The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  Whatever the case may be, I was in love. At the same time and with the same intensity, I evaluated the horror of this realization. Agnès was the king’s mistress. I was entirely dependent on that man and knew only too well his jealous, cruel nature. For a moment I thought of fleeing. After all, my presence was required everywhere by my business, and no doubt I would find some urgent matter somewhere to justify my departure.

  It was late afternoon and I was lost in these distressing thoughts when suddenly a messenger came to inform me that the king would be holding council the next day and was counting on my presence. Any retreat was cut off. I had no other choice than to try to remain calm.

  So I stayed at court and did not leave except on a few short missions. It was the beginning of a new stage in my life. All at once I found myself parted from my business. Over the last few years I had lived solely amid the frenzy of orders, convoys, and transactions, and now all of a sudden I was instantly handing everything over to Guillaume. This was now possible because we had established a solid network: I had over three hundred agents representing me all over Europe. The movement of money and merchandise was unceasing. Everything radiated from the nerve center of the Argenterie in Tours. The kingdom of France had been reinvigorated through her victories, and in just a few years we had managed to make it the new center of the world, on which the most enviable riches were converging. Once the movement was launched, all that was needed was to maintain it. Guillaume and a few others, all of whom had come from the Berry and were connected to me through greater or lesser ties of kinship, got along perfectly.

  Thus, for the first time, freed from the responsibilities that had constantly kept me elsewhere, I immersed myself in life at court.

  This world, which until now I had only glimpsed in passing, was a revelation. To begin with, I was dazed by the luxury. The endless processions of carts that accompanied the king from one town to another were filled with treasures. I took the full measure of this when, not long after my arrival in Saumur, we left again for Tours. There, we joined the queen. The negotiations for the king of England’s wedding were being finalized, and the duke of Suffolk was awaited, to conclude the final agreement with great pomp. I was in constant demand at these celebrations. Orders to the Argenterie came pouring in, and I agreed to a good number of loans.

  This was all quite usual. But once the time for the ceremonies had come, I suddenly saw beneath the vaults of Plessis-lès-Tours all the riches it had become possible to acquire because of me. Fine cloth, embroidery, jewels, weapons, equipages, fragrant trays of spices, bowls filled with exotic fruit—all of this was the glorious, living aspect of the contracts, commitments, letters of credit, and inventories that went to make up my everyday life. Until that moment I had lived inside the clock’s mechanism, and all at once, looking at the clock face, I could admire the harmonious ticking of the hands and the precise chiming of the bell. I became aware of how far my heart had traveled during these years of labor. In the pursuit of my dreams I had ended up losing sight of them, for they were hidden by the monotony of numbers and the petty striving of commercial activity. All of a sudden I was once again standing at the heart of my dreams—dreams that, in the meantime, had become reality.

  I was grateful to Agnès for having brought about this transformation. After our first brief meeting, I did not see her alone for a long time. Strangely enough, this state of affairs suited me. The feeling she had aroused was so strong that initially I succumbed to panic and wanted to flee. Retained by the king’s summons, however, I was obliged to remain in her proximity, and realized that being near her, catching sight of her across a room, or speaking to her in public all brought intense pleasure, and, in a way, this sufficed. I was afraid that if we were brought any closer together, the power of her attraction would become too great and would lead us to disaster.

  I observed the king in her company. His love was never bold, and he was careful never to display the slightest gesture of affection in public; as a result, his passion was expressed only through jealousy. I noticed the expression on his face whenever Agnès spoke to another man. His thoughts distracted him from conversation, and his gaze followed her with a mixture of pain, fear, and malevolence. I was careful not to arouse any such feelings in him. And I was grateful to Agnès for never placing me in such a delicate and dangerous position. Given her great tact, she had long before grasped how cautious she must be in the king’s presence. Had he been cleverer, he would have understood her game: in fact, it was those she sought to destroy to whom she showed favor in public. Charles d’Anjou, for example: he was the one who had introduced Agnès to the king, since he held not only the official position as head of the king’s council, but also the more dubious one of purveyor of young flesh. With him, Agnès was openly affectionate. He was weak enough to find it entertaining, never realizing that she was preparing his disgrace. Brézé, on the other hand, my friend Brézé, always bold, ambitious for the kingdom, and generous to his friends, was someone whom I knew Agnès appreciated greatly. And yet she showed him nothing but coldness when she met him in the presence of the king.

  And so these shining, happy weeks went by, and I waited expectantly for the event that would bring me closer to Agnès, knowing neither its nature, nor when it might come. It was enough for me to see her, hear her, and know that she was near me.

  *

  I was suddenly very busy with the council, following the king in his majestic wanderings from castle to castle. This was, in truth, the first time that I was completely involved in life at court. I was astonished to see that it consisted of almost equal parts boredom and festivity, two conditions which hitherto I had scarcely known. Boredom reigned over the castle for hours on end. My life had accustomed me to rising early; yet now I discovered motionless, silent mornings where everyone was shut away in their apartments. The space was given over to valets and chambermaids. They maintained this silence in order not to compromise the freedom it gave them. Afternoons were equally languid, either because they were filled with the gloom of a downpour, or, as the season progressed, because sunshine and warm air instilled in people’s drowsy consciousness a desire for naps or whispered conversation. But in the evening everything came alive, and the premises were filled with feasting. The brilliant chandeliers, the intoxicating perfume, the shimmering colors and powders all converged to create an excitement that began before supper and ended late at night.

  I learned to gauge the refinements of the house of Anjou, now in the ascendant. Charles of Anjou was at the head of the council; René was the future father-in-law of the king of England; Queen Marie, however unfaithful her husband might have been, still gave birth to multiple heirs; and wherever one looked there were Angevins. King René, the head of this house, I did not know well. He was a mediocre politician who had lost all the property he had inherited in Italy, and who was king of Jerusalem only on paper. But one must pay homage to the fact that he knew how to live. Until this point I had served luxury like no other man; the paradox was that I had rarely enjoyed it myself. Since childhood I had been dreaming of palaces, but, as in the old days with my father, I still approached a palace as a stranger, and never stayed for long. It took my meeting with Agnès and my brutal conversion to life at court to experience what it meant actually to inhabit such luxurious dwellings, to feel I had a right to be there, and to live to the rhythm of the festivities.

  This conversion, although the causes were very different, was fairly similar to the one the king had known. Prior to this, his life, and his family’s, had been austere. Public events were limited to the four plenary courts, at Easter, Pentecost, All Saints’, and Christmas. The king gave presents to his courtiers and attended a solemn mass. Then a feast was held, at the end of which valets tossed coins, crying, “Largesse, largesse.” It was simple, short, and basically quite dreary. Now that the king had shown he was open to pleasure, certain customs that were in fashion at other courts had been introduced into his
own.

  The great organizer of these new festivities was incontestably King René. His energy in such matters commanded admiration. Circumstances were particularly favorable for him, and when we joined him in Nancy he offered us a veritable apotheosis of divertissements of all sorts. Through his travels, his widespread family ties, and his own curiosity, King René knew everything there was to know about festivities in Europe. He did not want to be the last one to indulge. He paid for troupes of artists and impresarios. He was the one to introduce in France the custom of the pas, which had long been current in Burgundy. These pas were knightly tournaments whose complicated rules had been established in Germany or Flanders. During these celebrations, the old warlike and courtly foundations of chivalry were combined with all the artifices of modern luxury: chiseled weapons, magnificent gowns, and grandiose spectacles preceding the tournament.

  The king seemed to enjoy himself greatly during these festivities. After the surrender at Metz, he went to Châlons, where René had organized a pas in his honor lasting eight days. Charles was acclaimed when he broke lances with Brézé, who manifestly had let him win. It was clearly Agnès whom the king intended to dazzle. He greeted her conspicuously. For the occasion, she was wearing a silver gem-encrusted suit of armor. This exceptional piece, like almost all the finery, adornments, and saddlery that made the assembly so brilliant, came from the Argenterie. In the preceding weeks I had received all the most illustrious courtiers, and I had done my best to give all of them, even the most impoverished, the means to maintain their rank. Agnès had come to see me in person. She cannot have failed to notice that I was disturbed by her presence. However, she was not alone, and the conversation was limited to practical questions concerning her requirements for the pas. Our encounter left me puzzled and somewhat melancholy. This was the first occasion I had seen her on her own since that first time, and so many weeks had passed. Even if I took into account the reserved manner required by the presence of her ladies-in-waiting, I could no longer sense in her those feelings I had once intuited. Not a sign, even the most discreet; not a gaze, let alone an ambiguous word to provide purchase for my feelings. I began to wonder whether once again I had been carried away by dreams that belonged only to me.

  Her attitude during the pas, which I observed attentively and with no need to dissimulate, because she was the object of all gazes, showed me that she was in love with the king more than ever, and more than ever beloved by him.

  When one’s heart is sad during such celebrations, one is sure to cast a cool eye upon the events. I had eight full days, therefore, during the festivities, to form an opinion about King René and the nature of the luxury and enjoyment he had introduced to the court. I was richly attired, as was befitting, for the king constantly sent for me to accompany him here or there, or asked me to see to some material details. I wore a smile for the occasion, to make everyone think that I, too, took part in the general merrymaking. In reality, my mood was glum.

  These tournaments seemed ridiculous and inappropriate to me. They were an attempt to revive a bygone era. If at last we were about to triumph over the English, it was because we had created a modern army, which Bureau provided with artillery and I was financing. It was this new army we should have been celebrating, not the chivalry that had ruined the realm.

  And if only this evocation of the customs of the past had been humble and modest! When I acquired my fortified castles, it was the muffled echo of that long-ago time that I heard, and it filled me with a pleasant nostalgia. But during these tournaments, on the contrary, chivalry claimed to be alive still, whereas I knew very well that it was dead. And I knew what was going on underneath it all. I had an exact accounting of the lands that had been sold, the castles let go for nothing, the loans under contract. I knew how much poverty went to pay for this debauchery of riches. Chivalry was alive when it was founded on the possession of land and the submission of men. Now it was money that reigned, and there were no more lords.

  One of the highlights of the spectacle, in Châlons, was the gallant demonstration by the paragon of knights, the illustrious Jacques de Lalaing, who was known all over France to be the epitome of the valiant knight. He was a hero straight from the legends of King Arthur. His gestures of piety were known to all, and he shone with the halo conferred by the reputation of his exploits in single combat. He made of his chastity a virtue and a paradoxical tool of seduction. I was curious to meet this prodigy who claimed to be keeping the discipline of chivalry alive and at its most rigorous level.

  What I saw was a pretentious and virginal young man, crude and actually quite ridiculous. His chastity was clearly not the result of a vow but rather of timidity disguised as virtue. His manners were so unlike those of the time that it was as though he were acting a part. Spectators eyed him with the same curiosity that had caused them to applaud the comedians performing before the pas. During the tournament, Jacques de Lalaing turned his experience to good advantage as he went from combat to combat. While ordinary gentlemen rarely indulged in such activities, for this professional knight they were a familiar routine. He owed his success more to the awkwardness of his adversaries than to any talent of his own. However, he glorified every one of his acts with so much affectation, he sacrificed so scrupulously to the most complicated and old-fashioned rituals, that his victories seemed to be the logical consequence of a nobility, the appearances of which he painstakingly maintained.

  In reality, the little man was a perfect imbecile. Conformity was taken to the extreme, in lieu of originality. I had proof of this when, between two jousts, I had the opportunity to converse with him. Wandering in the vicinity of his valets, I realized it would be better not to look too closely at the knight’s equipment. The leather of his harnesses was dry and split, fabrics were patched, and his horses, once they were stripped of their showy battle gear, were scrawny, underfed beasts. These details reassured me somewhat. They made the knight more human, and above all more representative of the caste he claimed to incarnate. Like everyone else, he had no money. The world he thought he belonged to no longer had anything in common with the errant knights of yore. No matter how much he hurried from one combat to the next, luxuriously received each time, he was finding it difficult to survive. In the course of our conversation I urged him to speak of material issues. He looked at me with horror. I realized that his aim to live a life of heroic, eternal chivalry was not an act. He obstinately refused to see the world as it was, and he looked on people like myself with the same scorn his ancestors had lavished on our kind. If I had not seen Agnès showing him so much admiration, casting loving gazes on him, perhaps I would never have been so cruel as to hound him into a corner during our conversation. But I could not resist the pleasure of watching him squirm. He knew of my role in the king’s entourage and could not treat me as disdainfully as he would have liked. His defense, when faced with my impertinence, was to mumble some confused words.

  I was accustomed to behaving quite naturally around all the noblemen at court, and thus was acting perfectly normally when I offered him new mounts and leather imported from Spain. I prodded his battered armor shamelessly, while cruelly vaunting the quality of our Genoese breast plates, and informed him that all he had to do was come by the Argenterie to have one made to his size. As he was choking on his words, desperately seeking a pretext to run away, I aggravated his distress by offering him payment facilities for any amount he might deem necessary to spend. Absolutely terrified by now, more disarmed than if a fire-breathing dragon had attacked him in the forest of Brocéliande, Lalaing climbed back into his saddle without waiting for help from his valet. His armor rattled like old saucepans and he had to make three attempts to get his leg over his horse’s rump. He did not stop shouting, “Thank you, thank you,” and trotted away sitting sideways and blinded by his helmet, which, during these acrobatics, had slipped down over his eyes.

  This entertainment left me with a bitter taste, and in any case did not suff
ice to reconcile me with this merrymaking that to me smelled of death. I pondered my rage all through the remainder of the festivities. I had come to a decision: I would leave the court. I had been totally mistaken with regard to Agnès’s feelings, and moreover, what could I dare hope for? This brief interlude had been absurd, sheer madness, one of the manifestations, no doubt, of that melancholy that grips men in midlife and makes them imagine, mistakenly, that they can begin a second life, enlightened by the experience of the first one. All that remained was for me to find a way to announce my decision to the king and to persuade him to accept it.

  I do not know whether it is to be regretted or seen as an opportunity. In any case, my resolution was broken in the weeks that followed, when Agnès sent for me from Beauté.

  *

  The king, whose frugality had long verged on miserliness, now liked to spend. He expressed joy or gratitude by giving gifts. Every time she gave birth, the queen received a superb gown. And as I mentioned, Charles found it equally natural to buy a huge diamond for his mistress. His victories over the English gave him opportunities to make many other, even more generous gifts, since they consisted of land seized from the enemy. In general, this war booty was used to reward his most valiant captains or other notables at court.

  The king combined the practice of bestowing gifts of affection with the royal privilege of granting prerogatives when he decided to give Agnès an estate. I doubt he picked it out himself, because his basic stinginess would certainly have compelled him to choose a more modest dwelling. No doubt it was Agnès herself who asked for Beauté. And she got it.

  Did she already know the place, or had she been charmed by the castle’s name? In any case, she made an excellent choice—too excellent, even, for it caused a scandal. Built by Charles V, the domain of Beauté, near Vincennes, is one of the most beautiful castles in France. Charles’s grandfather had made it his favorite residence. It had been recaptured from the English by Richemont five years earlier.