by Robert Merle
My father had made his sons keep the secret of the Brethren’s decision until such a time as I should be converted, and so during the week occupied by my conversion, my mother, the Siorac twins and all the servants were blissfully ignorant that Mespech was going to transfer to the reformers’ camp, and all of them along with it. My father decided to speak to Isabelle de Siorac alone and so summoned her with Franchou to his chambers on the evening of Sunday, 22nd December. He had thought to take advantage of the presence among us of Jonas, Cathau and Cabusse to undertake a mass conversion of our household after dinner that evening.
The two candelabra (which had not seen service since the evening Sauveterre informed us of the fall of Calais to the English in 1347) were, on Jean de Siorac’s orders, lit by la Maligou in order to emphasize the solemnity of the moment, or perhaps to symbolize the light that the Brethren hoped to bring to the servants. At the far end of the brightly polished table sat the Baron de Siorac, Monsieur de Sauveterre and the Reverend Duroy, whose white hair was illuminated from behind by the dancing firelight, which seemed to make a halo around his venerable head.
Along each side of the table, our servants (all except Franchou, whose service to her mistress was required in her chambers) took their places according to their priority in the household: from the head of the table (where the minister and the Brethren sat) to the far end where the women sat, were seated first the sons, then Catherine (six years old at the time), then the Siorac twins (because they were related to us), Cabusse and his wife (because they were landowners at le Breuil), the two soldiers (because of their length of service), Jonas and Faujanet (who, as more recent recruits, came after them), and finally Barberine, la Maligou, Franchou (when she finally arrived), little Hélix carrying our nurse’s baby Annet in her arms, and lastly Little Sissy, who was the same age as my sister Catherine but as brown-skinned and dark-haired as Catherine was blonde.
Our household was not without some inkling that something was afoot, first because the Brethren’s religious opinions had long been known to them, even if, for prudence’s sake, nothing had ever been said of this outside the walls of Mespech, and secondly because they knew very well who Raymond Duroy was, ever since the tumult that had followed the burial of a Huguenot under the lantern of the dead at Sarlat had made him famous throughout our regions. But they could hardly have suspected the commitment that was to be demanded of them, believing perhaps naively that Catholic servants could continue in the service of a Huguenot master.
In this my father was quick to disabuse them. Sitting, standing, coming and going before them, stopping, crossing his arms, putting his hands on his hips, he spoke in his rapid and urgent manner, a bit rambling and lacking logical order, so passionate was he. Yet gradually the implications of his speech became clear: Sauveterre, the baron and his three sons, François, Pierre and Samson de Siorac, intended to declare publicly their adherence to the reformed religion, and they expected their relatives (meaning the Siorac twins), their friends (meaning Cabusse and Cathau) and their servants to follow their lead: first because this path was God’s way, long obscured by the papists, but now revealed again by the reformers; next because, in these troubled times, it would be difficult for the Brethren to trust anyone who did not share their faith, fearing that such a one might, sooner or later, under the influence of a confessor, be led to betray Mespech to its enemies. Certainly my father did not say straight out that he would dismiss anyone who did not convert to the reformed Church, but that was the obvious conclusion to draw from his words, and I could see from the astonishment and terror of our household that this was what they understood.
When I think back on this scene today, it makes me uneasy. For the Baron de Siorac was doing at Mespech exactly what he so strongly reproached Henri II for having done in his kingdom: demanding that his subjects embrace his own religion. The difference is that he lacked the power to send them to the stake. At the very least, however, he could deprive them of their daily bread and banish them from his domain, a sanction which was of no little consequence given the vast number of beggars who roamed homeless and starving throughout the countryside. At a time when the Roman Church tyrannized the kingdom, the idea of religious freedom had certainly shown some progress of late. But that liberty was all too often claimed as a privilege of the upper classes, or, at the very least, of the rich burghers in the towns. It did not extend to the people, still entirely governed and constrained by feudal ties—the same people over whom the Roman Church maintained its sway by its pomp, its processions, its rich and lustrous ceremonies, and its appeal to popular superstition.
Having said his piece, my father sat down. Such was the terror of our household at the idea of being thrown out of Mespech like a snail from its shell, and thrust unarmed, naked and hungry onto the highways of the world, that their eyes bulged in fear from their sockets, and their dry tongues stuck to their palates unable to utter a syllable.
Considering each of them in turn, Sauveterre measured the degree of their terror and sensed a happy outcome in it. For he loved the servants of Mespech enough to desire salvation for each and every one of them. Moreover, to dismiss anyone because of obstinate adherence to papist abominations would have broken his heart, not so much because of the famine to which such a one would have been reduced, but because of the risk of damnation he would have to face after his death.
He said, as calmly as my father had spoken passionately, “The Reverend Duroy will now instruct you in the differences between the Roman cult and ours.” Raymond Duroy did not rise, and when he spoke nothing moved in his countenance other than his dark eyes and his mouth, his body remaining as immobile as if cut in marble. He made not the slightest gesture, not even to raise his hands from the arms of his chair to emphasize a point. But out of this iciness came a great fire, especially when Duroy denounced the practice of simony and the corruption of the Catholic priests.
“These priests,” he proclaimed, “have grown wealthy in the riches of this world and impoverished in spirit. They live among their earthly delights day and night. Their ministry is foul and spoilt with their greed. They refuse baptism without payment. They never bless a marriage without bleeding the poorest couples of their money. They never open the sepulchres to the dead except by charging for the grave. In sum, the priests have made a shopkeeper’s commerce out of the administration of the sacraments. What’s worse: through a great and terrible simony, they have bartered pardons and absolutions from sin! They sell indulgences! In this stinking rot of their corruption, it comes as no surprise that the Roman clergy has redirected to its own pleasures the tithes that princes and common men have offered for the poor and for the instruction of the people.”
Here Duroy paused, and my father made a gesture inviting our people to speak, which they were quick to do, so much did they approve of Duroy’s opening words.
“Miserly, for sure, they are,” murmured Faujanet, who remembered having been rejected by the diocese of Sarlat when he went there begging for crumbs.
“And so greedy, they’d shave an egg,” added Cabusse.
“I could tell you about a priest, and not far from here either, who, with his long rosary, has rustled a sol from more than one of his faithful.”
“I kn… kn… know him too,” confirmed Cockeyed Marsal.
Only Coulondre held his tongue, so much was silence his inveterate habit. But he was known to be little given to religion, not much taken with hearing Mass, and somewhat detached from the faith of his fathers because of his bitterness about losing an arm.
Cabusse was no more fervent than Coulondre, having a Gascon’s irreverence for priests. Overwhelmed as he was with the riches of this world—the le Breuil farm, his sheep and Cathau—he was not much concerned with those of the next. We knew, by way of my mother’s ex-chambermaid, what his prayers consisted of: in the morning as he stretched he would say, “Lord, your servant is getting up. Grant him a good day.” And the evening prayer, between yawns, “Lord, your servant is going
to bed. Give him a good night with his wife.”
La Maligou and Barberine listened to all this without a word, being ashamed to speak in front of the men, but they exchanged a few whispered reflections and memories rehashed twenty times over concerning Pincers the priest—so named because some joker, passing by the presbytery and finding it empty, had thought to play a joke on the housekeeper by taking the pincers from beside the fireplace and placing them in her bed. But the joke had turned out to be on the priest since, while the pincers lay undiscovered in her bed, he railed for an entire month against his parishioners both in and out of the pulpit, believing himself the victim of theft.
“You’re so right,” said la Maligou. “A bigger lecher there never was. In confession and in the sacristy, he stares at the girls’ tits and gropes their arses.”
“And surely there’s no mother’s son in France,” said Barberine, “who’s a bigger drunkard. And for proof, at the funeral of poor old Petremol, just as they were lowering the body into the grave, and Pincers was mumbling his prayers for the dead, he saw Bellièvre, the smithy, in the front row of the mourners, and said to him in a loud and clear voice: ‘Bellièvre, seeing you there reminds me that you still owe me a barrel of wine. Remember to bring it tomorrow. Your salvation depends on it!’ After which, he went on with his prayers as if nothing had happened.”
When silence had returned, the Reverend Duroy began a clear exposition and resume of the forty articles of the Calvinist confession of faith, as established by the synod of 1559. He spoke with a kind of tranquil certainty and had the art of making the most thorny subjects accessible to the people and to children of all ages. Even today I can remember the way he explained to us the Huguenots’ interpretation of the Last Supper: “The Catholic priests,” he announced gravely and with vibrant indignation, “maintain the presence of the real body and blood of our Saviour in the bread and wine of the Communion. But that cannot be, and to claim such a thing is foolishness and falsehood. You must understand that the body and blood of the Saviour nourish the soul in the way that bread and wine feed the body. To understand it any other way is an imposture. How could Jesus Christ be up in heaven and down here in the stomachs of those who take Communion? In truth, the body of Our Lord is as far from the bread and wine as the farthest pinnacle of heaven is from the earth.”
To which, my father, raising his hand, added, “When Christ said, ‘Drink, this is my blood,’ and ‘Eat, this is my body,’ we must understand it as a parable, and not literally, the way the papists do.” This idea—the ultimate blasphemy for a Roman priest—was well received by our audience who saw no malice in it and accepted it as common-sense truth. Nor was our household any more recalcitrant when the Reverend Duroy attacked the idea of the celibacy of priests. (“That’s such hypocrisy,” affirmed Jonas. “It’s for sure that Pincers is a lot less chaste than me in my cave.”) When Duroy talked about monastic vows, Cabusse pointed out with a chuckle that “monks are the lice of the people”. And when he came to indulgences, Faujanet declared that “at that rate only the rich will be saved”. On the subject of private confession, Barberine agreed that all they were doing was “letting Pincers in on the family secrets”.
On the other hand, Duroy’s attack on the cult of the Virgin and the saints was met with great astonishment and heavy resistance. He conducted his assault, in consequence, with the utmost tact and prudence: “According to the Scriptures,” he said, “Christ is the only mediator between God and man. Therefore, you must not pray to the Virgin or the saints to intercede with Christ, nor make a cult of any of them. We must respect the saints as so many heroes of the faith, but we refuse to worship them. In the same way, we honour Mary as the mother of Christ, but we refuse to worship her. The Word of God in his Holy Scripture is clear and indubitable. The only intercessor with God is Christ. Whoever strays from this rule falls into idolatry. The cult of Mary and the saints is only an abuse and a trick of Satan.”
These words were received with great emotion by our people—both men and women—and from their frightened silence, and the way they rolled their eyes and bit their lips, you could see that Duroy’s words had collided with a centuries-old tradition. There was not a household in all of Sarlat that had not dedicated some corner to a niche where a statue of the Virgin stood, requiring a genuflection and a whispered “Hail Mary” of every passer-by. Every village of any importance had its saint, and the fountain of its saint, and proclaimed the miracles of that saint, to whom prayers were directed more fervent even than those directed to Jesus Christ, for He was a distant figure, like the king in the Louvre, or a lord in his chateau.
When my father, who knew these customs well, noticed the tumultuous silence provoked by Duroy’s words, he tried to drain this abscess by taking a lighthearted rather than an angry tone: “Speak up, my good friends. Speak your minds openly. We won’t punish you for it.” But our “good friends” kept quiet, terrified at the thought of contradicting the Reverend Duroy, whose pale face, deeply set features, long white beard and immobility seemed too much like the saints in the stained-glass windows at church. “Come, come,” said my father, becoming impatient, “don’t be ashamed! Speak out, good people! Tell us your feelings. I command you!”
Everyone looked at each other and finally their looks converged on Barberine as if to ask her to serve as their spokeswoman, given her secure position at Mespech as wet nurse to the Siorac children—both those present and those yet to be born. After some hesitation Barberine expressed her strong feelings on the matter: “My Lord,” she began, going pink from the roots of her hair right to her emerging and abundant breasts, “may I have your leave to speak before the men do?”
“You may, my dear Barberine,” replied my father, who grew tender just looking at all that pink colour—all the more so since she hardly seemed to pose much of a threat. And he added, “You know how much we all love you.”
“And well I thank you, My Lord,” shuddered Barberine, her breast swelling out of adoration for my father. “Surely I am but a woman, and a most ignorant woman at that, seeing our two masters and the Reverend Duroy and the Siorac twins and our soldiers who have travelled the world over and Jonas and Faujanet who are such experts in their trades, and ’tis only by great courage on my part even to open my mouth in the presence of these gentlemen. I don’t know nothing but how to give my milk like a poor cow in the stable. But touching on the Virgin Mary, whom, if it please my masters, I love and worship, I get to thinking this way: we pray to Jesus to intercede with God, am I not right, My Lord?”
“This is true, Barberine.”
“Then,” she continued, “if we ask the Son to placate the Father, why not ask the Mother to placate the Son?”
There was a silence, and I suspect my father realized he had underestimated Barberine, for he looked ill at ease and tried to hide his embarrassment with a little laugh. But the ever vigilant Duroy leapt to his defence:
“No doubt,” he said in his gravest voice, “it is so in human affairs. But here we are dealing with God. And not just any son, but Jesus Christ—who is our Saviour. And since our Saviour is Christ and not his mother Mary, it is to Him we must pray for intercession with the Father, and not to her. Mary bore Christ, just like Barberine gives her milk: it is an act of nature and not an act of creation. The Creator is the Father. And the Saviour is the Son. Pray to the Father and pray to the Son, but do not pray to any other than these and the Holy Spirit, for you would be guilty of idolatry and pagan superstition.”
This was so clearly and forcefully stated, and in a tone of such utter tranquillity and such absolute certainty, that one would have thought the venerable Duroy had consented to put off his own celestial rewards for a few months in order to correct a few misunderstood truths for those of us here below. And yet, as impressed as our people were, they all resisted, and, strange to say, their resistance abandoned the Virgin Mary (who was, after all, only a woman) to take up positions behind the saints—who were so numerous and so obviously b
eneficial (or, in some cases, harmful) that it seemed difficult if not impossible to deny their constant intervention in peoples’ lives.
Here again, the men refused to speak, and looked to Barberine as if they wanted to hide behind that ample green skirt lined with red stripes. The wet nurse, however, shook her head defiantly, refusing to open her mouth twice in defiance of her masters. So the men perforce fell back on la Maligou, although she was hardly the most effective ambassadress they could have found, given her penchant for excessive superstition—even for their taste. But he who has no horse for ploughing must content himself with an ass, and this ass needed no carrot to coax it. More dishevelled than any gorgon or maenad, at the first sign of invitation, she threw herself into the breach and mounted the assault.
“May I speak, My Lord?”
“Certainly, my dear Maligou,” said my father, trying to repress a smile.
“Ah, My Lord!” exclaimed la Maligou with a great sigh and rolling her dark eyes. “I would be terrified and horrified if we stopped praying to the saints at Mespech, for there are some pretty malicious ones in Périgord, especially here in the north. And what maladies we will see rain down on our chateau, on our people, on our livestock, on our harvests!”
“What?” retorted my father, raising his eyebrows and feigning surprise. “Have I lost my senses? Do the saints of Périgord bring evil?”
“And bitter evil it is, My Lord!” answered la Maligou with a terrible grimace. “St Siméon of Ligueux brings the worst of all. St Eutropius makes men infirm. St Paul of Agonac visits sickness and fear on children. St Avit afflicts your limbs with rheumatism. And the saint of Sarazac twists the legs of babes in their cradles.”