but they did not last so long, and she cried out incessantly, but with a less piercing voice. And this lasted again for some time.
It looked as if she could no longer lower her eyes; as if they were riveted on the Host; she did nothing but groan; her rigid body relaxed, and she sank down exhausted. The crowd was prostrate, with foreheads pressed to the ground.
The possessed woman was now lowering her eyelids rapidly, then raising them again, as if powerless to endure the sight of her God. She was silent. And then I suddenly perceived that her eyes were closed. She was sleeping like a somnambulist, hypnotized—pardon! conquered by the prolonged contemplation of the monstrance with its shining rays of gold, overcome by Christ victorious.
They carried her out, inert, while the priest went up to the altar. The congregation, thrown into wonderment, intoned a Te Deum of gratitude.
The smith’s wife slept for forty hours uninterruptedly, then she awoke without any remembrance either of the possession or of the deliverance. That, ladies, is the miracle which I witnessed.
Doctor Bonenfant remained silent, then he added, in rather vexed tones:
“I could not refuse to swear to it in writing.”