The Blood of Toulouse

by Maurice Magre

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. That thought appeared to be so agreeable that he wanted to rejoice immediately in having had it. He went to the door and shouted for someone to bring him Comminges wine, very dry.

  “I know,” he said, winking at me, “that you have a horror of sweet wine.”

  I had nothing of the sort, but he had got it into his head, and I thought it unnecessary to contradict him for such a trivial matter.

  “You’ll come with me to Rome!” he cried. “Dalmas Rochemaure is my squire. It’s him that I choose to company me to the presence of Pope Innocent III. There’s no fault to find in that.”

  And he repeated it joyfully, savoring the enormous irony that there was in taking Pierre de Castelnau’s murderer with him to see the Pope. If he was going to Rome, it was as much to complain about Simon de Montfort and the crimes of the crusade as to exonerate himself of the accusation of having had Pierre de Castelnau killed. That accusation still weighed upon him. It was maintained by the clergy of the Midi and had been repeated throughout Christendom. It had not been possible to furnish any proof. Of all the men on earth, I was the best placed to know how false it was.

  “And I’ll have you blessed by the Pope,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. After a moment, he added, in a tone that was not so light: “As long as I’m not poisoned beforehand, for it appears that there’s a lot of poisoning out there.”

  In Rome, we stayed in the palace that Guillaume de Baux, Prince of Orange, possessed there, which he had put at my master’s disposal. While awaiting the audience with the Pope, the question of poison played a considerable role. Under the pretext that I was a lover of wine, the Comte very often made me drink before him and watched out covertly thereafter for the preliminary signs of a rapid death. He always chose that moment to enumerate the enemies that he had in Rome and who had an interest in making him disappear. I uttered a great sigh of relief when the Comte, after a month of waiting, was summoned to the Basilica of Saint John.

  Since his arrival he had not ceased drafting a manuscript of the grievances that he intended to expose to Innocent. He had resolved to learn it by heart and then to simulate an improvisation, but his memory was rebellious; he feared being emotional at the last minute. He decided to read his manuscript. He was very anxious about the costume that it was necessary to don, the manner of salutation and matters of precedence. Bernard de Baux, the brother of the Prince of Orange, who lived in the intimacy of the Pope, gave him advice and promised to accompany him.

  He had to present himself without an escort, to be modestly dressed and to penetrate barefoot and bare-headed into the Basilica of Saint John. In the same apparel, I was to carry his cloak and the parchment of grievances, but I would take care to remain at the back of the church, in the part occupied by men of the people. Since Innocent’s coronation, all official receptions were public, but Bernard de Baux assured us that there was no need to be alarmed by that; in such cases, there were never more than five or six beggars at the door. As the Comte was tremulous at the thought that he might fail to recognize the Pope and throw himself at the knees of a cardinal or even some ecclesiastical servant, it was agreed that Bernard de Baux would hold him by the arm and take him to Innocent personally.

  On the morning of the ceremony the Comte waited for Bernard de Baux in vain. That absence threw him into an extraordinary distress. He thought of treason and told me that perhaps he had only been summoned in order to be murdered. Bernard de Baux was, in his opinion, a hypocritical individual who, in addition, nourished a great admiration for Simon de Montfort. He sent for wine, but when he invited me to drink I did not have the heart to support that anguish and I dropped the bottle. The Comte considered that a presage, and he renounced drinking. He thought of presenting himself at the Basilica of Saint John with his sword and breastplate, and even gave me an order to carry a crossbow on my shoulder. Then he wanted to have the horses saddled and to quit that accursed city precipitately. He only resigned himself at the last minute and I climbed up behind him in a sort of dilapidated carriage that belonged to the Baux palace.

  An extraordinary crowd had gathered in Saint John’s Square and the environs of the Basilica. The Comte thought that the coachman has mistaken the church and wanted him to turn back. It was a ragged, disrespectful, monstrous crowd. I had never seen its like. That crowd, moreover, makes the law in Rome, imposing its candidates for the Papacy and massacring the cardinals if they do not satisfy it with their votes. We traversed it, not without difficulty, amid Italian insults that, fortunately, we did not understand.

  The bronze doors of the Basilica opened before us as if by enchantment at the moment that my master gave the coachman the order to turn back. Armed guards threw themselves in front of the people who attempted to rush forward. The Comte de Toulouse advanced with an uncertain stride over the cracked mosaics, in the midst of a thousand candles that were flamboyant between the twin shadows that are the lateral chapels, and I remained motionless, struck by astonishment.

  Between two pillars, the door that opened to the Lateran Palace suddenly opened. I saw a file of silent individuals enter, with automatic movements and impassive faces, as if they were made of stone. Each of those individuals stopped in front of the main altar, bent a knee mechanically, and went to occupy a place fixed in advance, in a circular arc. They each wore a black chlamys over a violet mozzetta. The cranium was covered by a quadrangular biretta drawn down as far as the eyes. Their hose and their shoes were red, as if they had plunged into a bath of blood. They were the cardinals. I counted eleven cardinal bishops, eighteen cardinal priests and twenty-four cardinal deacons. And there were also the chamberlains, the officers of the apostolic chamber and other religious functionaries in white, black and violet robes, with scintillating rings, jeweled crosses on the breast ad impressive waxen hands under the fabric of robes, as unreal as those credited to phantoms.

  A cardinal who was wearing an archbishop’s pallium and was visibly striving to appear majestic came in last. I thought that he was the Pope. He seemed astonishingly young. I heard voices in the crowd designating him as the doyen of the cardinals and I thought that they were joking, but he was indeed the cardinal of Ostia, who consecrates Popes after their election and has the title of doyen whatever his age.

  The Comte de Toulouse had fallen to his knees in front of the altar. He made a semblance of praying fervently. I could see his back and I divined the anguish that he must be experiencing. But providence protected him for, if he had turned his head and perceived the cardinal of Ostia, he would have mistaken him for the Pope and would doubtless have thrown himself at his knees

  Suddenly, there was something akin to the passage of an occult breath in the Basilica that immobilized the audience and caused a wave of silence to radiate. A monk entered at a rapid pace through the door by which the cardinals had entered and, to my great amazement, he headed directly toward me. He was clad in a very simple white robe, the hood of which was thrown back behind the neck, with the consequence that he seemed to be moving against the force of an invisible wind.

  Suddenly my blood froze. I had just seen that the monk was wearing a crown of peacock plumes on his head. I recalled having heard that the Pope, instead of a tiara ornamented with precious stones, wore in ceremonies that bizarre crown, which symbolized the fact that his gaze, like the eyes of the plumes, were aimed in all directions in order to look out for the birth of heresies. It was the Pope who was coming toward me.

  So the Pope knew that I was there and he had no other objective than my person. I had time to wonder by what mystery he had been able to discern the murderer of his legate. I had time to be astonished by the intelligence of his gaze and the active nobility with which he was imprinted, while his clairvoyant eyes were fixed on mine. And he was also gazing at me with all the eyes of the peacock plumes of his crown. I had time to glimpse the spiral staircases that wound down toward the subterranean dungeons, the glint of the scalpels with which the torturers dissec
t. I had to commit myself to the hands of God.

  But the Pope stopped. He made the sign of the cross, and with the thumb and the first two fingers of his raised hand, he blessed me.

  I understood then that it was not Dalmas Rochemaure in particular that he was blessing but the malodorous, grimacing, sovereign crowd that was behind me, and which he was obliged to flatter and bless. Before I had recovered from my surprise, he had traversed the church at his rapid pace, lifted up the Comte de Toulouse, taking him by the shoulders, and had kissed him on both cheeks, calling him his dear son.

  I held up lightly, in the direction of my master, the parchment of which he had such great need. But he did not summon me by any sign, as I expected. He spoke familiarly with the Pope; he seemed full of ease, he expressed himself abundantly and his voice became increasingly firm. I only heard certain words because of the distance and I only understood the meaning of a few phrases. One name, however, took on the lips of Innocent III an unexpected sonority and always reached my ears. It was the name of Pierre de Castelnau.

  Thus, the evil man that I had struck because of the evil he had done was only dead in his physical representation. He still lived for the Pope, for the cardinals, for the great ecclesiastical sect of which he had been the redoubtable defender. He was now causing evils greater than when he was alive in the flesh. It was to his manes that the city of Béziers had been offered in holocaust. He was serving Simon de Montfort as a vengeful pretext for massacres and pillages in the Occitanian lands. It was his name that Innocent repeated in an irritated voice to the Comte de Toulouse, now kneeling on the flagstones in the pose of a penitent.

  On the bank of the Rhône, in the morning twilight, I had only felled a simulacrum. I had not attained the veritable cause of the evil. I had even multiplied that evil with my arrogant desire to punish. The cause was not in the visible form but in the spirit, and the spirit had remained beyond my reach. Pierre de Castelnau would not cease to torment and to put to death and to disinter the dead who could not do anything about it, with the pretexts of heresy. I thought that at that moment, he was standing to Innocent’s right.

  The disorder of my soul was at its peak. I remember that the vapor of which the dead are made is dissolved by the tip of a steel blade, and if I had had a sword I would have run forward to attempt to pierce that shade.

  Now, in a loud voice that had a simulated tremor, I heard the Comte de Toulouse confess. He said that he had made every effort to discover the murderer of Pierre de Castelnau and punish him, that he was a good Christian, that he loved the Church and defended it with all his power. Innocent’s noble visage filled with a mendacious indulgence. Before the enemy’s humiliation, the eyes of the cardinals shone like the pupils of cats when, in the gloom, they see a prey captive within their ferocious circle.

  I was witness to a ceremony of lies. The Comte, my master, was lying. He detested the Roman Church for its insolent tyranny, its insatiable thirst for riches, and the misfortune with which it was threatening him. He cherished the heretics and he had made a perfectus swear to bring him the consolamentum at the moment of his death.17 He enumerated insignificant sins, passing over in silence the pillages of abbeys, notably that of Saint Gilles, which was known to everyone, in any case.

  Pope Innocent was also lying. He had extended his hand over the head of the Comte de Toulouse as if he were about to crush it, and he gave him absolution. But that was only a false pardon. Also false were the promises he now gave him. He promised to return to him the domains conquered by the crusade, and he had just given those domains irrevocably to Simon de Montfort. He had confirmed that donation the day before by the envoys of his legate. Now, in calling Comte Raymond his dear son, he was thinking about the city of Toulouse, the queen of the lands of the Midi, the hearth of heresy, and he was asking himself by what ruse he could dispossess the legitimate seigneur whose head he held beneath his palm.

  In the empty space of the basilica I saw the splendid city that sheltered the men of my race, with the red girdle of its ramparts, the wings of its bells, the flames of its houses, and the radiation of its eternal soul. But that clairvoyant apparition only lasted for a second. Gray clouds enveloped it in every part. Nothing any longer emerged but a confused silhouette of Saint Sernin, in the midst of a fog woven of lies.

  Then the beauty of the truth appeared to me. The truth was what was important in the world. The elect were those who lifted that living word above the shadows in which inferior souls struggled. I had killed Pierre de Castelnau, I ought to proclaim that action and submit to the human consequences, raising the hands that had shed his blood toward the sunlight. I felt an extreme buoyancy, such as one experiences on reaching the summit of a mountain and discovering a limitless horizon there. I took a step forward, filled my lungs with air and with all my might I shouted: “It was me who killed Pierre de Castelnau!”

  But I did not hear the resonance of my voice beneath the fived arched naves of the Basilica of Saint John. A savage clamor had just resounded around me, and at the same time I was jostled and knocked down in the midst of a rain of gold coins.

  I had vaguely perceived, through the dazzle of sincerity in which I was bathed, that a functionary clad in violet, adorned with a cross, had approached the Comte de Toulouse and murmured something in his ear. Once the pontifical ceremony was terminated, custom dictated that the person who had received it from the Holy Father, should throw a large offering to the sovereign populace. My master, digging into his pockets, had thrown their contents in front of him and, careless of the majesty of the place and the presence of the embalmed heads of the apostles Peter and Paul under the altar, all those Roman beggars had precipitated themselves on all fours, had drowned out my voice with their cries and had caused me to fall from the luminous height where I was floating.

  My forehead collided with the bronze foot of the green basalt basin in which the Emperor Constantine had bathed several centuries earlier. When I got up again, the people, doubtless deeming the largesse insufficient, were proffering insults against the Comte de Toulouse and Toulousans in general. On all sides I heard the word “heretic” pronounced in Italian.

  The Pope descended from the main altar and with a familiar gesture he drew away his dear son, purified by repentance and absolution. All the kneeling cardinals got up simultaneously and it seemed to me that the pilasters were about to break and the vault shatter, by virtue of the secret force that emanated from their collective movement. They must have been accustomed to the cries of the crowd, for their faces expressed neither terror not disgust. Slowly, they deployed in a circular arc, elongating like a serpent of which each ring was a cardinal with feet the color of blood, and they disappeared through the lateral door in order to go and coil around the earth.

  I made my way painfully through the populace in delirium. I was bruised, and I was sad. It seemed to me that I had just contemplated the inverse of a medal whose face would never be revealed. And all of life was seen thus, backwards. I lived in confrontation with the caricature of souls. I never saw any of them in its true aspect. I could not even distinguish my own.

  That evening, the Comte de Toulouse, with a puerile joy, showed me a ring enriched with an antique cameo that the Pope had given him.18

  “This ring is worth at least fifty silver marcs,” he told me. “In any case, its value is of no importance.”

  He never ceased gazing at it, and even kissed it respectfully. Suddenly, he uttered a cry. He had just thought about poison. He had a very old wine brought and he steeped the ring and its cameo therein for a long time. Then he asked God’s pardon for that evil thought.

  IX

  If one could collect in the same receptacle all the blood that has flowed from my wounds in the course of my life, it would fill a vat large enough to contain the wine of a season, between Toulouse and Muret. Now my body is covered with scars, like those great resinous pines on the slopes of the Pyrenees that have been slashed in order to make the resin flow out. I have shed my
blood on the ramparts of all the besieged cites, in all the fields where the southerners fought for the independence of their land.

  It has flowed uselessly, since my land has been vanquished, since Toulouse is submissive to a Seneschal of the King of France and the Pope’s inquisitors, but I have no regrets. There is a hidden virtue in futile courage that is not wasted. The suffering of the oppressed falls into a spiritual balance in which the cry of a little child weighs more than an army on the march, and sooner or later, an invisible hand reestablishes the equilibrium of justice.

  I participated in the defense of the Château de Montréal and I was, I believe, the only man who was able to escape therefrom, for Simon de Montfort had the soldiers and inhabitants massacred to the last man. It was me who, disguised as a peasant, aided by a few good companions, came by night to set fire to the crusaders’ war machines and tents under the ramparts of Carcassonne. At the right hand of Gérard de Pépieux, I defended Puyserguier and I mounted with him the assault on Montlaur.

  Disguised as a monk after the capture of Bram, I saw the eyes of those who had fought put out and their noses cut off on Simon de Montfort’s orders, as well as those of the people who had remained quietly in their houses. I mingled with other monks in order to save my life. They were covering the screams of the tortured by singing canticles. Fortunately, I remembered those canticles, which I had once learned in the Abbey of Mercus. When it was the turn of a young woman whose eyes resembled Esclarmonde’s it seemed to me that as she struggled she held out her arms to me. My song became a frightful scream, and all the monks inclined their heads in my direction.

  A single man of Bram was protected by some lucky star. Only one of his eyes was put out, in order that, with the half-light of the other, he could lead the troop of the blind to Cabaret’s fortress and show its defenders that there was only darkness for those who resisted de Montfort.