by Robert Merle
His words brought to mind what Monsieur de La Boétie had said to my father about the harvest at Montaigne’s estate, where, when some of the sheaves came apart in the wagon, Monsieur de Montaigne had said not to rebunch them, so that the extra grain falling in the field would increase the gleaners’ provender. Likewise, Montaigne held rigorously to the ancient custom by which his fields, once harvested, should be opened to cattle of the poorest farmers—whereas at Mespech they were ploughed immediately, burying the stubble in the field to fertilize it. Of course, this method was more reasonable and profitable to the landowner, but it so antagonized the people in our villages that in the beginning we had some difficult moments with them.
But to return to our pleasant, copious and Périgordian meal, I can’t remember how or why we got to talking about love and marriage, but Monsieur de Montaigne was remarkably open on this subject, loving, it’s true, to talk endlessly about himself—not for small-minded, mediocre or egotistical reasons, but because it was the entire condition of man that he painted in talking about his own experiences and habits.
“When I was a young man,” he said with his customary abandon, “I gave myself over as licentiously and inconsiderately as any other to the desires that governed me. And not without glory, though in a lasting and durable way rather than in quick sallies: sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices.”‡
“Six, Monsieur!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “I can’t understand how anyone could be dissatisfied by such a number! As for me, I’d be very happy!”
“But I’m not,” said Montaigne, “since voluptuousness is too often vicious and sudden—it makes love too rapid and precipitous. And I end up feeling like that fellow in antiquity who wanted to have a neck as long as a crane’s in order to savour the food that traversed it for as long as possible.”
At this I laughed heartily and Giacomi along with me, but not my poor Samson, who was secretly so uncomfortable with these wanton subjects that he kept his eyes lowered and his expression as pensive as possible to give the impression he hadn’t heard them.
Montaigne then asked me, with his slow smile, how I treated the wenches I’d known once they were mine.
“Very well!” I said, caught off guard.
“Then you’ve done well,” said Montaigne, “and unlike most men, for I believe that we should behave with them as conscientiously and as justly as in any other relationship. As for me, since I desire neither to fool them nor to cheat on them, I’ve never pretended to have feelings I didn’t really have. I was so chary of making promises that I think I’ve kept more of them than I actually promised or owed. And finally, I’ve never broken with any woman out of scorn or hatred because the intimacies they’ve shared with one oblige one to some regard for them. Monsieur de Siorac,” he continued with a smile, “I’ve heard that in Montpellier you were the protégé of a lady of high birth and means and that she even called you her ‘little cousin’, though you were hardly her cousin.”
“I had,” I confessed, with a respectful nod of my head, “this immense privilege.”
“It was your luck and your privilege, Monsieur de Siorac,” said Montaigne. “When I was your age, I had such an appetite for the honest women I might meet that I eschewed, shall we say, commercial opportunities, wishing to sharpen my pleasure by conquest. I was a little like the courtesan Flora, who would sleep with no one less than a dictator, consul or senator: I counted as my reward the dignity of my lovers.”
“To tell the truth, Monsieur de Montaigne, it’s not the case that I despise common love affairs. On the contrary, I’ve found them satisfying and sometimes emotionally very fulfilling!”
“I don’t despise them either,” said Montaigne, “especially since I could never be content, like the Spanish are, with a glance, a nod, a word or a sign. Who could ever dine, as our Périgordian proverb says, on the smoke of a roast? I need more fulfilling meats and more substantial flesh. For I feel some emotion in love, and am not satisfied by dreams alone!”
“Well!” I thought. “There’s the difference between this great man and me! For when I think about my Angelina, do I not feel such emotion as to lose my appetite for food, drink and very nearly for life? And in her absence do I not lose myself in the most amazing dreams?”
“I gather, Monsieur de Montaigne, that you’re somewhat impatient with courtly love?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered with a smile, “when it doesn’t lead to anything. We must always keep our wits and our discretion in love. We want to enjoy ourselves but not forget ourselves. Love, Monsieur de Siorac, should not lead men to sighs and tears. In essence it’s an awakening of lively and happy agitation. It is harmful only to fools. My idea of the best conduct of love is a healthy emotion, enabling us to lighten our minds and bodies. And as a doctor I would prescribe it to a man as willingly as any other to keep him healthy well into his old age.”
“Well, he’s certainly not wrong about that,” I thought. “All you have to do is compare the way my father and Sauveterre have aged to see that my father has done much better by proliferating bastards than Sauveterre has by his implacable virtue.”
As we had arrived at the fruit course, Jacquou served each of us a melon, which neither I nor either of my companions was able to finish because of its size, but I observed that Montaigne loved this fruit so much that he ordered and devoured a second that was just as big as the first.
“Marriage,” Montaigne continued as he wiped his mouth, moustache and beard with the napkin the chambermaid had brought, “is meant to be a very dull pleasure with neither sting nor heat. And it’s no longer love if it lacks arrows and fire.”
“But,” I protested, thinking of my Angelina, with whom I expected a great deal more than dull pleasures, “can’t one teach one’s wife the special delights which make voluptuousness so lively, acute and exciting?”
“Absolutely not!” cried Montaigne, raising both hands heavenward. “Be very careful not to introduce into this venerable estate the extravagances of amorous passion! You should be careful, as Aristotle advised, that you do not caress your wife to the point where pleasure makes her lose her mind! And if she must learn such rashness let it at least be at the hands of another!”
“Well,” I thought, “our sage is, for once, not making sense, even though he’s lined up Aristotle, the Church and common wisdom on his side. Gracious! I shouldn’t instruct Angelina in the delicious caresses I’ve learnt? I shouldn’t make sure her pleasure is as great as mine? I should wait for a rival to teach her how to enjoy love?”
However, I said nothing, not wishing to argue with this great mind, who, because he dared differ from what was considered common sense and dared envision deeply original approaches to every subject, abounded in new and exciting perspectives, and expressed these so beautifully, mixing into his French here a Latin maxim, there a Périgordian turn of phrase, that ultimately his combination of rustic and learned locutions provided music to your ears and fruit for your understanding.
I was in the midst of these reflections when Montaigne, gulping down his last slice of melon, suddenly cried out and clapped his hand on his mouth.
“Monsieur,” I cried, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he groaned. “From wolfing down my melon, I ended up biting my tongue. But it’s nothing, though it hurts terribly when I do it. And so now, Monsieur de Siorac, you’re going to Paris. You will find great comforts there,” he continued, as though he’d entirely forgotten the grave reason that drove me there, and the favour my father had asked of him: that he compose a request for my pardon. “And when will you set off?”
“I’m afraid it must be tomorrow, Monsieur.”
“What! You would deprive me so soon of your youthful faces! You’ve scarcely arrived and how you’re off again!”
“But, Monsieur, we cannot tarry here! We’re outlaws and may be seized at any moment and thrown in jail!”
“Ah, ’tis true!” he sighed. “How I would have loved to ride alongside you on this tri
p, though I do travel quite a bit and was in Paris just two years ago, leaving the governance of my house to my wife—who, among her many other excellent virtues, knows how to run a household. Some people complain that travel interferes with one’s marital duties. I don’t believe it. The pleasure of seeing each other every day is trumped by the joy we derive from the emotion of parting from and returning to our loved ones. In any case, there is no agreement in marriage that we must always remain tethered like dogs. I believe that a wife should not be so greedily focused on her husband’s front that she can’t see his rear from time to time!”
I laughed at his witticism, and Giacomi as well, but not Samson, who kept his eyes rigidly fixed on his hands in his lap, wishing he were leagues away, so wounded was his modesty.
“Monsieur de Siorac,” Montaigne continued, “I hope you will allow me to be silent for a while since I’m tired of talking on a full stomach. While I rest my voice, however, be so good as to tell me the story that has been attributed to you about a diabolical witch in a cemetery in Montpellier.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” I laughed, “although the wench was eventually burnt at the stake, she was no witch as I first believed, and the Devil was only metaphorically dwelling in her petticoat.”
“So, tell me about it!” urged Montaigne, folding his hands over his stomach and looking at me intently, his eyes shining.
I obeyed, though I was ashamed to recount this affair in front of my beloved Samson, from whom I’d managed to hide it until this moment, and I watched with some distress as his blue eyes opened wide in amazement to hear of such mad goings-on—which is why I prefer to gloss over it here, not wishing, as I’ve already explained, to offend the delicate ears of the ladies who have objected to my liberties with the fair sex.
“As for witches,” agreed Montaigne, when I’d finished my tale, “I am distressed to see that almost everyone believes in them—or pretends to—and Ambroise Paré is first among these believers, which doesn’t shock me, since he was a great physician, but outside of medicine not a very learned man. In Bordeaux, some witches were put on trial. Everyone was crying ‘Devils!’ before the trial, the priests along with the crowds, but I didn’t want to be influenced by this mob, so I went and talked to the poor women without threats or torture. I found them mad as hatters, to be sure, but there was no devil in them other than their imaginations, and their visions were more likely due to hallucinogens than to hemlock.”
I was very glad to hear Monsieur de Montaigne’s thoughts on this subject, since I’d found so few people in Montpellier who doubted what the judges and priests held as truth, when they sent to the stake so many of these unfortunates. In their warped minds, these poor creatures believed their accusers, attributed their deviations to the work of Satan and ended up convinced of the power of their rites, in which they mimicked the rites of the Church, but backwards.
Meanwhile, Monsieur de Montaigne, apparently no longer concerned that our discussion was detrimental to his digestion, returned to the subject of Paris. He had great admiration for the capital and eloquently sang its praises—a speech that was as diverting as it was enchanting since I still remembered Captain Cossolat’s description of this sewer city, its stench, its difficulties, its buffeting crowds, the unbearable uproar of its carts and wagons, and the infinite arrogance of its inhabitants.
“Monsieur de Montaigne,” I said, “your description has a very different ring from what I often heard in Montpellier.”
“Pure prejudice!” replied my host. “As for me, when I’m most dissatisfied with our kingdom, I feel the most positive about Paris; she won my heart when I was young! The more I’ve visited beautiful cities, the more the beauty of this one has won my affection. I love her for herself, and not for her pomp and foreignness. I love her tenderly, including all her warts and stains: I am French only by my love of this great city, great in her people, great in her cuisine—but especially great and incomparable in the variety and diversity of her commodities. She is the glory of France and one of the most noble ornaments in the world.”
At this speech, we three looked at each other with delight, inflamed with the beauty we’d be heading towards the next day as we took to the highways of the kingdom. So inflamed, indeed, that I almost forgot the purpose of our visit. And I only remembered it when, after this eloquent portrait of the capital, Monsieur de Montaigne rose and excused himself, explaining that there was a task he must perform before he went to bed, adding that, if we were indeed resolved to leave at dawn, we should bid our adieux now, since he was accustomed as an old married man to rising late. And, not knowing whether he had completely forgotten my request, or whether his silence on the matter was a sign that he refused to comply, I was trying to decide how to bring the subject to his attention when he concluded the evening by saying,
“Monsieur de Siorac, I am going now to dictate to my secretary your plea to the king. He will give it to you tomorrow morning as you leave. All you’ll have to do is sign it.”
“Oh, Monsieur,” I cried, “what a debt of gratitude I owe you!”
“Not at all. Injustice committed against one man is an injustice to humanity. It is every man’s duty to work for justice, lest he himself be unjust.”
“Monsieur,” I replied, “one last question. May I say that my request to the king was written by you?”
At this he frowned, and, his expression becoming quite circumspect, he seemed unsure as to whether he should say yes or no, but finally, his generosity overcoming his prudence, he decided on a compromise, and said with a smile, “If you’re asked, and if you believe that it will be useful to the outcome you seek, yes. But otherwise, say nothing.”
* “The nobles of the sword” [the feudal, knightly class of nobility]; “the nobles of the gown” [the judicial and administrative class of nobility].
† “If there’s only one witness, there is no witness.”
‡ “I can barely remember managing it six times.”
4
WE REACHED MONTFORT-L’AMAURY without incident towards evening on 1st August, and finding we were still a good day’s ride from Paris, I decided we would spend the night in this beautiful market town, whose ancient towers stand at the edge of the forest of the same name. But the two inns of Montfort refused to open their doors to us since there was not a closet or even corner of either that was not filled, given the veritable tide of gentlemen from Normandy and Brittany who had been invited by the king to come to the capital for the marriage of Princesse Margot. So we would have been in the most extreme discomfort (being unable even to sleep in a field, since this 1st August was so rainy and cold), had not the hostess at the second inn, seeing us in such a fix (and, no doubt, swayed by our honest faces—and Samson’s beauty), suggested that we go knock on the door of Maître Béqueret, the apothecary, whose shop stood just to the left of the church, and who, given the size of his house, would likely have room for us.
When we got there, his valet tried to slam the door in our faces, given the number of importunate people who had already tried this address, but I was so earnest and polite that he hesitated long enough for me to slip a few coins into his hand and finally agreed to fetch his master. This gentleman did not open the door of his house to us, but received us in his shop, which was as large as Maître Sanche’s in Montpellier and, in addition, so new and beautifully arranged that Samson was immediately bewitched. His wide blue eyes gazed with wonder at all the druggist’s bottles, with their gold lettering, that filled his shelves from top to bottom.
Maître Béqueret, a tall, brown-haired, black-eyed man with a sympathetic face, listened courteously while I explained who we were and what we were asking. But when I’d done, he refused quite civilly but firmly my request, saying that, as the wealthiest master apothecary in the town, it was beneath his dignity to rent out rooms, even to the sons of the Baron de Mespech—though he was, he added, very honoured to meet us.
He bowed quite coldly and I returned his bow, but before giving up entirely,
I said in as casual a way as I could manage that he ought to know that I was a doctor of medicine from the Royal College in Montpellier, hoping this would soften him a bit, but he refused to change his mind.
At that moment, the rain redoubled its force against the window-panes and my heart fell flat and my hair stood on end at the thought of spending a night at the mercy of this storm.
Defeated, however, I began to take my leave of Maître Béqueret, when Samson, who, lost in wondrous contemplation of the shop, hadn’t heard a word of our conversation, suddenly burst out, “Oh, Maître Béqueret, what a beautiful display you have here! And what noble bodies and substances you have in your jars! It’s quite clear that you spare no expense to provide the greatest quality in your medicines!”
“How can you tell, young man?” said Maître Béqueret archly.
“Because, for example, your senna is from Alexandria and not from Seyde, which, though less costly, Maître Sanche considered vile, dirty, full of mud and gravel and unworthy of feeding to an ass.”
“What! You worked under the illustrious Maître Sanche in Montpellier?”
“For five years,” replied Samson, “before I was promoted to master apothecary myself on 24th August 1571.”
“Heavens!” gasped Béqueret. “You are a colleague! And the student of Maître Sanche! Why didn’t you say so immediately instead of brandishing your titles of nobility? Make yourself at home, my dear colleague! And you too, venerable doctor of medicine,” he added, looking my way, but with perhaps less warmth, since I was from a related family, but not of the same lineage as an apothecary.
And what a welcome the good apothecary provided I leave to your imagination, inviting the four of us to stay there, and stable our five horses in his barn for the entire month of August, since we would assuredly not find lodgings in Paris given the masses of guests who were flooding the capital for the wedding of Princesse Margot—“may the Blessed Virgin watch over her!” To which I said, “Amen!” and Giacomi as well, but Samson was visibly offended in his Huguenot rigour by such an idolatrous invocation. I thanked Maître Béqueret a thousand times for his invitation, but explained that I could not tarry in Montfort, but had to go immediately to Paris and would have to spend the entire month there—not just Margot’s wedding day—since I needed to present to the king a plea, on which my entire future depended.