by Robert Merle
As far as I can calculate, it took the duchesse a good half an hour to reach her desired goal, which she did with high-pitched screams you could have heard on the other side of the Seine, accompanied by such convulsions that I thought they’d never end. Ultimately, however, they did, and she opened her steel-blue eyes and shoved me so vigorously away from her that I fell from the bed, whereupon she arose abruptly and left the room.
“Madame,” I cried, pretending to be indignant, “where are you going?”
“Only to piss,” came her reply.
Which, however uncouth it was, at least gave me time to hide the stolen letter in a pocket of my doublet. Hardly had I done so, however, when she reappeared (with Frédérique on her heels) and seemed positively astonished to see me there.
“What?” she said sullenly. “You’re still here?”
“Madame,” I replied, “I waited only for you to dismiss me.”
“And so I do,” she said, extending her hand rigidly to shake mine. “Did you know that the king had the effrontery to say out loud at the court that he would burn me at the stake if I continued to incite the priests against him? Well, Monsieur, since you are his faithful servant, ignoring the interests of the kingdom and your own, tell this poor devil of a king that it’s sodomites like him who are burnt at the stake, not me!”
This said, she turned her back on me and sat down at a small desk and began writing furiously, as if she hoped to regain her strength by scribbling.
Frédérique, without saying a word, led me back to the small salon, where I found La Vasselière waiting for me, who said frostily:
“Monsieur my cousin, don’t flatter yourself that you have gained the protection or favour of the duchesse by the little service that you rendered her here, since she never asks it of the same person twice, be he noble or low-born. You’re alive. That’s the main thing. And don’t go bragging about these exploits at the court if you hope to remain so.”
“Madame,” I replied with a deep bow, “I shall remember your wise counsel.”
At this she remanded me to the care of Franz, who, to judge by the way he was walking as he preceded me down the stairs, had already submitted to the punishment prescribed by his mistress for having coughed in her presence. Come to think of it, I’d been scarcely better treated than he, and despite his low birth and my noble one, we had ended up being companions in misfortune. Feeling suddenly that I wanted him to understand this, I caught up with him, slipped an écu into his hand and said softly:
“Franz, this is to console you for having been beaten on my account.”
“Ah, Monsieur!” said my giant guide, staring at me in utter astonishment. “I thank you! I get more whippings than thanks in here and haven’t been paid my wages for six months! Not that money’s lacking in this house, but it all goes to the priests, to the soldiers and to the purchase of arms. I thank you, Monsieur!” he continued, looking at me with his benign and naive eyes. “I would have been very sorry if I’d been ordered to kill you!”
“What?” I whispered. “Does that really happen?”
“Oh, Monsieur! A lot more often than my conscience is comfortable with! Though our good chaplain absolves me on each occasion! Even so, I feel remorse from time to time.”
I felt infinitely relieved to be able to step outside and to escape from the company of these two pitiless gorgons, and to find Miroul waiting for me, almost devoured by anxiety, given the long hours that I’d submitted to the various forms of inquisition these two women had practised on me. Their religious zeal and partisanship had succeeded in transforming their noble house into a veritable workshop of falsehoods and assassinations. ’Tis true, alas, that, given the examples that stretch from Blanche de Castille to Catherine de’ Medici, including the Duchesse de Montpensier, the female of our species is to be feared every bit as much as the male when she applies herself to the affairs of the state, abandoning for these pursuits the sweet arts of love. Certainly, what passed between the duchesse and me in that bed would never merit the beautiful name I’ve just mentioned, and would drive me more to tears than sighs if I were given to crying. But such is not my temperament, and I’d much rather laugh at this insatiable gluttony that cannot get enough either of men or of sweetmeats.
I practically sprinted back to my lodgings, deaf to all of Miroul’s questions, and only deigned to answer them when we were locked in my study. Of course, I omitted my ministrations to the duchesse and the theft of the letter, since I couldn’t explain the latter without describing the former and I didn’t want to put my Miroul in any danger by sharing with him these secrets. And then, realizing that from the windows of the needle shop opposite I could be shot, not only in front of my door, but in my very study if the shutters were open, I sent Miroul off to enquire whether anyone had rented the shop or the lodgings above it and, if not, to rent them at whatever price the owner proposed.
“Ah, Monsieur!” cried Miroul, his brown eye aglow. “Surely you’re not serious! At whatever price the owner proposes! Have you become a papist to be throwing your money away like that? I’ll bargain for the place, you can be assured of that! And you’ll have it at the best price, as any good, self-respecting Huguenot would insist, even if I have to spend the whole day bargaining with the fellow.”
“What a great pretext for spending the day wandering about Paris,” I thought to myself, “once the deal is closed.”
“So, Monsieur, who would you place in the room upstairs once you’ve acquired it? You’ll need some thread to stitch this rent in your armour, and turn the place into a kind of gatehouse or watchtower for the house.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, impatient for him to leave so I could peruse the letter which I could feel burning inside my doublet.
“But I,” Miroul said with an air of great consequence, “have some little ideas which I’ll share with you—unless I just keep quiet about them, as you seem to be keeping quiet about the events of this morning at the Hôtel de Montpensier, which have nonetheless left a sparkle in your eyes.”
“Why, nothing happened, Miroul,” I said, lowering my gaze, “nothing! I didn’t hide anything from you! Get on with you now and stop this inquisition!”
And, taking him by the shoulders, I practically pushed him out of the little study, closed and bolted the door, and then shut the window, before daring to pull from my doublet the note from Henri de Guise to Felipe II of Spain, and examine it. It read as follows:
The difficulties and fatigue that Your Majesty has ever faced in the service of the Lord our God, in every land over which you hold sway, are ample witness of the piety and zeal that have produced such extraordinary progress in your royal enterprises. The help that we have received from Your Majesty’s liberal hands is yet another proof of your piety and zeal. I cannot resist most respectfully thanking Your Majesty for being so obliging on our behalf. These obligations have created yet another connection between us, and I find myself today more closely engaged than ever before in carrying out Your Majesty’s orders with my usual devotion.
I have already informed Your Majesty through your ambassadors and ministers of the happy progress we have made in our affairs. We are firmly resolved to push forward in this arena with all of the ardour that such an enterprise demands: I can say truthfully that nothing will be neglected on our part in pushing the king into an irreconcilable war against the heretics…
The note ended here, but what was stated was certainly enough to compromise the honour of a prince of Lorraine who claimed to be French, but had no shame whatsoever in receiving monies from a foreign sovereign, and submitting to that monarch’s orders.
I was wise enough, no matter how hot my blood was boiling, to wait until the morrow and the hour of my usual visit to the king, before whispering to him, as I took his pulse, that I had matters of the gravest consequence to impart to him, and asked him for a private audience. To which he consented almost immediately, needing first to say his prayers in his chapel, and asking me to wait with Du
Halde and Chicot in his chambers. Chicot, nose running as usual, said:
“Bloodletter”—which he called me because he knew that I had no use for this procedure—“you’re going to find Henri in one of his happiest moods, since he’s just engaged with the Huguenots in a game of ‘he who loses wins’, waging war with them so fecklessly that he couldn’t possibly defeat them—a discomfiture that would bring great comfort to Guise—and in the south has signed a truce for one year with Navarre, who, for his part, is not putting a knife to the king’s throat.”
When I’d taken Henri’s pulse, I’d scarcely looked at him in the shadows of his bed curtains, but seeing him now in the light of his chambers, as he exited the chapel, he seemed to be in a good mood, his eyes bright, his face neither grey nor unduly wrinkled and the hand he extended to me quite cool, proof that in this long war of attrition with Guise he seemed to feel that he’d regained some of the ground previously lost in the Treaty of Nemours.
“Siorac, my child,” he said almost joyfully, pointing to the stool next to his chair, “sit here, please, and tell me your news. I never feel I’m wasting time listening to you!”
And so I told him of the morning with the Duchesse de Montpensier, omitting nothing except the salacious and nasty words of this Fury, but reserved for later in our discussion the discovery of Guise’s note to Felipe, which I was sure the king would be delighted to have in his possession since it was in Guise’s own hand and thus irrefutable proof of the duc’s felony.
My story delighted His Majesty, except the part in which it became clear that the duchesse had a mole working in his treasury, since she knew he hadn’t made a disbursement to me upon my return to Paris.
“Sire,” counselled the austere Du Halde, “you should tell your treasurer to sack all of the clerks and hire new ones.”
“No, no!” countered the king. “I could never strike so many innocents to punish one guilty party! I’ll deal with it some other way. Go on, Siorac.”
So I continued my saga, and when I got to the chapter on my abdominal palpations and their grotesque aftermath, the king put his hand to his mouth and laughed like a schoolgirl, while Du Halde and Chicot guffawed good-naturedly, both at my predicament and to see the king so joyful.
“Ah, Siorac,” cried the king, tears in his eyes from laughing so hard, “how diverting you are!”
“Diverting perhaps, but divergent from us, since he’s just been baptized Guisard in the font of Madame Limp!”
“An accusation without foundation!”
“Ha!” said the king, laughing even harder. “Leave aside the foundation—this bell is supported by two unequal columns!”
“Nay, nay!” cried Chicot between two spasms of laughter. “Poor Siorac is in grave danger of hydrophobia, since he was bitten in his vital parts by the rabid jaws of the Enraged One!”
We all laughed so hard at this last witticism that we were bent double with hilarity, with tears in our eyes and nearly unable to breathe. But when we had quieted down somewhat, I ventured to say:
“Sire, there’s an epilogue to this tumultuous farce that seems to me to have some consequence.”
At this the king ceased his laughter and stood looking at me attentively with his jet-black eyes. And so I told him in detail about stealing the note from Guise to Felipe II. After which, I took the letter from my doublet and offered it to him, one knee on the ground.
His Majesty seized it and, rising quickly to his feet, began to pace back and forth in his chambers.
“Siorac,” he said at length, with a smile, “though it’s clearly a sin to steal anything from anyone, I absolve you of your crime with all my heart, in consideration of the service you have done the state in committing this felony. I’d had reports about the river of gold with which Felipe was flooding Guise to refresh him, but now, thanks to you, I have the proof! For this is definitely Guise’s handwriting. My cousin the duc is so unsure of his French that he’s forced to write out a draft before dictating a letter of any consequence to his secretaries. And in this draft, observe, Siorac, the weaknesses of his style. The duc thanks Felipe for being so ‘obliging’ on his behalf—and, a little further on, he writes: ‘These obligations have created yet another connection between us.’ Guise doesn’t know the difference between ‘obliging’ and ‘obligations’. He thinks they’re the same thing. Likewise, he writes: ‘I cannot resist most respectfully thanking Your Majesty…’ This ‘I cannot resist’ is very gauche. One would say that some exterior force is pushing Guise against his will to thank Felipe for his money!”
“So what should he have written?” asked Du Halde, astonished that the king should give us, on this occasion, a lesson in the French language.
“‘I hasten’,” corrected the king. “‘I eagerly hasten to thank Your Majesty most respectfully.’ Eagerness is the only sentiment a subject can feel towards his king, since his sovereign, in this case, seems to be Felipe and not myself. Here’s another example of the weakness of his prose: ‘piety and zeal’ used twice in four lines. Nasty style, Siorac, nasty man. And the content of the note confirms this. What is at stake in this matter? Interests. And what is referred to in the letter? ‘God’. ‘Piety’. ‘Zeal’. One hypocrite writing to another hypocrite, his pen dipped in the font. Guise and Felipe pour over the Lord all the sauces of their base cuisine, and these sauces—God knows that they’ve turned. That they’re rotten. When Felipe conquered Portugal, he had 2,000 monks massacred, whose only sin was to love their country and to try to defend it against his invasion. This is the kind of ‘service’ to which His Majesty devotes so much ‘piety’ and so much ‘zeal’ in his ‘royal enterprises’.”
“Henri,” laughed Chicot, “I’m astonished! To speak of your brother-in-law in such terms! That’s a sin!”
“Well,” said the king, “I’m Felipe’s brother-in-law! I’m the brother-in-law of Mary Stuart! God save me from all these alliances that my mother was so enamoured of! What a lot of problems they’ve created! They’ve all turned against me! Felipe wants to put my niece on the throne when I’m out of the way! And Mary Stuart, from the depths of her prison, is asking me to help her unseat Queen Elizabeth!”
“Sire!” Du Halde pointed out. “Navarre is also your brother-in-law!”
“Ah, but I like him! And I’m furious with the Pope for having excommunicated him as a heretic. The Pope has declared him ineligible to wear the French crown. What arrogance this Sixtus V exhibits! He shows none of the modesty and good sense of his predecessors.”
“Henri,” Chicot added, “did you know that when he was young, Sixtus was a keeper of swine?”
“Well then,” replied Henri bitterly, “let him watch over his pigs and I’ll watch over mine! What right does he have in my stables? And by what right does he pretend to decide the succession of established kingdoms like France? Let him explain how ‘piety’ and ‘holiness’ allow him to give away what isn’t his! To take from others what belongs to them! To urge mutiny among vassals and subjects against their sovereign prince! To overthrow the very foundations of the political order!”
It was well said: with force, eloquence and reason. And the most marvellous thing about Henri’s tirade was that he spoke in defence of a man against whom he was forced to make war, despite liking him and valuing him above all the other princes in Christendom.
“Siorac, my child,” said the king as he sat down and held up his hand to me, “go home and take care of yourself. Once again you’ve served me well. I will know how to use this letter from Guise for my own ends, if God wills that I should successfully achieve the goals I’ve set for myself. Tomorrow, my Quarreller will bring you a modest expression of my gratitude.”
This last was quite surprising: Henri had never before used Quéribus to send me a message, since I saw the king every day.
My Miroul didn’t reappear at our lodgings on the rue du Champ-Fleuri until nightfall; when he did he was quite exhausted, or at least pretending to be, I don’t know which, something that s
uggested that he’d spent most of the day wandering the streets of Paris.
“Ah, Monsieur!” he breathed, asking permission to be seated in my little office. “I had a lot of trouble and toil to find our man! I couldn’t sit around, but had to use up a lot of shoe leather to locate him. He’s lodging way out on the outskirts of Paris, and to get him to rent out the needle shop I had to work really hard. Without the tongue God gave me, which is as frisky and talkative as any they come, I would never have got him to agree! Ah, Monsieur, the obstinate hypocrite! The stubborn miser! He was a tough nut to crack, and he’s more gluttonous than the devil!”
“And so?”
“Well, Monsieur,” said Miroul, surprised by my interruption of his narrative, “I was able to get the needle shop for five écus a month.”
“That’s a lot!”
“That’s a lot?!” cried Miroul indignantly. “Is that all the thanks I get for having run around like a madman all day, worn out the soles of my shoes and blistered my feet! Monsieur, am I your secretary or your messenger? A lot, Monsieur? Did you say a lot?! The fellow began by demanding fifteen, and I had to spend an hour knocking him down to five! And you’re saying that’s a lot, whereas yesterday you said you’d accept whatever he asked, as if you were a papist! Then, not content just to conclude the bargain with this fellow, and get the best price for renting the shop, I went and found you a tenant for the place! Ah, Monsieur, I’m furious! Is this the reward for my pains? You greet me coldly, put on a sour face, get all suspicious as though all I’d done was stroll around, instead of spending the entire day in your service! And then you interrupt my story and, worst of all, you say ‘That’s a lot!’ as dry and hard as a stale crust of bread!”
“I’m sorry, Miroul,” I answered, in as conciliatory a manner as I could (though I was still convinced that he’d spent the whole day happily strolling the pavements of Paris and taking in the street life, as he loved to do). “I’ve been very distracted, swamped by an ocean of worries.”