Glory

We happened upon our revenge in a delightfully serendipitous fashion this morning, and as we return to our riverside hovel in the dank hours of the night with a touch of winsome wistfulness in our spry steps, the amaranthine hue of the sky belies a glory to all of God's creations.

As a curiousity, one can be informed quite definitively that the Madonna is neither ours, nor do we ever want to set eyes upon that notoriously infuriating and oddly pigmented virgin. In our haste we set ourselves upon the robbery of artifacts, but in our retrospective opinions we concluded that thievery only grazes the slippery integument of notoriety, relatively to the efficacy of well-timed insults in guaranteeing paramount infamy.

Insults, my dear friends. Such as, "Your flesh resembles the torrid wastelands of the Sahara, where noone ever dares tread for fear of quietus from the harrowing grip of dehydration".

Or, if one were feeling particuarly festive, "Your intelligence is on par with the underside of a malodorous mammal slowly partnering itself with the elite menagerie of the purulent festering inner sodality of the dead".

There's more in my bag of castigation, but for now I must share the hallowed glories of our triumphs (if not quite hallowed at this point, one or two days, five at most).

As we arose from our perturbed slumber this fine morning, we wandered into Rocamadour proper, resembling the reanimated corpses of Pere Lachaise Cemetery; those poor souls who rest underneath the Mur des Federes. Although there were 147 of those communards and 5 of us, our heroism is homologous with those batards tristes, this is more a comparison relating to their generally decrepit appearance after 40 years of burial.

Rumour has it they buried that Irish playwright of questionable persuasions in Pere Lachaise several years ago.

I was in the midst of fighting people whose names I wish I spent the time to learn before I ran them through with bayonets. I'd either have thought better of my activities or at least spent my life riddled with guilt, rather than ambivalent to the rampant anonymity of it all.

Regardless, due to these circumstances I know of the funerals of Irish homosexuals only through hearsay, which is a goddamned shame.

Chopin is also entombed within this macabre bastille.

I digress, quite sincerely, because our vivacity is pure fabrication, we have yet to think of any possible way to rive the hearts of those repugnant nuns of Notre Dame.

This is not the glory we had anticipated for the first forrays into villainy, but our time will come.

Frayne has managed to acquire some of the famed Rocamadour cheese, this is not so much of a meal for five, but right now we are desperate.

And in regard to the insults, this has mostly been Thibault's effort, as he has spent most of the day cursing the sky with the choicest words. Colourful, is not quite justice to the veritable kaleidoscope of his phrasings.

We have yet to return to Rocamadour. All of this is a lie, admittedly, I am liar, but what did you expect from a thief, said the snake to Eve.

It is true about that Irish fellow in Pere Lachaise; sad really, I thought he was fairly amusing.

Renewal

We are all rested and recovered from the traumatic onslaught of the nuns of Notre Dame. The results of such an inauspicious demoralization have been bittersweet, for though we are at a indisputable disadvantage, given our impecuniosity, our deplorable esurience, and our increasingly nidorous body odour, we have managed to retain our inimitable winsomeness and charming good looks.

In spite of this immediate impasse, our crushing defeat has only determined our resolve to rid the French nation of the malignant brume that cripples and corrupts the quixotic and doe-eyed shavelings of our youth.

We have camped outside of Rocamadour by the banks of L'Alzou, a few miles short of its grand meeting with L'Ouysse. Here we are cradled by sky, witnessed by clouds, and slowly cosseted to sleep by the balmy lullabies of stars. In spite of Monsieur Ives' perpetual swearing our surroundings are somewhat serene and gentle, though I don't trust that bower of trees over there.

Monsieur Rameau's foot has been rendered almost entirely useless, but he insists the pain has subsided. What remains (and this is certainly not for the weak of constitution) is a stub of a foot, as all of his toes have been emancipated from thralldom to the inexorable ordinances of his base appendage. He sleeps now, dreaming of sailing away on the Dordogne or consuming goat cheese with impetuous voracity.

Monsieur Riesling has been nursing his head in the placid waters of L'Alzou, as he comments that there are over a hundred new visitors to his crown, displaying quite proudly the bruises and bumps that now rest upon his flesh, exacted by the cruel lambaste of the Mother Superior.

Monsieur Ives in between intermittent bouts of crude vituperations has been singing La Marseillaise, the sui generis of revolution, la chant de guerre de l'Armee du Rhin. How we long for the day when we march past the Theatre Marigny and the Grand Palais echoing these words in celestial chorus, knowing that our lives are free from the bondage of these gentlemen of malfeasance, excremental maharajas of venality.

Monsieur D'Alsace has composed a poem, he scrawled these fine words upon the bark of a tree with his French legion issued camping knife:

Perhaps my name isn't Gautier at all
It is in fact, dot dot dot
Because noone said happy birthday to me this year
And that's just awful

I'm so tired and hungry
That someone had better feed me soon
Because though I'm sure there are fish in this river
I'm not very good at anything, especially not fishing

Where is the end of this long struggle?
Maybe over there, by that tree with the odd branch
Slightly resembling a rather rude extremity
But probably not as that would be silly

I think I'll go to sleep now
Because I'm bored, and there's nothing else to do
I wish I hadn't fainted in the church
Because I'm not scared

- Gautier D'Alsace, 10th of April, in the year of our Lord, 1913
Rocamadour, by the banks of L'Alzou
- -

Perhaps we are the cullions of the world, but we'll die with honour at the expense of that opinion, and dine on olives and caviar on the divans of empyrean, bathed in celestial light by the gracious effulgence of crystal azure.

Tomorrow we exact our revenge.

Failure

As the rarest of occurrences in the licensed activities of the Infantry, it is with the greatest of shame and with profoundest aching of the ventricles of my blood siphoning chambers, to admit that our brethren has failed, most decidedly, in the efforts of our mission of sacrilegious thievery.

No, the madonna is not ours, nor are we graced with success in our plan to establish ourselves as the most notorious of rebels, the quintessential brigands, insurrectionary paradigms, and thieves to be honoured for our incomparable panache.

We were well met at the hour of our Lord (that being 11 hours past noon) the penultimate point prior to the shadowy approach of the witching hour, well met indeed.

We met at said hour with smiles in our hearts and mischief on our mind. Etienne Rameau commented that "Rascality is the gift of the Gods". We all offered our affirmations with manic vehemence, a chorus of asseveration echoing the sentiments of the heavens (surely), aside from Gautier D'Alsace who as you'll recall has long since been dragooned into silence. Silence being a relative term as he certainly vocalised what we assumed was his alliance with our machination in the form of monosyllabic grunts. The smile on his face betrayed any questionable motive he may have been harboring, leaving no doubt of his infallible loyalty to our cause.

I have met many a man who could discourse on the genius of Voltaire for hours, and still never convince me of their goodness with language, and yet Monsieur D'Alsace denied of such convenience of speech retains dignity and honesty merely with the grace of his actions and the glint of his countenance.

Upon the Plateau de St. Michel we appeared from the shadows of wattle and daub, cloaked in the savage greens of the Black Forest of Baden-Wurttemberg, the church of Notre Dame genuflecting her obeisances to the slightly darkened clouds of the night canopy, pinpricked with stars. Thibault commented "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Honouring the late Francois Villon (our commandant from beyond the grave) and his celebration of those bound and drawn to the gibbet, the sorrowed disciples of the gallows.

"Oui, Thibault" I muttered as we approached the church.

Our plan:
Gautier enters the church and in his inability to express any semblance of human speech one of the mendicant friars of the monastic community will surely assume his need for sanctuary and in his altruistic mood care for the needs of the piteous.

In his distraction Frayne, Etienne, Thibault, and myself club said friar over the head with some blunt object, find the carving of the Black Madonna and vanish, inconspicuously into the dark embrace of the night.

A plan worthy of applause and praise, the true gift of thieves.

Gautier made his entrance as planned. As he opened the doors of the church, we all felt our hearts recollect the rataplan of the drums of Sidi Bel Abbes, the Mecca of the Foreign Legion; our rudimentary rebellion ironically being precipitated by the onslaught of memories from those sordid days.

As we heard Gautier through the door mumbling syllables of eloquent distress and the subsequent saccharine replies of another, we counted to one hundred and burst through the doors of the sacred vestibule of the Black Madonna. Much to our dismay Gautier was not talking to a gentle ascetic of the male persuasion, but in fact the Mother Superior of Notre Dame.

Frayne elbowed me in the ribs, exclaiming "Punch her in the face". I refrained.

Etienne pulled a small wooden club from his cloak and raised it to strike the unsuspecting nun upon the cranial belfry, however she was less unsuspecting than we had imagined and immediately shot Monsieur Rameau in the foot with her as of yet hidden French Navy issue pistol. She proceeded to club Monsieur Riesling on the head with the butt of her pistol for suggesting I punch a woman of the cloth. I decided to take her side, admittedly it would have been wrong to harm such a fine, upstanding servant of God. For some unknown reason Frayne continued to repeat the words "Vous etes une putain!" in my general direction.

Suddenly a horde of nuns came running from the cloisters armed to the teeth with all manners of medieval weaponry, cutlasses, and firearms. Perhaps in the future to avoid such missteps, reeking of an ill-preparedness uncharacteristic of the Infantry, we should stake out the forces of the enemy, or at least bring a gatling gun. Never again shall we undertake such a foible as unflattering as the ill-fated siege of Notre Dame of Rocamadour.

I cried to the heavens, "Retraite!"

Etienne Rameau had long since left the church and was bathing his wounded appendage in the fountain of the Plateau of St. Michel. Thibault Ives dodging the jeopardous slash of a Sister's broadsword, managed to lift Etienne onto his shoulders and proceed away from the church with unbridled promptitude.

I was able to pull Frayne from the perpetual downward blows of the Mother Superior's nocent fists, and we galloped with enviable adroitness as far as the city gates before we rested. Fortunately we were able to meet Monsieur Ives and Monsieur Rameau with relative ease, as the cries of the latter were discernible even to the least auricular of Rocamadour's residents.

As related to us many hours later, Monsieur D'Alsace remained at the church struck to palpable consternation by the admirable aegis of Notre Dame exacted by the 3 score nuns of the monastery (one must point out that he wrote out this account in rather scrawled and frantic fear with a nub of charcoal). Apparently after the dust of the siege had settled the Mother Superior turned to Gautier and simply exclaimed "Will you still be needing sanctuary, Oh child of Adam?"

Monsieur D'Alsace shook his head and fainted. He awoke in the fountain outside the church.

Disaster. But perhaps our intentions should shift as we attempt to salvage what remains of Monsieur Rameau's foot. We shall allow ourselves a few days of recovery as we determine a plan of attack that would befit a suitable revenge upon the nuns of Notre Dame.

Oh God, give us guidance. Or at least some food.