by Robert Merle
“What,” I smiled, “a mathematician who writes verses? Wasn’t I right? Isn’t he a poet?”
“Listen carefully,” countered L’Étoile with a hint of impatience, crossing his arms over his chest, “and when you hear this you won’t be able to keep from trembling, given how precise the prediction is!
“A thousand years after the Virgin gave birth
Five hundred others flowed rapidly by;
In the eighty-eighth year, prodigious things swirled,
But in their terrible wake there’ll be no mirth:
We’ll see at year’s end if it’s the end of the world—”
“Well, that’s reassuring!” I laughed.
“But let me go on,” L’Étoile answered, somewhat annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his prophecy, which was supposed to leave me trembling like a leaf.
“We’ll see at year’s end, if it’s the end of the world!
All will be o’erthrown; vast empires will fall
And everywhere mourning will hold us in thrall.”
“Well then!” I cried, leaping to my feet and throwing my arm over L’Étoile’s shoulder. “France is safe!”
“Safe?” he frowned. “How do you conclude that?”
“Because ours is not a ‘vast empire’, since we have no possessions beyond the seas, except in Italy, where there’s the Marquisate of Saluzzo. No, no, my dear L’Étoile, the ‘vast empire’ can only mean Spain. And if the prediction miraculously comes to pass, believe me, it’ll be the opposite of what Regiomontanus says: mourning will not ‘hold us in thrall’! Neither England, nor Holland, nor any among the Lutheran princes in Germany, nor Huguenot Switzerland, nor Navarre, nor even the court of the king of France!”
“Well, you’re just reading into things!” he countered, not wishing to be reassured at any price, since he found a kind of comfort in his malaise.
“Indeed, I am reading into things, but what else is Regiomontanus doing if not reading into an eclipse and a conjunction of the stars?”
“Dear chevalier,” replied L’Étoile, now throwing his arm over my shoulders, “even though I hold you in particular affection and your joyful and lively humour delights me each time I see you, your reasoning will not comfort me, so many and so terrible are the manifest signs of the coming desolation. For example, on the Sunday preceding your arrival in Paris, there arose in this city and in the surrounding areas a great and thick fog such as has never been seen in living memory: for it was so black and dense that two people walking together through the streets could not see each other and were obliged to light torches to see their way, even though it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. And the next day, they found hundreds of wild geese, jackdaws and crows that had bumped into walls and chimneys because of the sudden darkness.”
“My dear L’Étoile,” I replied, “a fog is a fog and that’s all. And what does a momentary fog have to do with the machinations of Guise?”
“Ah, those terrible plots defy the imagination!” agreed L’Étoile bitterly. “Have you heard about the ‘happy day of Saint-Séverin’? The expression designates, in the League’s language, the day when the king calamitously attempted to arrest the three most insolent priests in Paris and failed, since the people sounded the alarm and, taking up arms, fortified themselves with the priests in a house in the Saint-Séverin quarter and repelled not only the sergeants and commissioners, but even the king’s guards.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Fighting in the streets? Here? In Paris? Because of two or three tonsured priests? And the king couldn’t calm the public outcry?”
“Ah, my friend! My friend!” cried L’Étoile, raising his hands heavenwards. “There’s worse! Have you ever made the acquaintance of Madame de Montpensier?”
“Yes, I know her quite well,” I said without batting an eye.
“Well, chevalier, she’s a demon! A female demon! A succubus! A she-devil! A Fury from hell! On fire everywhere, even her arse!”
“As everyone knows,” I observed. “And who is unaware that her missives to the Paris priests inspire their invective against the king?”
“Well, chevalier, our king, lord and sovereign calls her into his presence and scolds her, telling her that he knows what she’s doing and more, that she invents and creates myths about him and then sends them to the priests, whom she pays to spread them to their congregations. She thinks she’s the queen of Paris, he tells her, and that she is raising the city against him, who has been so patient with her; but his patience is at an end and it’s he who is in command. Then he tells her to get out. She answers not a word to any of it, not a shadow of an excuse, makes a short curtsey and leaves, proud and limping; then she goes to throw herself on the neck of her Lorraine cousin the queen, and on the queen mother, who now swears only by her Lorraine grandson, on Chancellor de Villequier and the ministers, who have been ‘Lorrainized’ right down to their kidneys, whereupon all of these—the queen, the queen mother, the chancellor and the ministers—go and invade the king’s chambers, like ticks on a dog, and remonstrate with him that he can’t exile Madame Limp without provoking a popular uprising and mortally offending the Guise family.”
“And what did the king do?”
“He gave in and she’s staying. Oh, my friend, the king has become so soft and timid!”
“Soft! Timid?” I said indignantly. “Soft, the victor at Jarnac and Moncontour?”
“I grant you,” said L’Étoile with a sigh, “that he was once a courageous prince, but at present he looks like a warhorse whose warrior is lying on a stretcher.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” I replied. “The king is just feigning this lack of spine and his madness. He’ll strike when he’s ready.”
“I don’t think so,” answered L’Étoile, frowning and scowling. “The king has been too enervated by his pleasures. Did you know that at the request of the ladies, he prolonged the fair at Saint-Germain by a week? And that he goes there every day and allows his favourites to hurl nasty insults at the wenches—some women, others mere girls—whom they see there? And as if these villainies were not sufficient, he brings women from all over Paris to certain houses where he takes his leisure—the most beautiful and the least well bred, with whom he puts on ballets, masquerades, dinners and, even worse, diversions that he calls his ‘little pleasures’, into which he throws himself with abandon, as though the kingdom were enjoying a period of lasting peace and as though there weren’t priests, the League, the Guisards or Guise at his heels.”
“My dear L’Étoile,” I laughed, “you love morality more than you love yourself! And I frankly don’t see whether you’re reproaching the king for his taste in men or for his taste in women!”
“Both!” came L’Étoile’s sombre retort.
Thereupon, after a powerful embrace, I left him, amused to see him so unforgiving in his statements about the king—him who was carrying on a secret liaison with a strumpet—but also quite alarmed at the same time to hear that the situation of the king had so worsened that one could not help fearing the outcome of this sedition here in Paris, in his capital, in the symbolic seat of his royal power.
Scarcely had I opened the door of my lodgings before Miroul handed me a sealed but unsigned note that he said had been handed to him by a masked lady as he was strolling near the Grand Châtelet. He added that he believed she was the lady-in-waiting of Lady Stafford, because she handed him note with her ungloved hand, allowing him to see the ring that we both knew so well. Hearing this, I broke the seal and read:
Friends of the Moor, who have eyes to see and ears to hear, have advised ER’s little French Lark to vacate his nest, which is dangerously threatened day and night, under a different plumage and to find a friendly nest.
“Read this, Miroul,” I urged, seeing his varicoloured eyes looking at me tremulously.
“Well,” confessed Miroul, “this is about as clear as Guise’s conscience, and I can make neither head nor tail of it. Who is this ‘Moor�
�? And who are his friends?”
“‘The Moor’,” I explained, “is Walsingham. And his friends, I surmise, must be his agents in Paris.”
“And who is this ‘ER’?”
“Elizabeth Regina.”
“What? The queen of England! And who is this ‘little Lark’?”
“The nickname she gave me.”
“The Lark!” cried Miroul, breaking into a laugh. “Well, Monsieur, that’s very sweet, and fits you to a tee!”
“Miroul, this is no laughing matter. Knowing what you know about its source, what do you think of this warning?”
“That we must pay close attention to it! Especially since Mosca, whom I just saw, refuses to visit you, even at night, arguing that there are too many spies who’ve got their eyes on the door of your house.”
“Miroul,” I said, making my decision in the blink of an eye, since our lives depended on it, “I’m going to disguise myself as a bonnet-maker and go to stay with Alizon. As for Silvio, Florine and you, I can’t keep you with me any more since your two-colour eyes would give you away anywhere, so you’ll lodge with Giacomi.”
“No, Monsieur!” declared Miroul firmly. “I’ll dye my hair black and put an eyepatch on. As for Florine, she’s handy enough to do some sewing in Alizon’s shop. You’ll need a messenger even when you’re staying with Alizon and I need Florine in order to live, move about and be who I am.”
“All right then!” I laughed. “Since the valet is now giving the orders and not the master! A pretty faithful image of the kingdom we’re living in!”
“Monsieur,” corrected Miroul, holding his head high, “I’m your secretary, not your valet!”
“Well then, Monsieur my secretary,” I said, embracing him, “may I ask you to please tell Mosca, or Leo, to visit me at night at Alizon’s shop.”
“But are you sure, Monsieur,” he replied, his hand on the doorknob and his brown eye sparkling while his blue eye remained cold, “that Alizon would want to have you stay with her?”
“Ah, Miroul! Miroul!” I laughed. “Why didn’t I apply the rod and beat you more often when you were younger so I wouldn’t have to put up with your impertinence!”
“A good question, Monsieur, though if you had I wouldn’t love you,” observed Miroul. “Things come bundled together, Monsieur: impertinence and affection!”
“Miroul,” I laughed, stepping towards him with my hand raised, “do I have to beat you?”
“Fie, then!” he said, feigning terror. “A lark is about to peck at me.”
“Miroul,” I added as he was about to leave, “when you come back, take these ten écus to Mérigot in the needle shop, and use the back door. And please tell him that since I’ve returned, he needs to redouble his vigilance.”
Even though Florine was bustling about, trying to arrange our affairs all by herself since our chambermaids had remained at the Rugged Oak, I felt quite lonely with Miroul gone, and when I went to knock on the secret door that joined our lodgings to Giacomi’s I learnt that the maestro and Larissa had gone out and wouldn’t be back until that evening. So, exhausted from my long trip, I went to lie down and tried to fall asleep, but even though I was physically tired, my mind remained very active and my soul (which I believe is different from the mind, being, as it were, our breath, our impetus and our instinct) was so exalted at the thought of the adventures I was to have that I felt my chest dilating and my nostrils swelling with a sort of intoxication, as if I were pawing the ground and shaking my mane, impatient to throw myself towards new horizons, whatever obstacles or troubles might await me in this headlong gallop!
Recalling the beautiful image that Pierre de L’Étoile had used, comparing the king to a warhorse whose bold warrior lies wounded on a stretcher, I considered that the long rest at the Rugged Oak had in no wise softened me (quite the contrary) and that the danger in which I now found myself—the measures, ruses and stratagems by which I would escape the claws of the enemies of the state, my disguise as a bonnet-maker, my stay with my “little fly from hell”, the (delicious) perils that I’d faced there, my comings and goings, my steps and actions, watchfulness and waiting, the traps I’d have to set to escape from other traps—that all this would allow me, in the near future, to extricate myself from the rut and furrow of an existence altogether too orderly and too safe. All these thoughts threw me into a state of excitement so great that I felt a rush of joie de vivre—even in the teeth of death—that was completely unknown in my daily life.
I was then thirty-seven years old and had arrived at the age when it is customary in our country to treat a man like an old greybeard and expect him to retire, as Michel de Montaigne had done before the age of forty. But I didn’t feel the slightest need to cut back on any of my activities or projects, or loves, feeling that, quite the contrary, their cessation would be a cowardly capitulation to old age and death, which, in my view, a man should never give in to except after a long fight, his back to the wall, his strength ebbing, his sword falling from his hand.
Night had fallen, and since Miroul had not yet returned to the fold, I was lying uneasily on my bed when I heard a knock at the front door and Florine came to tell me that a man named Franz was asking to see me with some urgency. I racked my memory, and suddenly recalled that this was the name of Madame Limp’s gigantic valet, to whom I’d given an écu to comfort him for having been whipped by the major-domo of his mistress. And even though I didn’t imagine that the fellow meant me any harm, since gratitude comes more easily to these simple people than to our strutting cocks of the court, I strapped a dagger behind my back and a pistol in my belt before peering through the peephole, where I recognized the man, and opening the door, upon which he immediately handed me a note, which I read immediately since I could see he was waiting for an answer.
Monsieur my cousin,
My cousin would like to see you this evening in her hotel at the stroke of ten, and, as you know, she is not someone who accepts disappointment. I am therefore counting on your prompt acceptance of this invitation, which you may impart to the bearer of this note.
I am, Monsieur my cousin, in expectation of your presence here, your humble and devoted servant,
Jeanne de La Vasselière
Having read this, I felt very perplexed that Madame de Montpensier should have so quickly learnt of my return here, and, this circumstance causing me some mistrust, I felt very little appetite for throwing myself into the mouths of these ogresses, but felt equally worried that by not going I would incur their wrath. Seeing that Franz was watching me with his big blue eyes as I inwardly debated with myself, it occurred to me to say:
“Franz, you can see my confusion and you can guess the cause. Give me some friendly advice. Should I go or not?”
“Monsieur,” replied Franz with great gravity and, surprisingly, great eloquence, despite his thick accent, “I’m the one who’s embarrassed. I am faithful to my mistress, who is, however, less stingy with the whip than with her money.”
“In that case, why are you so faithful?”
“She’s from Lorraine, as I am, and of higher birth than I, being a princess. Which is why I must ask you, Monsieur, not to ask for my advice—advice not being part of my job.”
“And if I were to ask, what would you do?” I asked, amused, despite the seriousness of the moment and his very stiff formality.
“Having some obligation of friendship towards you, I would be forced to tell you not to go there. Which I would deplore, since I want to be a good servant, whether my master is a good master or not.”
“In that case, I’m not going.”
“Monsieur, I didn’t hear your answer, since, if I heard it, I would be obliged by my position to stab you to death before your door.”
“What? Right here in front of my house? While I’ve got a pistol in my hand?”
“Even then.”
“Well, Franz,” I observed, “I like you way too much to trade my death for yours. And so I now understand that the correct re
sponse is to say that I have every intention of going to see your mistress.”
“Assuredly so, Monsieur. What you do after this doesn’t concern me. Especially since, by this answer, you will have gained a few hours.”
“A few hours to do what?”
“To pack your bags and flee the city.”
“Very good, then. Tell your good mistress that I will happily accept her invitation. And Franz, please accept from me, in recognition of our friendship, this écu, which is certainly worth much more than a ball from a pistol.”
“Monsieur,” Franz explained, his good, square face reddening like a slice of ham, before becoming rigid again, “it isn’t part of my job to accept money from a gentleman I was supposed to stab to death, either here or at ten o’clock on the way to our lodgings. I would be too afraid that, in accepting it, I would be in the delicate situation of having betrayed my mistress.”
“Franz,” I smiled, “night is falling, the street is quite deserted. You have a lantern in your hand. Suppose that, quite by accident, I dropped this écu through the peephole of my door. Would you fail to find it as you left my doorstep?”
“I can manage not to fail to find it,” said Franz with the utmost gravitas. “Providence sometimes smiles on unfortunate people. Monsieur, I salute you most humbly,” he continued, as he watched me toss the coin through the peephole, his ears pricked in the direction it had fallen so that they could hear it land on the pavement.
“Well,” I said to myself as I closed the door, “the Moor’s friends were right! I have to flee this place!”
Hardly had I turned away from the door when there came another knock and, risking a sidelong glance through the peephole, I saw Miroul.
“Miroul,” I said in Provençal, fearing some ambush, “are you alone? Is there anyone pressing a knife to your back?”
“Degun me vol aucire o menaçar,”* he answered in the same language.
I opened the door. He was alone, but very pale, and blinking, his lip trembling and his breath very laboured.