City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  “I thank you for offering me a martyr’s death!”

  The soldiers all groaned at this, but Cellerier merely raised his hand and, disdaining any reply, merely continued down his list: “Nicolas Sausset, Jacobin prior.”

  This was a little reed of a man, bent over and hoary with age and, either because of his age or because of his present terror, his hands, which were folded over his chest, wouldn’t stop trembling. But however inoffensive he seemed, this appearance must have hidden some malice, for our soldiers all hooted at him as much as they had Quatrebar, and were hardly tender with him when they hauled him away.

  Cellerier continued: “Étienne Mazoyer, canon of the cathedral church.”

  This time there were no hoots, but a few sniggers, which suggested that the unfortunate canon must have owed his position more to influence than to his reputation for good works. Moreover, he seemed incredibly old, dreamy and stupid, trembling with senility, and walking laboriously; and, as he advanced, having no idea what he was doing there, he said, “Are they going to free me?”

  “In a sense, yes,” replied Cellerier.

  And however cruel this joke was, it was probably more humane than the truth, and produced but a smattering of laughter among the soldiers, which annoyed the others. However, Mazoyer, his head bobbing and still not understanding, asked again, very hesitatingly, “But where are you taking me, Monsieur?”

  “To the bishop’s house,” replied Cellerier with a smile, which I found greatly offensive. “You’ll be better off there than here! Enough talk! Let’s go!”

  “What about us?” cried a voice from among the remaining papists. “Are you going to call us too the next time? Are we all going to die?”

  Cellerier frowned so hard that I thought he wouldn’t answer. But after a moment of thought during which he appeared to be trying to decide, honesty won out over cruelty and he said in his rude voice: “I know not. The judges haven’t decided yet.”

  “But you, neighbour?” cried another voice. “What do you think they’ll decide?”

  Cellerier seemed troubled and blinked, as though he knew this voice and had heard it many times, and, turning away, said over his shoulder, almost as if he were ashamed to make any charitable gesture to the papists, “I believe that you won’t all die.” Perhaps the cruelty of this sentence wasn’t intended, but it merely shifted their fears without eliminating them.

  I managed to be the last to leave this room, with Miroul and Samson, so as to remain far from the light of the torches, but there was little risk of being identified, since the soldiers had eyes and ears only for their prisoners, who, with the exception of Nicolas Sausset, displayed great courage, but occasionally as they passed through the streets looked desperately at the houses as if they hoped some last-minute help might come from that direction. Sadly for them, however, the city was dead, and not a single candle shone from the windows; all the shutters were closed and the doors barricaded since the judges had forbidden the papists to stick their noses out of doors that night so that the streets would belong entirely to the Huguenots.

  Meanwhile, as we walked along with the prisoners in our midst, Quatrebar, in the sonorous voice that had resonated for years under the cathedral vaults, exhorted the other papists to have courage, repeating every minute or so, with great exaltation: “My brothers! My beloved brothers! I see the heavens opening already to take us up into God’s hands!” At which the soldiers began protesting, one of them shouting indignantly, “It’s hell that’s opening up for you, you idolater!”

  “Quiet there!” said Cellerier, turning to his troops. “Silence in the ranks! And you, preacher, preach your last sermon more quietly!”

  “Why should I obey you, heretic?” shouted Quatrebar, tossing his head. “You can only kill me once.”

  “That once will be good enough!” replied Cellerier, his soldiers laughing their approval.

  Our destination was the bishop’s palace, as Cellerier had joked to Mazoyer, who was so little able to keep up with us that the soldiers were taking turns carrying him. And not the palace itself but the enclosed courtyard in front of it, which was fairly large and well paved and had, in one corner, a large well, surmounted by beautiful ironwork. On the far side stood a bell tower with four windows spaced vertically in its stonework, and on three sides the courtyard was surrounded by a solid wall with a parapet, which was reached by some stairs. On these stairs, on the parapet and in the windows of the bell tower could be seen soldiers holding torches that were flickering, which gave the eerie sense that the paving stones in the courtyard seemed to be shaking. One corner of this courtyard remained in darkness and so I hastened over to it with Samson and Miroul, fearing we might be discovered and questioned before Captain Bouillargues could get there—but we had to wait several hours for him, not daring to move all the while.

  Sweat began dripping down my back, and my heart was pounding in my chest as if I myself were facing death. But, unaccustomed to the horror of death as I was, I simply couldn’t believe or imagine that this courtyard, which was so beautiful, and lit up as if for a festival, could become the theatre of a horrifying butchery. But, of course, why would they have chosen this high seat of Catholicism except to make it clear to everyone that it would be the tomb of these zealots?

  The soldiers—if they could indeed be called soldiers since they were really local artisans and tradesmen commanded by Huguenot merchants—didn’t rush headlong into this massacre, perhaps because they weren’t accustomed to spilling blood voluntarily, and perhaps, too, because they were waiting to be given the order to do so. Cellerier himself, once the prisoners had arrived at the bishop’s palace, was careful to give no order and left immediately with half of his platoon to look for other “outlaws” at the city hall, leaving the other half to decide what they would do with the unfortunates who were gathered there. And I guessed that these soldiers, who had little appetite for this grisly work, would have delayed the execution even longer had not the preacher, Quatrebar, demonstrated such arrogant appetence for martyrdom. Raising himself to his full height and tossing his head, he demanded at the top of his lungs, in his cathedral voice and very insolent manner, permission to pray out loud. Despite their irritation, the soldiers told him he could, on condition that it was the Our Father and nothing else. Hearing this, Quatrebar crossed his arms over his chest and intoned an Ave Maria as if it were a war cry. They shouted and hooted at him to be quiet, but he kept on: so doggedly that they threw themselves on him and stabbed him more than a hundred times, some shouting as they went about their bloody work, “Go to hell, miserable idolater!”

  At this, Nicolas Sausset threw himself on his knees and, trembling from head to toe, begged for mercy, crying that he’d never pray to the Virgin again, that he recognized his errors and that he’d convert. But his cowardice seemed to irritate the soldiers every bit as much as Quatrebar’s arrogance had, and they massacred him on the spot and stabbed him and covered him with spit even more than they had the preacher.

  Poor Mazoyer who, having been left to himself, had had to sit down on the paving stones in the middle of the courtyard, watched these proceedings with horror, and bleated out, “What’s this? What’s this?”

  He was killed, as though in passing, and our troops, with great howls of hatred, threw themselves on the first consul, Gui Rochette. It took them some time to do their business, because he kept parrying their knife thrusts with his elbows, all the while pleading with them to spare his little brother. Of course, his resistance only enraged the soldiers even more, so the minute Rochette was felled, their hatred overflowed onto Robert Grégoire, whose throat was slashed furiously despite the fact that only moments before I’d heard them wondering why he was even here.

  Now that they’d warmed to their murderous work and knew that Cellerier was returning with other prisoners, they didn’t hesitate to dispatch the rest of their victims. Surprised, in fact, that the others hadn’t yet returned, they began stripping the dead of their clothes and th
eir rings and emptying their pockets, complaining that these had already been visited by the soldiers in the escort. As soon as this pillaging began, their mood seemed to change, and it seemed to me that, apart from a few who didn’t want to touch anything that had belonged to their victims, the appetite for lucre added to their zeal.

  Having stripped the dead of their clothes, I saw one of the soldiers drag the bloody corpse of Nicolas Sausset across the paving stones of the courtyard and I wondered what he intended to do when, after hoisting him onto the curb of the well—which was quite wide—he threw him into it. His example was immediately followed and it was there that the bodies of all of the unfortunates whom they killed that night ended up, as if they’d wanted to pollute for ever the clear water, which bubbled up from beneath, by this despicable use of it. I heard later that the well was virtually filled to the brim by the bodies they threw in it, and that the judges decided the next day to throw enough dirt over them to close it up permanently.

  I watched this entire spectacle with feelings I can’t begin to describe, my heart frozen with disgust yet my body sweating through all of its pores. What added to the horror we felt was to hear emanating from this well, which was close to the dark corner where we were hiding, the moans emitted weakly by a dying voice, which indicated that some of the victims hadn’t been entirely killed and that they continued in the water and ghastly tangle of bodies their interminable agony. Driven by compassion or by the hope of maybe helping one of them—though how could I possibly help since the well was so deep?—I went to lean over the edge, which wasn’t very prudent since I was in the full light of the torches, but all I could see was the mass of bodies convulsively moving about in the water, reddened by their blood. Miroul hurried to pull me away from the light, and I returned to our corner and put my arm around Samson, who was quietly crying, his face hidden in his hands. Ah! I should have done the same, so overcome was I by shame and pity. But Miroul, his own face streaming with tears, held my right hand firmly, fearing, no doubt, that I might throw myself like a madman between the assassins and their victims—as indeed I was itching to do.

  Gradually, as the night wore on, I noticed that the killing became more mechanical and that the soldiers became more and more hardened to it. Most of the condemned accepted their fate with resignation and prayer at the moment they were struck down. But one of them, named Jean-Pierre, revolted suddenly, and cried that he was only the music master at the cathedral, that he’d never said or done anything against our people, and that he didn’t deserve to die! Hearing him, the soldiers laughed uproariously and joked cruelly that he would die because his music was papist. And as Jean-Pierre escaped from their grasp and ran like a madman around the walls, they pursued him shouting, “You run pretty well for a musician!” and when they finally caught him and began stabbing him they said with each blow, “And what do you think of this little note?” And when, in agony, Jean-Pierre screamed, “I’m dead. I can’t bear any more!” one of the soldiers laughed and said in Provençal, “You’re going all the way to the well!” and, pushing him there, didn’t kill him until he’d reached it.

  What added to the villainy of the business was that, living in the same city, some even neighbours of each other, murderers and victims often knew each other well, so that, in addition to the zeal and desire for lucre, there were also many old scores being settled here. That became evident in the execution of Doladille, the silk worker whom Jean Vigier had wounded with his sword and who was brought all bloody to the bishop’s palace. When he was brought in, there was a torrent of hoots and insults from all sides, since Doladille was, it seemed, a well-known profligate who had, in the words of Vigier, cuckolded more than one of our partisans, parading around town boasting of having something in his pants that could convert all the Huguenot ladies in Nîmes. He was not executed right away, but made to suffer excessively, accompanied by horrible comments and mutilations, before finding his repose in death.

  However, after Doladille, there were no more such horrifying outbursts of pleasure, and the executions settled down to a kind of mournful, mechanical routine. Moreover, as day began to dawn, the soldiers slowed down and displayed more repugnance in their sinister work, as if, gorged with so much blood, disgust overcame them—or fatigue, or perhaps a sense of the awful absurdity of these murders.

  Just as dawn was breaking, something happened that struck me powerfully, because it restored a little bit of my faith in humankind, whom I’d come to despise so terribly during the night. To witness what I’m about to recount was like a breath of pure air, and convinced me that there are fewer evil men than there are evil thoughts, including this one, which is the worst of all: that nothing is evil which serves the advancement of the true religion. But it’s enough for this terrible idea, the cause of all our evils, to subside somewhat for the seeds of goodness to be rediscovered in the hearts of almost all men; like sparks of fire on a flintstone, it takes very little to produce them.

  Among the executioners, I’d observed a rascal of about twenty, fairly strong and well built, who, as far as I could tell by the light of the torches, didn’t have such a bad face, seemed to kill more out of duty than out of a taste for it, and never insulted his victims, or stripped them, leaving his part of the pillaging to those who enjoyed it. Now it happened that, exhausted from his night’s work, this fellow came over and leant against the wall next to us, his bloody sword in his hand, saying with a sigh, “Ah, my mates. We kill and we go on killing! Is this our gospel, then?”

  To which, all prudence deserting me, despite the fact that Miroul was squeezing my hand very hard, I couldn’t help saying, “Assuredly not.”

  The rascal turned to get a better look at me, as though surprised by my answer, which, however, he should have expected since it was implied by his question. “So, you didn’t kill anyone?” he said finally.

  “Not a one,” I replied. “We came here for another matter altogether. We’re waiting for Captain Bouillargues.”

  “Ah, my friend, you may count it as a certainty that he’s not coming… That fox is too sly to get blood on its paws! And where he is I can tell you—or better yet I can show you as soon as this vile work is done.”

  I thanked him profusely, and after a few moments, during which he sighed repeatedly, he said, “My name’s Anicet, I’m twenty years old and I’m a weaver. And I’d much rather have laboured the night through at my loom than to have killed so many of my fellow men—with the exception of Gui Rochette and Quatrebar, who spew fire and flames against us. But Robert Grégoire was a very quiet sort of papist! Did we have to kill him because he was Rochette’s brother?”

  “Anicet,” I said, “and why even Rochette and Quatrebar? Do we have to kill every papist who calls for our execution?”

  “Truly I know not, my friend. Our leaders claim that we have to inherit Nîmes from the papists or the papists will inherit it from us… and that we’ll have to kill them before they kill us.”

  “Ah!” I said. “I don’t like this word ‘inherit’. It sounds too much like profit and looting.”

  “My friend,” said Anicet, “you’re right. You saw here the shameful stripping and picking of pockets that went on. Is that what Calvin preaches?”

  As he was speaking, two soldiers, one carrying him by the head, the other by the feet, brought in a lad who couldn’t have been more than twenty, and who had a large wound in his left thigh. They threw him down roughly on the paving stones near us, which caused him to groan in pain. But taking no notice, the two soldiers, with terrible curses, began undressing him, having no doubt decided that this was more easily done while he was alive than after they’d dispatched him. Meanwhile, as they were trying to pull off one sleeve of his doublet, the unfortunate boy turned his face towards us, and the torches bathed it in light.

  “By the belly of St Anthony!” Anicet cried suddenly in a troubled voice. “I’m not going to tolerate this!” And marching over to them with his sword drawn he yelled, “You there! Stop that! I
know this rascal. He’s named Pierre Journet. He’s a little cleric at the bishop’s palace, not even tonsured yet, and he’s never done anything against us!”

  “No matter,” said one of the executioners, “he was found hiding with the bishop in the house of the councillor of Sauvignargues. Robert Aymée wounded him in the leg with a pike and told us to bring him here to be killed with the others.”

  “What?” cried Anicet. “That idiot Aymée is giving us orders now? No one but the judges or Captain Bouillargues has that right!”

  “I don’t care if he’s got the right or not,” said the second soldier. “This rascal is ours ’cause we carried him here. And I’m taking his doublet!”

  “I’m taking the rest,” said the other.

  “By my faith,” cried Anicet, pointing his sword at them, “that’s pillaging and thievery, and not zeal! Leave the rascal his clothes, mates, and give him back his life or I’ll take yours.”

  At this the two soldiers stood gaping at the lad, then looked at each other silently. Then one, leaning over to the other, whispered something, and the other nodded. Suddenly, they drew their swords, which they’d just sheathed in order to strip Pierre Journet.

  “’Sblood!” cried one. “There are two of us! And you’re alone! Are you going to try to stop us, friend?”

  I tore myself out of Miroul’s grasp and, unsheathing my weapon, leapt to Anicet’s side in a trice.

  “Who’s he?” said the soldier.

  “The judge of this dispute,” I replied. And catching his sword in mine, with a sudden movement of my wrist I flipped it about ten paces away—which wasn’t really much of an exploit given the way he was holding it. I then placed the point of my sword on his throat. “And here’s my verdict. You’re going to carry Pierre Journet to the house where Captain Bouillargues is staying. He’ll be the one to decide this case.”