The Blood of Toulouse

by Maurice Magre

  When I was dressed again, curiosity impelled me to climb the stairs and lean over between the arcades. I had only been there for two minutes when I sensed someone beside me. I turned my head ad saw a young woman whose face reflected a marvelous gaiety. I recognized her as the impudent woman who, when I had emerged from the water, had let ironic laughter fall from the height of the gallery like drops of cold crystal. I had thought that she was mocking my gaucherie, for God had modeled the form of my body with irreproachable care. Instead of being semi-naked under a light veil with a silver net to retain her wet hair, she now had a head enveloped in a vast amaranth turban that brought out the violet color of her gaze. She was wearing a tunic laminated with silver and a purple robe, above bouffant trousers. That particularity made me think that she was a Saracen, or one of the captives that the crusaders had brought back from Jerusalem.

  “Walk behind me,” she said to me, “but above all, don’t give the impression of knowing me while we’re in the street.”

  Her foreign accent would have made me laugh in my turn if I had not been so confused. I was not sure that she was speaking seriously. I replied, with embarrassment, that my father was waiting for me in the Rue Saint-Laurent.

  That redoubled her gaiety. She seized me by the sleeve, giving me a sign to follow her with a movement of the head and a wink. We passed alongside the women’s swimming-bath and my confusion redoubled at the spectacle of the general immodesty. The young stranger turned round and, in order to prevent me from seeing, she placed her hand playfully over my eyes.

  She took me to another exit that led to a side-street. There she was awaited by a matron of jovial aspect and another creature with a bronzed complexion, carrying a large package from which sashes and linen for the baths protruded. All three started walking with further laughter, and I followed them.

  I had only taken a few steps when I saw an assembly in a little square. A monk was speaking, standing on a stool. His face was menacing. He pointed a finger in the direction of the steam-baths and a few words reached my ears.

  “They please themselves in the putrescence of their bodies... They are like beasts avid for coupling... They have lost the shame that is the commencement of purity...”

  In the monk who was thus scourging the usage of the baths I recognized Petrus. I was only half-surprised, remembering the scant care he had for his person and the amicable reproaches I had made him on that subject. I would have liked to make myself known to him, but the amaranth turban was about to turn the street corner.

  We walked as far as the Bazacle quarter, where the streets, behind high stone walls, hid ancient gardens. Abruptly, the three women disappeared. I saw an open door. It gave access to a garden where I took a few hesitant steps. Large sculpted box-trees framed a pool tiled with mosaics. Yews loomed over clumps of hyacinths and jasmines like lofty thoughts above women’s smiles. The sand of the pathways was mixed with gold powder.

  Invisible birds were singing amid giant rose bushes.

  The house at the back of the garden was in the Moorish style, and verses from the Koran could be read above lacy arcades, between thin colonnettes.

  As I stood, bewildered by what I saw, I heard the laughter of the unknown woman again. I recognized her melodious voice, to which the foreign accent added something pleasant. She was annoyed because someone had forgotten to put nutmeg in the wine with the hyssop and honey, and because the snow sorbets had not been brought rapidly enough. Then she suddenly appeared in the midst of the roses and asked me why I was standing there like a simpleton, yawning in the middle of the garden.

  I was confounded by so much impudence and so much grace. How different the women of the Orient are from those of Toulouse! I thought. This one was more so than I would have believed.

  She told me that Sézelia was the ridiculous name that she had been given since she had landed among the Christian barbarians at Marseille. Venetians had stolen her from an island whose name I did not recognize and brought her to sell in Provence. It was there that she had been baptized and taken to mass for the first time. I understood from the gleam in her eyes that her conversion was only apparent. But experience must have informed her that religion is the one thing that it is necessary not to talk about frankly. She had been bought by a Genoese, a man of a certain age, who did everything she wanted and had brought her to Toulouse. The crystal of her laughter cracked when she talked about him and took on a resonance of hatred. She remembered her homeland, where the arts were loved, with regret, and she considered Christians as demi-savages solely moved by their lustful appetites.

  She made me eat and drink so frequently that I was soon befuddled. Then she played the darbuka and wept. Afterwards, she laughed more loudly than before and took off some of her garments in order to dance.

  The afternoon declined. I was lying on animal skins. The hyacinth and rose perfumes of the garden mingled with that of a resin that she sometimes threw on a cassolette where charcoal was burning. I was overtaken by a strange intoxication. Although I had shaved off my beard that morning, in accordance with the custom of clerics, Sézelia told me that I was as hirsute as a peasant; she approached her cheek to mind and then took it away, saying that I had scratched it. I savored the beauty of the hour with the vague apprehension of being the vim of an enchantment

  As Sézelia, lying beside me, spoke at hazard, a name struck me. It was that of the Genoese who had fitted out this house for her. His name was Foulque.

  Now, Foulque was the name of the new Bishop of Toulouse, whose scandalous election the Pope had just ratified. He was notorious in Provence and Languedoc for his immoderate liking for women and the bad poetry he wrote for them. He had only had amorous disappointments, because of his ugliness and coarse habits. After years of a dissolute life he had entered into the ecclesiastical career as that in which one enriched oneself most rapidly. A bitter and active hatred had come to him for the race whose daughters had refused themselves to him. He was one of the rare men capable of doing evil in a disinterested fashion.

  “Bishop, that is indeed the title of which he prides himself incessantly,” said Sézelia, shrugging her shoulders.

  I did not have time to reflect on the danger I might be running. My expression must have darkened at the name of Foulque, for Sézelia went on in order to reassure me: “He won’t come today. He’s celebrating a mass at Saint Sernin. It’s today that the famous tree is to be felled.”

  She had not finished when I was on my feet, I had seized her by her slender neck and was already shaking her.

  “Are you sure? The tree of Saint Sernin?”

  She replied that she was sure of it and that the thing must have been done by now. It was necessary that the Toulousans were deprived of common sense to attach importance to the life or death of a tree.

  That was a drama that had been going on for a year. An age-old oak filled with innumerable birds rose up before the great door of Saint Sernin. It obstructed it with its branches and bathed it with its shadow. It was older than the church, older than the city itself. It had seen the Romans, the Goths and the Saracens pass. The cantors complained that in spring, during vespers, their canticles could not be heard because of the noise of the sparrows and the swallows. It was claimed that a nightingale came to sing there, but only on the night of Saint John. The soul of Toulouse lived in the profundity of its roots and the wings of its birds.

  Now, the prior of Saint Sernin, a jaundiced old man embittered by a disease of the liver, had resolved to cut down the tree. He had the right, the tree being on the terrain of his convent. The consuls had opposed it. Comte Raymond had said that he washed his hands of the matter. It had been remitted to the justice of the new bishop whose election was imminent, and the love of the people for the tree had only increased.

  I felt that love vividly. Still holding Sézelia by the top of her laminated tunic, I made her tell me what she knew. Foulque had given orders for the tree to be felled before nightfall. He had said the day before that the Toulous
ans were no better Christians than her, a Saracen. He counted on humiliating them in the pagan cult that they rendered to the oak.

  Sézelia’s tunic had torn in my hands and her naked upper body protruded from it like a living flower from a vase. As I headed for the door she ordered me imperiously not to leave. I took no account of her and sketched a gesture of adieu.

  Rapidly, she took a little dagger from a casket and followed me into the garden, trying to strike me with it. Her tunic had split entirely and she tore it off. Standing between two yews, as if between two somber guardians, she gave the impression of a golden statue with violet eyes. She shouted insults at me in an unknown language, and as she threw herself at me, I was obliged to twist her wrist. She fell on to the sand, a vanquished bronze fury, bathed in her loose hair. I saw her, as I looked back, throwing a handful of sand and rose-petals at me.

  Outside, I started running in the direction of Saint Sernin. I felt light and full of ardor.

  There were people on the doorsteps. Others were running and calling to one another. A fat man shouted to his wife to come and lace his corset. A pike thrown from a window nearly fell on my head. In the Rue Saint-Rome I mingled with a group that was going in the same direction as me and I heard the news that was being exchanged.

  The Capitouls had come to see Comte Raymond. After remaining silent in their presence for a long time, he had tossed a coin in the air, saying that if it came down tails he would prevent the Bishop from cutting down the oak. As it came down heads, his face had brightened and he had said that he could not do anything more. Arnaud Bernard wanted him to send the city militia to defend the tree, but the other Capitouls had been afraid.

  Soldiers were blocking the streets around Saint Sernin. In the crowd, I shouted that it was necessary to advance regardless, and I perceived that my voice had an unaccustomed resonance, carrying a long way. The people surrounding me looked at me with surprise and admiration; and when I explained that the people of Toulouse could not be contained by a few soldiers, that explanation traversed the square and was heard throughout the city.

  A human tide lifted me up and carried me to the first rank, directly in front of the sergeant-at-arms, the disagreeable cold of whose breastplate my hand perceived, like the chill caused by a snake.

  Then, like the multiplication of the sound of my voice, there was an unexpected multiplication of my strength. I threw the armored man in front of me with such force that a joyous clamor resounded on all sides and the crowd, imitating my example, rushed into the square.

  It was at that precise moment that the first blows of the ax attained the trunk of the ancient tree. And as the bishop had thought of imposing silence on the city by celebrating a solemn mass, the song of the organs rang out at the same time.

  In order to cut down the tree, the executioner and his aides had been requisitioned. I saw their execrable faces fill with terror, and the monks of Saint Sernin, who were standing in two rows, scattered like leaves.

  The disorder was indescribable. The soldiers, reformed in small groups, sheltered from stones behind their shields. Cavaliers ran hither and yon, striking at random and leaving a trail of groans behind them.

  Many courageous young men had recognized me and had gathered around me, I heard them shouting: “Dalmas! It’s Dalmas!” We had formed a human chain around the tree and everyone swore to die rather than retreat.

  But then, between the Hôpital Saint-Raymond and the convent, a mass of cavaliers appeared like a wall of iron. Those cavaliers, with the shafts of their lances, struck all around them as if scything wheat. Another wall of iron was advancing along the Rue du Taur and was about to emerge on to the square. The Capitoul Arnaud Gilabert, paler than the chalk-white façade of his palace, his arms widespread, like an obese Christ, begged us to abandon the defense of the oak. I saw the red doublets of the executioners to the right, behind the silver of breastplates.

  I understood that the tree was condemned. Then, with that splendid voice that God had just given me, I shouted: “Let’s rather set fire to it!”

  I had no firm plan, but a few seconds later, someone had put a bundle of lighted straw in my hand, and I heard voices crying: “Yes, let’s burn the tree!”

  The oak had profound cavities in its structure, and they were full of vegetable debris rendered flammable by long dryness. Scarcely had my torch fallen into one of them than a high flame rose up, crackling, and was communicated to the high branches of dead wood. A great light trembled over the square, causing the armor to sparkle and terrifying he gaping faces at the windows.

  Within the church, the firelit stained-glass windows doubtless spread an abrupt light of catastrophe. It was the moment of the elevation. Either to ward off the peril, or to satisfy his theatrical taste of a former troubadour, Bishop Foulque interrupted the celebration of the mass. He traversed the nave and, standing on the portal of the church, full of pride in his sacerdotal garb, he extended the host toward the people.

  With an immense clatter of wings, the ten thousand birds that had made their habitation in the foliage of the oak, rose up together like a cloud, which the fire tinted crimson. And while the tree blazed, the birds rose up, and as the evil bishop raised the body of Christ, I saw all eyes fix themselves in another direction, in the air.

  I looked in my turn. At the extremity of the steeple, a man was standing with his arms around the spire, and, as his feet were unsupported by anything and the spire could not be seen, he appeared to be standing in the void, with a cross over his head. There was a vast, unique sigh of anguish among the entire audience. The man’s arms rose up, snatched the cross away, and hurled it into the void.

  For a minuscule fraction of a second, everyone was able to see that the man made a movement to rise higher, to fly into the sky. He fell back, rebounding from the stages of the tower and came to flatten himself near a lateral door on a tombstone.

  A howl of horror followed. And as I fled, I went past the man. The skull had burst but the face was recognizable. There was an ecstatic light in the depth of the eyes. I thought I saw there the reflection of the phantom basilica with the flameless candles and the silent organs, the splendor of which he had described to me the previous evening, and toward which he had departed.

  I lost myself in the crowd. I walked for a long time at random, striving to calm down. I felt remorse because of my father, whom I had forgotten, because of the sin into which I had plunged myself. And tears flowed down my face when I thought of the calcined oak, and Saint Sernin, who had lost his cross.

  V

  A long time before it was accomplished, the act began to live in the depths of my soul. For an act does not surge forth without reason; it is like a plant that has a seed and roots, and it rises slowly toward the light of its realization.

  I do not know exactly when the first design of my act was sketched in the great tableau on which God paints mad and terrible mages. Doubtless it was during the period when I was obliged to hide in order to escape the pursuits of ecclesiastical justice. For some time I only went out at nightfall, and my father accompanied me, and brought me back to the house when the chains were extended in the streets.

  It was then that I saw once again the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, whom I had glimpsed at Mercus. The Albigensian heresy was growing in the city and he had all those identified to him by cowards and informers thrown into prison. He employed the Templars and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem installed in the Rue de la Dalbade in two fortresses facing one another. Those knights escaped the authority of Comte Raymond and that of the Capitouls, and were only responsible to the Pope and his legate.

  That day, Pierre de Castelnau emerged from the Château Narbonnais and went alongside the Garonne on horseback. Doubtless he had come to obtain approval from the Comte for some further arrests. He had only one servant behind him and yet he carried neither a sword not a spear. An object of execration in the city, he affected to traverse it disarmed, sensing behind him the shadow of the Latran, which
protected him. I saw his blue bulging eyes, his parchment face and the two red patches put on his cheeks by the perpetual anger in which he lived. When his cloak brushed me in passing, like a wing, something obscure rose up within me, in which there was already the seed of a future act.

  Several months passed and I was not disturbed. I found my friends again, and observed that a great change had taken place in them. An element of hatred had been introduced into souls. Everyone was suffering injustice, and that injustice had various effects.

  The monk Petrus had resumed his habits of intemperance and had become fanatical.

  “Have you seen Jesus?” he asked me, with severity, as one demands whether a habitual event has not happened. And when I replied in the negative he insulted me and told me that it must be because of the perfume of heresy that my person gave off.

  My friend Samuel Manasses was increasingly anxious and agitated. He lived with the presentiment of misfortunes, which, according to him, were going to strike his family and himself. He was so thin and pale that when he went past them in the outlying district, children shouted: “A ghost!” He helped his father care for the sick and read Plato. He dreamed of going to the Orient to find the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, convinced that he could learn from him the wisdom of life, the secret hidden behind visible forms.

  One morning, when I had gone out early and was going along the ramparts, I saw a group of Templars on horseback passing under the arch of the Villeneuve gate. In their midst I thought I recognized the thin silhouette of the legate in the monk’s robe that he only put on for ceremonies. A trumpeter preceded them and caused an appeal to resound at intervals. They were riding rapidly, and I emerged from the city behind them.

  To my great surprise, I saw them ride past the gallows and head toward the cemetery where cagots and plague-victims were buried. When I arrived, in the midst of people impelled by the same curiosity, I saw that a grave had been dug up, and I recognized the jovial face of Tancrède, the Bishop’s executioner. He was kicking away bunches of flowers while his aides dragged a coffin out of the ground. It was at the place where Marie, the draper nicknamed in Toulouse “the illuminate,” had been buried the previous year.