by Robert Merle
And though he laughed, I could see that he took my situation to heart and was worried about me. Of Calais and my father, he’d spoken like a soldier, but now, looking at my repaired doublet, he was speaking like a courtier. And then, in his solicitude, he offered to give me the address of his tailor so that I could immediately rejuvenate my wardrobe. I was forced to confess that my father hadn’t provided me enough money to cover such an expense.
“Ah,” he joked, “so Siorac is still as careful with his money! And, I’ll wager, as Huguenot as ever!”
“Unshakeably.”
“Alas,” said Monsieur de Nançay. “In that, I must dare to say I think he’s wrong. A captain should leave religion to the clerics. It’s true, when you think about it a little, that ours abounds in manifest absurdities. But bah! You just have to swallow them with all the rest. As for me, I hear Mass every Sunday and go to confession once a year without thinking about it. The world doesn’t ask more than that. ‘To live happily,’ as Ronsard said, ‘simplicity is everything.’”
“That’s easy,” I thought to myself, “when you enjoy the favour of the king”—something that, for both Ronsard and Monsieur de Nançay, has never failed, since this great poet howls with the wolves at the heels of the reformists. But about my father’s religion—in which I intend to remain (though without any zeal)—I didn’t want to argue, hearing what I’d heard from the captain, and said nothing more. Seeing this, Monsieur de Nançay, whose sharp grey eyes missed nothing, asked me about the affair that brought me here. I told him everything: about my duel and my trial and the king’s pardon that I’d come here to seek.
“Well,” he said, “as for your access to the Louvre, you only have to ask me: it’s already granted. And as for your duel, I’ll speak to my friends here to ensure that the king hears of it and is favourably disposed. But that won’t suffice. You’ll have to be presented to the king. And although he’s not as concerned about dress as the Duc d’Anjou, I couldn’t possible present you dressed as you are. So we’re back to your doublet, and the money you need to have a new one made.”
“But,” I moaned, “who would ever lend me money, and on what guarantees, since I’m a younger son?”
“I would,” said Monsieur de Nançay, continuing immediately, “if I weren’t already up to my neck in debt, living in the Louvre well beyond my means, my captain’s salary paid only when the king’s coffers are full, which is to say, never. Ah, Monsieur de Siorac,” he said stroking his long, fine moustache, “what you need is for one of our gallant, generous ladies to pay for your clothes, as several I know here do for some of the pretty young men of the court. But there’s the rub! How can you ever approach one of these brilliant ladies dressed as you are?”
Ah, reader! What claws his words planted in my heart, I who was already desperate at the thought that, the next day, I should have to confront Madame des Tourelles, who had already told me to come dressed in new clothes and to have my body shaved, which of course was easier to achieve than the first thing. “So,” I said to myself, laughing at my predicament, “I need a fairy with a wand to transform my body hair into an elegant suit!” Sadly, it’s true that you’re nothing at court without the right clothes. Nobility, merit, wisdom—nothing matters at the Louvre except show. You have to make the right impression or suffer absolute suppression.
I was in the midst of these thorns and pricks, in bitter humour from my humiliation, when a gentleman of about my age entered the room without knocking. He had roughly my build except that he was much better looking than I and superbly dressed in the most marvellous doublet of blue satin I’d ever seen, even at the Louvre. He gave a quick bow to Monsieur de Nançay and, at the very instant that I was in such admiration of him, he gave me such a scornful and insolent look that I paled in my immediate anger and returned his look with a degree of hatred equal to the admiration I’d just felt, and further nourished by the realization that the fellow had seduced me by displaying exactly the image I would have most wanted to present here at the Louvre. The gentleman was greatly surprised by my look, and when his look doubled in arrogance, I matched it, my blue eyes flashing so angrily, as Monsieur de Nançay told me later, that if our eyes had been pistols, we would have laid each other out cold on the ground. In the end, sensing it was ridiculous to continue this awkward predicament, the fellow turned his back, which, from the rigidity of his posture, communicated the infinite disdain he felt. Shaking with rage, I decided to surpass his arrogance, and, making a deep bow to Monsieur de Nançay, and asking to take my leave, I stood up straight and, as the Parthians did in retreat, shot the newcomer such a murderous look as I passed that it’s a miracle he didn’t fall lifeless on the tiled floor.
Alas! the dart I intended for him wounded me instead, causing me such pain as I was little accustomed to, and I was thoroughly outraged that this fatuous courtier dared trample me underfoot merely because of the sorry state of my doublet. ’Sblood! It’s not with the sharp look I gave him but with the sharp point of my sword in his heart that I should have taken my revenge! I quietly roared with anger, my lips pressed as tight as the string of a crossbow and my fists, in my mind’s eye, gripping the handles of my weapons, while, drunk with anger, my temples throbbing, my body stiff and my muscles flexed tight, I rushed like a madman from the room where the captain of the guards had received me. It took me a long time, my vision was so troubled, my voice strangled in my throat, to be able to see, hear and converse with my good companions as we headed back through the streets of the capital to Maître Recroche’s lodgings. I was so cooked, recooked and boiled in my fury that, all the way back, I said not a word, fearing to howl like a wolf if I opened my mouth. And once back at our lodgings I found myself unbearable and, so mortified that I was unable to tolerate the view of my dear brothers, I left them, telling them in barely audible tones that I felt too dirty and sweaty and was going to head to the baths, and that they should go to the restaurant without me, since I had no appetite.
A Guillaume whom I asked for directions in a severe and roguish manner—I who am normally so pleasant and courteous—was so astonished by my imperious manner that he doffed his hat immediately and said in a trembling voice, “Well, Monseigneur, if you’re looking for clean baths with a good reputation, where they won’t admit lepers, the pox-infected, thieves or lowlifes, you should go to the Old Baths in the grand’rue Saint-Honoré. It’s quite nearby and a prince would feel very much at ease there. The barber of the baths is so expert that she can shave a woman’s snatch or a man’s prick in a trice. And they have so many facilities at these baths that some people eat there, and even spend the night so they don’t have to walk home after dark when the streets are so dangerous.”
Having said this, he insisted on accompanying me to these baths, speaking to me with his hat in his hand and in such a humble and fearful manner that I felt a pang of remorse for having so verbally assaulted him. And so, wishing to add some oil to my vinegar, I asked him very pleasantly how it happened that his lips were split.
“Oh, Monseigneur!” he cried. “Surely you jest! You know as well as I do!”
“Not at all!” I answered, quite surprised.
“Monseigneur, you’re mocking me!”
“’Sblood!” I cried. “I’m telling you I’m not!”
“What?” said this Gautier, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re swearing too! But it’s for my swearing and blasphemy (a terrible habit that I’m trying to break) that I had my lips split! Alas! First a fine, then the iron collar—and now split lips! Nothing worked! I’m still swearing like a picklock!”
“Yes,” I said quietly to myself, “just like the king of France at tennis.”
“Monseigneur,” this Guillaume continued without listening to me, “when you spoke to me so abruptly just now, my mouth was still hot after stepping in some excrement in the street. So of course I thought you’d heard me and that you were going to denounce me.”
“So what would they have done this time?”
“Ah! What a barbarous act! Does the judge think that he’s pleasing Christ by being so pitiless? And why would I denounce you, my friend?”
“For the reward, which is one-third of the fine.”
“And who gets the other two-thirds?”
“One-third to the clergy, the other to the king.”
“To the king!” I said. “That’s justice and equity for you! And so, friend,” I continued, putting a sol in his hand, “my thanks for your escort. Go in peace and by God’s blood, as they say in the Louvre, don’t swear any more! You’re not noble enough for it.”
This encounter had somewhat revived me from my mortification and the excellent condition of the baths contributed even more. They were beautiful and clean, the marble floors had been washed, the walls were covered with blue and white tiles up to a man’s height, and here and there plants and flowers graced the rooms.
The mistress of the baths was a large and powerful woman whose arms were as thick as my thighs, and whose thighs, when she stood up, appeared as thick as the trunk of a century-old oak tree. Her breasts were so enormous that, supported tightly as they were by her bodice, they were practically pushed up to her nose, which forced her to tip back her head, a soft and swollen sphere in which two eyes, just visible through little slits narrower than the loopholes in a rampart, peered out at her customers, whom she espied like a cat stalking a bird. I noticed that, as we talked, she was breathing with some difficulty and I surmised that living daily in all the vapours of the baths must have upset the rhythm of her heart.
“Monsieur,” she said in so restrained and breathless a voice that it seemed to have difficulty clearing its way through her massive, greasy body, “do you want the baths or the steam rooms?”
“That depends,” I replied. “What are your prices?”
“To sweat: two sols. To bathe: four sols. To bathe in a private room: five sols. For a bath cloth and a peignoir, two deniers each.”
“A bath cloth and a peignoir?” I asked, mystified by this Parisian jargon. “What are those?”
“They’re the same thing, Monsieur, but a peignoir is what you put under your arse while bathing to protect it from the splinters in the wood and the bath cloth is to dry yourself after the bath. One of each?”
“Yes. And the private room as well.”
“Monsieur,” she asked with a gleam in her eye, “with a bed?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be another sol. Are you spending the night?”
“I believe so.”
“One sol more. Do you want a barber to take off your body hair?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Two sols.”
“Ah, good woman!” I cried. “Your sums are adding up too quickly! You’re strangling me!”
“Not at all!” she countered, turning crimson; and her bosom swelling under the effect of her indignation, she threw back her head. “These are honest prices, set by the provost of Paris, and you can see them posted on the wall. We’re authorized to raise them if wood and coal are scarce in Paris. Monsieur, please be so kind as to pay me in advance. That’ll be nine sols, four deniers.”
I lightened my purse by this amount and the mistress of the baths shouted at the top of her lungs “Babeau! Babeau!” and a chambermaid appeared, brown-haired and scantily clad, barefoot and bare-armed as well, and her arms were so rosy and round you wanted to take a bite out of them. “Ah,” I thought, “a wench from the villages, and it doesn’t matter that these villages are in the vicinity of Paris—she reminds me of Cabusse’s Cathau or Coulondre’s Jacotte.”
The mistress of the baths took a pile of clean linen from her counter and handed it to Babeau, who took them, pressed them against her bosom as she might have done a lover, gave me a quick glance and, saying that she’d lead me to my room, set off at such a lively pace in front of me that I could scarcely keep up with her, quite disappointed that she was shortening by her vivacity my pursuit of her, an activity that I normally very much enjoyed, since I always liked watching a pretty girl while she trotted in front of me.
Babeau brought me down to a basement room whose window, set with bars, was at ground level and looked out onto a little garden. This “micro-chamber” was indeed very clean, as was the bed, which was also quite wide, and the bathtub was in a form that I’d never seen before: not a tub really but a sort of small wooden boat, except the water was inside rather than outside and was steaming hot. Having put the bath cloth on the bed, and stretched the peignoir on the bottom of the steam bath, Babeau came over to me and began to unbutton me.
“What, Babeau? You’re supposed to undress me? Am I a lady, then, to deserve such a pretty chambermaid?”
“Monsieur,” replied Babeau, it’s the custom here to undress the client and make sure when you’re naked that you don’t have any buboes from the plague, or carbuncles, pox or cankers on your shaft.”
“This is good,” I replied, “and as a doctor I find this rule very wise.”
“What?” she gasped. “You’re not a nobleman?”
“I am, but I am also a doctor.”
“Ah, Monseigneur,” she said, blushing, “may I tell you what I need?”
“Tell me.”
Standing up on tiptoe, she whispered a few words in my ear, and I laughed.
“This is not a problem, Babeau,” I told her. “I’ll tell you what herbs to use and where to put them.”
She thanked me a thousand times for this promise and continued the work of unbuttoning me with her smooth feminine fingers, and so I joked, “Ah, Babeau! What imprudence! If you keep on undressing me as you’re doing, you risk catching your arm in a mill wheel. Once that happens, everything goes with it: the arm, the shoulder, the breast, the buttocks! And then you end up on the other side all ground up and broken.”
She laughed. “Ah, Monsieur! You’re so funny! But alas, this cannot be! My husband is a butcher and as jealous a man as ever lived and so furious that at any hour of the day he might burst in here, his butcher’s knife in hand, shouting, ‘Where’s Babeau? If the minx cuckolds me I’ll have her guts out!’ Which is why, Monseigneur,” she said with a bow, “as handsome and well hung as you are, I won’t be caught up in your mill wheel.”
She said this so sweetly that I wasn’t hurt in the least, since I’d only spoken in jest and merely wanted to see how far her tender care would take us.
Meanwhile, Babeau, having undressed me, examined me very carefully and closely over every inch of my body. After which she was happy to declare that I was as healthy and vigorous as any mother’s son in France and, taking me by the hand, she led me over to the bathtub.
“Are you sure, Babeau,” I asked, hesitating to step in, “that your water is as healthy and clean as I am? Does it come from the Seine?”
“Are you kidding, Monsieur?” she cried. “The Seine? And while we’re at it, why not from the cesspit on the place Maubert? This water comes from our well, which is purified every year.”
I stepped in and immersed myself, comforted by her assurances. Oh, reader! What a paradise to have a body when you can bathe it! How the clear water makes you feel your firm and full parts! God knows by what good fortune bathing turns out to be not just a duty but a pleasure, whereas many of the cares we must take of our bodies demand such labour and pain—like abstaining from drinking or eating too much.
Some of the idiots of our times go about prescribing the inverse of what’s good for us, claiming, for example, that a gentleman should have sweaty armpits or smelly feet. Heavens! Do we have to stink to earn the right to be noble? And what glory is there in a royal princesse’s bragging that she hasn’t washed her hands for a week? Or in the story of the duchesse at court, about whom it was said that if she had black fingernails it was because she was in the habit of scratching her body? ’Sblood! To these very high-born and powerful ladies who spray their encrusted bodies with the most expensive perfumes in the world, I would a
thousand times rather bed the rustic Babeau, with her rosy arms and her robust body washed in clear water, shining like a newly minted écu! I’ve heard tell that there was a papist priest, speaking ex cathedra, who denounced the immorality of the bathhouses and demanded their suppression, but praised St Benoît Labre for his lack of cleanliness, his vermin and his stinking breath, which was so nauseous it caused even the most abject beggars to vomit. Good God! Can mankind sink any lower in its inhuman folly? Does one have to stink to become a saint? Is there no salvation outside of garbage?
After having let me flop about and soak in the hot water, Babeau asked me to stand up and lathered me with soap in every part of my body, leaving none out, which was, as you may easily imagine, a lively and immense pleasure, in part because it reminded me of how my Barberine at Mespech used to rub me down in my bath with her sweet hands. But how much sweeter was this soaping now that I was a man, and Babeau, in the courteous practice of her art, didn’t fail to praise the objects of her cleaning, adding to the caresses of her right hand the caresses of her words. “Oh, Monsieur,” she would say, “what strong shoulders! And what a deep chest! How muscular your arms are and how long your legs! How thick your fleece! It’s so blonde! Isn’t it a pity to shave off this hair to please our refined ladies? What’s the point or turning a man into a woman, and completely in vain, since in three days he’ll be as prickly in bed as a hedgehog? Whereas at present your hair is as soft and woolly as a lamb!” And saying this she passed her soapy hands over this and that part of my body.
As pleasant as this was, it had to come to an end, and Babeau, having rinsed me off, asked me to step out of the tub and, wrapping me in the bath cloth—which fell all the way to my toes it was so long—gave me a vigorous rub-down.
“Monsieur,” she said as I lay down on the bed, completely relaxed and stretching my arms and legs, “I have to go and I’ll send you the barber. She’s very dexterous and you’ll be very happy with her.”