THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT

The Abbe Bruneau, who gave his shaven head in atonement for unnumbered crimes, was a finished exponent of duplicity.  In the eye of day and of Entrammes he shone a miracle of well-doing; by night he prowled in the secret places of Laval.  The world watched him, habited in the decent black of his calling; no sooner was he beyond sight of his parish than his valise was opened, and he arrayed himself—­under the hedge, no doubt—­in a suit of jaunty grey.  The pleasures for which he sacrificed the lives of others and his own were squalid enough, but they were the best a provincial brain might imagine; and he sinned the sins of a hedge priest with a courage and effrontery which his brethren may well envy.  Indeed, the Man in the Grey Suit will be sent down the ages with a grimmer scandal, if with a staler mystery, than the Man in the Iron Mask.

He was born of parents who were certainly poor, and possibly honest, at Asse-le-Berenger.  He counted a dozen Chouans among his ancestry, and brigandage swam in his blood.  Even his childhood was crimson with crimes, which the quick memory of the countryside long ago lost in the pride of having bred a priest.  He stained his first cure of souls with the poor, sad sin of arson, which the bishop, fearful of scandal and loth to check a promising career, condoned with a suitable advancement.  At Entrammes, his next benefice, he entered into his full inheritance of villainy, and here it was—­despite his own protest—­that he devised the grey suit which brought him ruin and immortality.  To the wild, hilarious dissipation of Laval, the nearest town, he fell an immediate and unresisting prey.  Think of the glittering lamps, the sparkling taverns, the bright-eyed women, the manifold fascinations, which are the character and delight of this forgotten city!  Why, if the Abbe Bruneau doled out comfort and absolution at Entrammes—­why should he not enjoy at Laval the wilder joys of the flesh?  Lack of money was the only hindrance, since our priest was not of those who could pursue bonnes fortunes; ever he sighed for ‘booze and the blowens,’ but ’booze and the blowens’ he could only purchase with the sovereigns his honest calling denied him.  There was no resource but thievery and embezzlement, sins which led sometimes to falsehood or incendiarism, and at a pinch to the graver enterprise of murder.  But Bruneau was not one to boggle at trifles.  Women he would encounter—­young or old, dark or fair, ugly or beautiful, it was all one to him—­and the fools who withheld him riches must be punished for their niggard hand.  For a while a theft here and there, a cunning extortion of money upon the promise of good works, sufficed for his necessities, but still he hungered for a coup, and patiently he devised and watched his opportunity.