Father Bonaventure

Father Bonaventure is the Dame of Keridreux’s former confessor and one of the two monks drawn into the crisis surrounding the Sire of Keridreux’s transformation into a loup-garou. His outward good humour, clerical authority, and apparent readiness to investigate the knight’s affliction conceal an intimate relationship with the knight’s wife and a keen anxiety about his rival, Father Etienne. Through him, the episode turns religious assistance into a contest of sexual jealousy, professional vanity, and comic evasions.

Identity and Appearance

Father Bonaventure is a thirty-five-year-old monk described as sleek, plump, and oily, with a countenance suggesting great good humour until a sinister cast in one eye alters the impression. The contrast between his surface amiability and his unsettling appearance establishes him as a figure whose social manner cannot be trusted as a complete account of his character. He is not merely a religious adviser summoned to a household in distress; he is already implicated in the household’s concealed disorder.

His position as the Dame of Keridreux’s former confessor gives him an established connection with her and distinguishes him from Father Etienne, the knight’s own confessor. The difference between the two offices becomes the basis of their rivalry. Each monk assumes that the other may be watching, suspecting, or replacing him, and neither fully understands how much of the situation the other knows.

The Letter and the Hidden Affair

The Dame of Keridreux sends Father Bonaventure a letter through Hugues, asking him to come privately to the castle and examine the condition of her husband, whom she presents as transformed into a loup-garou. She directs him to ascend by the private stair at dusk and meet her in the closet, ostensibly to discuss whether prayer can restore the knight to human form and prevent further mischief. The language of spiritual consultation therefore functions as a cover for a clandestine rendezvous.

Father Bonaventure immediately suspects that the summons may have been delivered by mistake. When he learns that the letter came from the Dame of Keridreux, however, he treats the message as confirmation that her influence has brought her husband to seek him for a shrift or benison. His response reveals both vanity and opportunism: he is pleased that the Sire of Keridreux appears to have turned to him, because this would demonstrate his superiority over Father Etienne.

He also fears that Father Etienne already suspects the affair. In his private reasoning, the prospect that he has supplanted Father Etienne with the knight’s wife makes the other monk’s jealousy especially dangerous. His concern is not directed toward the knight’s spiritual or physical suffering alone; it is directed toward secrecy, precedence, and the preservation of his own position within the intrigue. The loup-garou becomes, in his interpretation, a malady to be investigated and an opportunity to consolidate his intimacy with the Dame.

Rivalry with Father Etienne

Father Bonaventure’s rivalry with Father Etienne produces the episode’s central chain of misunderstandings. Father Etienne receives the Dame’s letter intended for him, while Father Bonaventure receives the knight’s letter. Each monk interprets his message according to his own secret hopes and fears. Father Etienne believes the Dame has summoned him to a private meeting; Father Bonaventure believes the knight has called him to attend upon the supernatural illness. Neither recognizes that the letters have been confused.

When Hugues tries to bring Father Etienne to Keridreux, Father Etienne encounters Father Bonaventure on the way to the stable and retreats into the convent, pretending to have forgotten something. Father Bonaventure similarly turns back. Their repeated movements make them appear to Hugues as though they are endlessly fetching and carrying relics, while the setting sun and the warder’s horn intensify his fear that the knight will be left alone in the forest. The rivals’ secrecy does not make them strategically powerful; it makes them mutually unreadable and comically ineffective.

Hugues finally seizes Father Etienne, places him on the waiting horse, mounts behind him, and rides away at full gallop. Father Bonaventure, seeing his rival depart without understanding why, follows on his own palfrey. The pursuit becomes an absurd race between the two monks: Father Etienne, terrified by the apparent pursuit, urges the horse on with heels, prayers, and curses, while Father Bonaventure, seeing the double-loaded horse maintain its pace, fears that his own mount is merely trifling with him and drives it furiously onward. The chase ends when Father Bonaventure’s palfrey stumbles while leaping a ditch, causing him to disappear from Father Etienne’s sight and leaving Father Etienne to curse what he takes to be a phantom horseman.

The Knight’s Clothes and the Misunderstanding

After the reports reach the convent that the Sire of Keridreux has become a loup-garou, the search for him produces no clue either to the knight or to his clothes. In the werewolf episode, the missing garments are almost as important as the missing man, because the transformation leaves the material evidence of the human identity behind. Father Etienne, consumed by apprehension and jealousy, refuses to let Father Bonaventure receive by a single evening’s confessorship what he believes the other has earned through an entire year. He therefore secretly carries the mysterious bundle of old clothes into Father Bonaventure’s cell.

Father Bonaventure does not know that the bundle comes from Father Etienne. The Dame, finding the priest absent from the rendezvous, has sent the clothes by Hugues with instructions to fasten them to the monk’s palfrey. Father Bonaventure and the Dame thus carry out their plan without explanation and without realizing that a second monk is involved. When Bonaventure discovers the clothes, he assumes that the Dame has sent them directly to him because fear of the rumours has driven her to dispose of the evidence of their mutual guilt.

His reaction is defensive rather than penitential. He reasons that she could have burned the clothes if she wished to protect herself, and resents the implication that he alone should bear the danger. He also asks what a monk could do with the old clothes of a knight. The bundle changes from a practical object into a threatening sign: it materializes the affair, the disappearance, and the possibility of exposure, while each participant assigns it to the wrong sender.

Disposition and Narrative Function

Father Bonaventure chooses to return the danger rather than confront it. When Hugues arrives at the religious house of Ploërmel after riding from convent to convent in search of spiritual aid, Bonaventure persuades him to take charge of the bundle and deliver it to the Dame of Keridreux. He simultaneously assures Hugues that the monks’ spiritual efforts will be devoted to the knight’s cause. The exchange allows him to preserve the appearance of religious service while transferring the incriminating object elsewhere.

The character’s conduct repeatedly converts responsibility into evasion. He treats the letter as proof of personal advancement, the werewolf as a problem that can enhance his authority, the rival as an obstacle to be outmaneuvered, and the clothes as an accusation to be passed back to the woman. Yet the same secrecy that seems to protect him continually exposes his lack of control. He never learns who sent the bundle, never understands the letter’s confusion, and misreads the pursuit that follows the departure from the convent.

Father Bonaventure therefore serves as a comic embodiment of corrupted spiritual authority. His clerical language and concern with prayer coexist with jealousy, clandestine desire, and self-preservation. The werewolf crisis does not merely place a monster outside the convent; it reveals the human appetites and rivalries already operating within the religious world. By making Bonaventure both participant and misreader, the narrative uses him to show how concealment multiplies confusion until ordinary objects, letters, horses, and clothing become agents of unintended disclosure.