Married | Page 9

them, which, correctly interpreted, meant: You and I understand these things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting him a personal slight and declared that he "would be hanged if it wasn't a rapier!" The consequence was a fight which transformed the place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and re-echoing with screams and yells.
The door opened and the minister stood on the threshold. He was a pale young man, very thin, with watery blue eyes and a face disfigured by a rash. He shouted at the boys. The wild beasts ceased fighting. He began talking of the precious blood of Christ and the power of the Evil One over the human heart. After a little while he succeeded in inducing the hundred boys to sit down on the forms and chairs. But now he was quite out of breath and the atmosphere was thick with dust. He glanced at the window and said in a faint voice: "Open the sash!" This request re-awakened the only half-subdued passions. Twenty-five boys made a rush for the window and tried to seize the window cord.
"Go to your places at once!" screamed the minister, stretching out his hand for his cane.
There was a momentary silence during which the minister tried to think of a way of having the sash raised without a fight.
"You," he said at last to a timid little fellow, "go and open the window!"
The small boy went to the window and tried to disentangle the window cord. The others looked on in breathless silence, when suddenly a big lad, in sailor's clothes, who had just come home on the brig Carl Johan, lost patience.
"The devil take me if I don't show you what a lad can do," he shouted, throwing off his coat and jumping on the window sill; there was a flash from his cutlass and the rope was cut.
"Cable's cut!" he laughed, as the minister with a hysterical cry, literally drove him to his seat.
"The rope was so entangled that there was nothing for it but to cut it," he assured him, as he sat down.
The minister was furious. He had come from a small town in the provinces and had never conceived the possibility of so much sin, so much wickedness and immorality. He had never come into contact with lads so far advanced on the road to damnation. And he talked at great length of the precious blood of Christ.
Not one of them understood what he said, for they did not realise that they had fallen, since they had never bee different. The boys received his words with coldness and indifference.
The minister rambled on and spoke of Christ's precious wounds, but not one of them took his words to heart, for not one of them was conscious of having wounded Christ. He changed the subject and spoke of the devil, but that was a topic so familiar to them that it made no impression. At last he hit on the right thing. He began to talk of their confirmation which was to take place in the coming spring. He reminded them of their parents, anxious that their children should play a part in the life of the community; when he went on to speak of employers who refused to employ lads who had not been confirmed, his listeners became deeply interested at once, and every one of them understood the great importance of the coming ceremony. Now he was sincere, and the young minds grasped what he was talking about; the noisiest among them became quiet.
The registration began. What a number of marriage certificates were missing! How could the children come to Christ when their parents had not been legally married? How could they approach the altar when their fathers had been in prison? Oh! what sinners they were!
Theodore was deeply moved by the exhibition of so much shame and disgrace. He longed to tear his thoughts away from the subject, but was unable to do so. Now it was his turn to hand in his certificates and the minister read out: son: Theodore, born on such and such a date; parents: professor and knight ... a faint smile flickered like a feeble sunbeam over his face, he gave him a friendly nod and asked: "And how is your dear father?" But when he saw that the mother was dead (a fact of which he was perfectly well aware) his face clouded over. "She was a child of God," he said, as if he were talking to himself, in a gushing, sympathetic, whining voice, but the remark conveyed at the same time a certain reproach against the "dear father," who was only a professor and knight. After that Theodore could go.
When