by Robert Merle
I did not kneel, but threw myself at her feet and kissed them.
“Monsieur,” she cried, “are you crazy? What are you doing?”
“Madame,” I replied without batting an eyelid, “I humbly beg your pardon for having called me a Périgordian knave, unwashed bumpkin, atheist and scoundrel who’s wet behind the ears!”
“Oh, Pierre!” she giggled. “No one could resent you for very long. You’re so clever and have such wit! All right, I see I’m going to have to give in to you and forgive you! But you must also promise always to be my slave and obey me in everything.”
“What, Madame, your slave? When did I ever disobey you?”
But the reader well knows the measure of such repartee and to what sweet nothings and caresses it was leading in our School of Sighs, and what good lessons it would inspire in each of us. But I will not enter into the details of these scholastic activities, having already said much—and perhaps more than I ought to have done—on this subject, despite the licence allowed for such things in this century.
Once our lessons were done and teacher and student had recovered their breath behind the blue curtains, and were enjoying the mirth, laughter and thousand little confidences that they loved to share, suddenly Madame de Joyeuse burst into tears, but wouldn’t tell me at first what had provoked such sadness.
“Oh, my sweet!” she said through her tears. “It would have been easier to part in anger, as I tried to do, than this way. But part we must. You must leave Montpellier, at least for the time being. Both my husband and Cossolat are certain that if you stay here you’ll be assassinated; you are so hated by the fanatics among the Catholics.”
“Me, flee!” I cried. “Run away from these people? And leave you? In the very jaws of death I’d never do such a thing!”
“Oh yes, you will, Pierre!” countered Madame de Joyeuse. “You will when you hear what’s being plotted against you and what our spies have learnt.”
“I’m listening, Madame. What’s happening? A plot against me?”
“No! That’s the point! It’s your brother who’s the target.”
“Samson!” I cried, leaping to my feet, terrified. “But he’s got nothing to do with any of this! God knows, he’s the most innocent being on this earth!”
“Samson is in great danger!”
“But why?”
“Because he’s your brother. Because he’s not as careful as you. Because he’s not so quick to unsheathe his sword as you, or to fire his pistols. And because that would be the worst thing they could do to you, knowing your great love for him.”
“But,” I cried, beside myself, “what sort of people are these that could strike down an angel from heaven?”
“Fanatics—who are implacable once their anger has been aroused.”
“But, Madame,” I said, having made my decision in the blink of an eye, “if it will save Samson’s life, of course I’ll leave, but where shall we go? I can’t go back to Mespech without my father’s permission.”
“Ah! Thank God for that, my sweet! You wouldn’t get far! I have a very good friend in Nîmes, Monsieur de Montcalm, who is a royal officer and head judge in the courts there. He was once one of my ‘martyrs’, and will take good care of you for as long as I want you to stay there, and in Nîmes you’ll have nothing to fear, since neither Huguenots nor Catholics there know you. And, although there are some underground agitations going on there—as there are throughout Provence—given the events you’re aware of, the city is calm. Nevertheless, my little cousin,” she sighed, shedding a few more tears, “I will miss you terribly! You should have thought about me before you fired that awful shot with your arquebus!”
“Madame, Cabassus was suffering so much it was driving everyone crazy who could hear him. Even the crowd who wanted to see him burn couldn’t bear his screams.”
“But he was an atheist!”
“Oh, Madame! An atheist can suffer as much as anyone else! More, perhaps, since he can expect no consolation in the hereafter.”
This idea appeared to be so novel for Madame de Joyeuse that, completely taken aback, she fell silent. Then, hugging me tightly, she gave me permission to leave and I threw myself in her carriage; before returning to my lodgings, I had the coachman take me to the Saint-Firmin church, but, not wanting a coach with the Joyeuse coat of arms to stop in front of the needle shop, I had him drop me on the other side of the church. I crossed the church at the end of the nave, walking as quietly as possible, to reach the side door. Alas! I arrived at the benediction, and though the papists who were there pretended to be deep in their devotions, a few hypocrites with eyes in the backs of their heads caught sight of me, and whispering among themselves, threw me looks that would have killed me if they’d had the power to do so.
I couldn’t say goodbye to Thomassine the way I’d hoped. Cossolat was there, seated at her table, a goblet in his hand, and frowned in a most unfriendly way when he saw me.
“Are you leaving?” he said abruptly.
“Tomorrow at dawn, with Samson and Miroul.”
“Good,” he replied sternly. “Wear a mask and arm yourselves for war, with body armour and a helmet. You’ll find three safe-conduct passes and a letter from me to Captain Bouillargues in Nîmes. This captain is one of us, if I can still call you one of us after you insulted Monsieur de Gasc.”
“I didn’t insult him,” I answered stiffly. “I simply refused to have him confess me.”
“In any case,” said Cossolat, staring into his goblet, “after your last exploit, Monsieur de Gasc has little love for you. And as for myself, I don’t care for you much either.”
“I’m am very sorry to hear this, Monsieur,” I said, bowing, and then turned on my heels and left, wounded deeply by his hard words, since Cossolat had always shown me, despite his military and abrupt manner, a certain friendship.
As I expected, Thomassine caught up with me in the antechamber, and, throwing herself in my arms, hugged me to her breast, and said, “I still love you, Pierre! No matter what you’ve done, I’ll always be your friend.”
But I scarcely had time to kiss her back, since Cossolat was calling her angrily. “Aha!” I thought as I walked around behind Saint-Firmin (since I didn’t want to walk by the hypocritical stares inside.) “Cossolat is clearly master of the house here, just as he is at the Three Kings, and who knows how many other places! And yet, he is also, no doubt, to hear Monsieur de Gasc tell it, ‘one of ours’—proof that they don’t mind that the ‘Devil has made him his prey’ whatever his ‘daily habits’. Why, he might even be forgiven a few games of tric-trac since he does so much for so many!”
Turning these bitter thoughts over in my mind, and thoroughly dissatisfied with my fellow men and with the world, I threw myself in the carriage and wondered whether I should also say goodbye to Chancellor Saporta. But of course I knew his sacrosanct rule that I would have to request to see him in writing, a request that he would answer a week later with a written response. As for going to visit him unannounced—even if he opened his door to me, it would have been like going to look for sticks to hit myself with, to be honest, and I’d already been buffeted enough in one day and was too bruised and bloody to go looking for another thrashing by my teacher.
There was another one—and a very severe one—waiting for me when I got back to the pharmacy. My father had written to answer the letter I’d sent him confessing to everything that had happened: the grave-robbing in the Saint-Denis cemetery, and including even my fornication with the Mangane girl on the tomb of the Grand Inquisitor, an action my father considered, in Latin, “atrocissimo”. I did not show this letter to Samson any more than I told him about our trip to Nîmes, but, enveloping myself in mystery, frowning and speaking tersely, I told him to pack his bags, and, once done, to help Miroul to tend to the horses, and to be ready to ride the next day at daybreak.
After our evening meal, at which I observed that Dame Rachel displayed a very uncharacteristic but insolent joy, intending, no dou
bt, to show me how delighted she was that I’d be leaving, I spoke with Maître Sanche alone, and my illustrious master, without raising his voice in the least, without a single word of reproach, embraced me warmly, rubbing his scratchy grey beard against my cheek; then, holding me at arm’s length and looking me straight in the eye, he said, “Oh, my good nephew! Go in peace! And come back soon! I am going to miss you here and your brother even more, for he has been a great help to me in my laboratory and adds much to my practice as much by his beauty as by his dove-like amiableness. And by the way, I don’t know and don’t want to know whether it was you who fired the shot that killed Cabassus, as is the rumour. But if you did fire it, I do not in any way hold it against you. This unhappy Cabassus was suffering and screaming to knot up your intestines, and as we Sephardics know pain only too well, having ourselves suffered in Spain, we cannot lightly bear the sufferings of others. They have called you wicked. I would say, on the contrary, Nemo proprius ad deum accedit quam qui hominibus salutem dat et beneficium.* Were we going to wait until they brought the hay? You acted from the goodness of your noble and steadfast heart. Cor nobile, cor immobile.† By Hippocrates, I couldn’t bear another minute of those horrible screams! It seemed as if all the millennial sufferings of the Jews were crying with his voice, and in my cowardice I hid my head in my bedcovers! My beautiful nephew, you are young, hotheaded and valiant! You dare to act! Don’t pay the least attention to the hate that oppresses you. The word impious is too quickly spoken. Is it piety that counts, or pity? Or to reverse the terms, can there be piety without pity? My nephew, your conscience shines like the leaves of a tree that’s bursting with sap! Oh, I pray you! Stay the way you are! It’s your greatest strength. Murus aheneus conscientia sana.‡ My nephew, I bless you in the name of the Lord Adonai, Amen.”
And giving me a huge hug, and combing his beard furiously with his hands, tears brimming in his eyes, he turned away, more bent than ever, one shoulder lower than the other, and muttering under his breath one of those Latin sentences in which he found solace against life’s reversals—of which there were plenty, to judge by the constitution of his wife.
Scarcely had I left this excellent gentleman when I ran into Typhème in the corridor leading from the laboratory to our lodgings—which was fairly dark but suddenly seemed illuminated by her Moorish beauty. She stopped and, eyes lowered, said, “You’re leaving us, I believe. Our house will seem very empty without you and your brother.”
I was completely surprised that she should speak to me, for, in ten months, she hadn’t said ten words to me, so shy was she in her virginal reserve. She was promised, as everyone knew, to Dr Saporta, and would enter marriage the way one enters religion—for what convent could be more mournful than the spare lodgings of the chancellor, nor guardian sister more hawk-eyed and ill-tempered than the amazingly withered gorgon that served as his chambermaid? Since I didn’t say a word, so amazed was I that she’d spoken to me and that she was alone with me in this dark corridor, she added: “But is it really so? Concepcion told me.”
“Ah!” I said. “So Concepcion is still here! I thought that your illustrious father had sent her away for having listened at my door.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair at this and fell silent, having perhaps heard or guessed what Concepcion had been trying to hear. Seeing her confusion, and not wishing to embarrass her further, I continued: “So much the better if Concepcion was pardoned. But, yes, I am leaving with Samson. But only for a time. We will return.”
“I’m very happy to hear it,” she said, and, taking me by the hand, she squeezed it. And then, blushing even more deeply, eyes lowered, she turned away and, pulling up her skirts to run more quickly, hurried away as if terrified by her own audacity.
“Oh, the poor girl!” I mused. “Having to go live in that tawdry dwelling with that bilious old greybeard! What a jail! What a forsaken dungeon! What a dead end! And yet our very illustrious master is so full of goodness and goodwill. It’s incomprehensible that he’d choose such a union for his daughter.”
I was going to knock on Luc’s door when it opened before me; he fell into my arms, in tears, and couldn’t utter a word, but held me tight, so I found myself having to comfort him rather than the other way around.
“Oh,” he sobbed finally when he’d recovered his voice, “I can’t stand Monsieur de Gasc or the religious bigotry of the elders and deacons! They’ve thrown fire and flame on you for firing that shot! It’s madness! No one can contradict or confront them without peril—especially someone like me, who’s a Sephardic, and therefore inevitably suspected of not being sincere in his faith. Oh, Pierre, I’m so weak! Without you, whom I’ve so relied on, I can’t do anything but sit here and tremble like a rabbit in its hole!”
As he was speaking, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and there was a knock on the door, and as I cried, “Come in!” Merdanson and Carajac appeared and quickly filled up the room with their great statures. They’d come, they explained, to say their goodbyes.
“What?” I said open-mouthed. “You knew I was leaving? It’s a secret. Who told you?”
“Fogacer.”
“Fogacer knows about it? Who told him? Friends, wait here for a moment with Luc. There’s a flagon. Uncork it and make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
I went to knock on my tutor’s door.
“I was expecting you,” said Fogacer, his eyebrows in their familiar arch, and a tone of ironic humour in his voice. “Come in, young and impetuous Siorac! Take a stool. I’m very interested in seeing close up our Christian Iphigenia, for, you should know, there isn’t a papist or Huguenot in Montpellier who isn’t hungering to put a knife to your throat. And frankly, the Huguenots are particularly eager for your blood, fearing that if they supported you, they’d be suspected of atheism. So, you’re leaving, like the goat that Israel sent out into the desert, loaded with all the sins of that clever tribe. But do you know the what and the wherefore of this departure?”
“I’m betting that you know it, Fogacer. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here listening to you.”
“I do know it,” said Fogacer, walking back and forth in his tiny room where his spidery arms and legs seemed even longer than usual, his body thin as a thread and clothed in black from head to toe. “I know,” he repeated, stopping and looking at me with his most ironic expression. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Without further delay, I beg you!”
“Well then, listen carefully, Siorac! The Vicomte de Joyeuse, in his Machiavellian diplomacy, approached the papist fanatics—the very ones who were planning to assassinate you.”
“He knows them?”
“Like the fingers of his hand.”
“Why doesn’t he throw them in the city jail?”
“He can’t. Nor does he want to. Have you forgotten he’s a papist too?”
“So what did he tell these fanatics?”
“He decided to bargain with them: senna for rhubarb. They’ll make no attempt on your life, but you’ll leave town. At least for a time. The time for the two scandals you created to die down.”
“Two? What do you mean, two?”
“The big one and the small one,” replied Fogacer.
“The big one’s the arquebus shot. What’s the little one?”
“Oh, the little one’s very little indeed and is hardly worth mentioning. It’s exceptionally annoying to the vicomte, who’s trying to increase his power and his fortune, that there’s a rumour going round that you’re not as ‘martyred’ as you should be by Madame de Joyeuse.”
“Ha!” I said. “That’s pure calumny!”
“Of course!” agreed Fogacer without batting an eyelid. “But, as you know, Siorac, Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. So the vicomte very adroitly killed two birds with one stone. He protects you and he gets rid of you.”
“Two birds with one stone,” I thought. “I’ll wager that the vicomte has managed his coup so well that his wife is immediately going to f
ill his purse.”
“Well?” said Fogacer. “What do you think of all of these knots being tied so nicely?”
“Ah, Fogacer,” I said, after some reflection, which did not sit well with me, “why is man what he is?”
Meanwhile, those who were waiting for me in my room, my medical-college companions, loved me without qualification, reserve or hesitation. And after having emptied the flagon I’d promised them, and another as well, and then a third with Luc, Fogacer, Merdanson and Carajac, Miroul playing his viol (Samson was present but wouldn’t touch a drop), I went off to bed, my head throbbing a bit, but my mood much improved. And I still remember that the last thought I had before I fell asleep was that in Nîmes I would finally have some peace and quiet after the incredible series of reversals and troubles I’d suffered ever since the ill-fated grave-robbing in Saint-Denis. By St Anthony’s belly! What a blindfold the future had fastened over my eyes! If there were worse things to be endured than what I’d experienced here, I was galloping hell for leather right at them. I was going to put so many leagues under Accla’s hooves just to fall from the frying pan into the fire! I was heading straight towards the wolf, and, if not actually into its mouth, I was at least putting myself in the uncomfortable position of trying to hold its ears while avoiding its teeth.
* “None is closer to God than he who shows goodness to men and serves them.”
† “A noble heart is an unshakable heart.”
‡ “A healthy conscience is a brass wall.”
13
READER, YOU CAN easily understand how sad I was to leave Montpellier, a city I loved dearly, and along with it so many people that I’d folded into the secret places of my heart. And yet, at daybreak, as I saddled Accla, masked, helmeted and well plated with armour, I felt excited to be setting out on a new adventure, in the bloom and vigour of my youth, on the great highways of our kingdom, heading for a city I’d never seen and that was famous for its beauty.