by Robert Merle
Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking as I walked here and there, window shopping in the Parisian manner, that there wasn’t a single shop in this street (where there are so many beautiful ones) that I wouldn’t have “licked the floor” of (as they say here), enjoying the curiosities displayed in each, so much so that I finally went into one and bought a top, amusing myself by taking it between my thumb and index finger and spinning it—just the way, as a child, I’d enjoyed the many tops Faujanet had carved for me, as well as some that were activated by pulling a string wound tightly round the middle. I paid two sols for this top that so delighted me, but then, remembering the nest where I’d developed my first feathers, my Huguenot conscience began to bother me about this crazy and ultimately useless expense (after all the money I’d spent in the baths), and, to calm this inner voice, I told myself that, when I returned to Mespech, I’d give this top to my little sister Catherine, though she was now sixteen and was probably more interested in turning men’s heads than spinning tops.
As I passed through the atelier of Maître Recroche, Coquillon, very focused on not working, gave me a smile from ear to ear and Baragran bid me a civil good morning, informing me that Miroul was out in the stable tending to the horses, but that my brothers, he surmised, weren’t up yet since he hadn’t heard them stirring. As for my little fly from hell, though she appeared refreshed and rested after the eleven hours she’d slept in my chaste arms, she was sewing, sitting very straight on her stool, looking exceptionally pretty, but kept her eyes down as I passed, not giving me a look, a smile or a word of welcome.
However, no sooner had I retired to my micro-chamber than there came a knock on my door and Alizon appeared, her face expressionless and her black eyes shining more brilliantly than a ball of jade; she looked at me without a trace of love and a very stand-offish air and said:
“Monsieur, a chambermaid, who belongs, I believe, to the household of Monsieur de L’Étoile brought this letter here for you.”
She handed me the letter stiffly, and was turning to leave when I took her by her cold shoulder and exclaimed:
“Alison, what’s this? Are you angry with me?”
“Monsieur,” she replied, pulling away, her eyes now suddenly full of anger, “have you even looked at me? Am I so ugly and decrepit? Am I some slattern in a slum? Or an old hag on her filthy bed? Do you really think that the Baronne des Tourelles, when you take off her feathers, is more beautiful than me?”
“Not at all, Alizon,” I said, seeing where this anger was leading, “you’re a perfect beauty, young and smooth, clean as a new coin, comely and fresh, with breasts to die for!”
“You’re making fun of me, Monsieur,” she spat, her jade eyes throwing sparks at me. “I’m old, wrinkled and I stink. If I weren’t so awful would you ever have slept twelve hours by my side without taking what was yours?”
“But Alizon,” I protested, “how could I have done that after you made me ashamed to have bought you?”
“How could you have paid attention to me when I was angry? The wine was poured! You should have drunk it! And not offend me a second time by despising me!”
“Despise you! Quite the contrary, I respected you and didn’t want to trade coins for you!”
“Blessed Virgin!” she screamed, beside herself. “I don’t want that kind of respect! It cheapens my body, which, Monsieur, is more beautiful and smoother than those of your noble whores!”
“Alizon, no one knows this better that I, who saw you entirely naked!”
“Appetite comes by eating, not by looking!” cried Alizon, her claws out in her fury, and, not daring to scratch my face, she dug them into her own palms.
“Could I have awakened you, Alizon, when you were sleeping like a log?”
“A log!” she screamed, each of my words seeming only to increase her anger. “Am I a log? Would I have been a log when you took me? Oh, no! Here, Monsieur, take your money! I don’t want it!”
And ripping the three sols from her pocket, she sent them flying across the room, and after this demonstration stood there, arms crossed, defying me, trembling from head to foot and looking at me with fire in her eyes. I walked over to the door, leant against it and said calmly, “Alizon, pick up those coins. They’re not for you, they’re for Henriot.”
“What?” she said, all of a sudden softening. “You remember his name?”
“I remember his name and everything you told me about him: how he threw you such gracious smiles and glances while his nurse was suckling him, and how he would caress her breast with his little pink fingers.”
“Those are my same words!” she said with great feeling, and from the pillar of salt that she’d become, she turned back into a woman, saying softly, “Monsieur, do you like children?”
“I love them.”
“Oh, Monsieur,” she said in a voice trembling with tears, “I’m so sad that the experience of the baths came between us! I dreamt it could be another way. Do you despise me? Tell me!”
“Absolutely not! You only worked there out of necessity and not for greed.”
Going over to her, I took her in my arms and my little fly from hell let herself be comforted without any more buzzing or biting.
And while she quieted down like a wounded sparrow in the hollow of my hand, I held her close for a long moment, wondering whether or not I should lay her down on my bed; yet, despite the enormous desire I now felt for her, I abstained, thinking that Alizon might not be very happy about it later, having these three nasty sols between us that so wrecked everything, and that left us, whatever we did or didn’t do, all confused and ashamed. Meanwhile, as we stood there quietly, holding each other, and no act following upon the words we’d had, things might have become embarrassing had I not suddenly remembered the top I’d just purchased and wondered why I hadn’t thought of offering it to little Henriot.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she said, pulling away and laughing out loud (in part, I think, to hide her emotion), “that’s men for you! My little boy is much too young to play with a top! I’m going to keep it for him for when he’s old enough to enjoy it. Oh, Monsieur, thank you so much! You have such a generous heart!”
And throwing herself back in my arms she covered my face with little kisses. She then picked up the coins and repocketed them in her skirt, gave me another quick kiss, left my room with tears welling up in her eyes and fairly danced down the stairs.
I unfolded the letter Alizon had given me, and it was, indeed, as she had believed, from Pierre de L’Étoile, who begged me to join him for dinner that same day at eleven o’clock in his lodgings in the rue Trouvevache, where I would find other guests, who, “though not of the gentler sex, will not fail to please you: the very illustrious Ambroise Paré and the very learned Petrus Ramus, assuredly the most knowledgeable man in the kingdom in philosophy and mathematics”.
I could hardly contain my joy at this invitation: “Oh, the good L’Étoile!” I cried out loud, before going immediately to knock on my brothers’ door to tell them I wouldn’t be dining with them at midday at Gautier’s restaurant in the rue de la Truanderie. I found Giacomi standing at the tiny basin, washing his face, and Samson stretched out on the bed, completely naked, half asleep but looking very sad.
“Oh, my beloved brother,” he said as he got up to greet me with a hug, “I see little profit in being with you in this city that I like so little. I never see you, neither last night at dinner nor during the night you spent at the baths. And now you’re off to dine with Monsieur de L’Étoile, and this evening you’re invited to sup with the Baronne des Tourelles. At least promise me, Pierre, that you’ll stay there tonight given how dangerous the streets are after dark.”
Hearing this, Giacomi turned around and, as he towelled off his face, gave me a quick and knowing grin, having understood that my brother’s recommendation was absent of any malice.
“Samson, I promise you, at least as far as that is up to me,” I replied, with a wink at Giacomi. “But Samson, you have to
be patient. We’re not in Mespech, where we spend all our time together day and night, never leaving each other, but in Paris, where diverse affairs and obligations necessarily cause us to go our different ways.”
“Well,” complained Samson, as he ran the fingers of his left hand through his copper-coloured hair, “if that’s the case, then, my brother, you should have left me in Montfort-l’Amaury in Maître Béqueret’s pharmacy. At least there I could have earned some money working in his shop, instead of wasting it as I do here in this modern Babylon. You don’t need my presence to ask for the king’s pardon, and what pleasure can I find in this Paris that’s so filthy and corrupted and whose inhabitants, so blind to the pure truth of Holy Scripture, worship stone idols carried through the streets? Oh, my brother, all I want is to leave as quickly as possible, like Lot, this ignominious Sodom before the Lord visits His wrath on the leprosy of its iniquities and reduces it to ashes.”
Having said this, he turned away and went to wash in the little basin, leaving me speechless at this sombre sermon that predicted with apparent certainty the destruction of the capital. “Oh, my poor brother,” I thought, “how can you, in your zeal, have such a cruel thought? What do you know of the world, since you’re so blind? Do you flatter yourself in believing that Montpellier is less corrupt than Paris simply because it’s smaller? And don’t you remember that Lot himself, whom you like to call ‘just’ could resist neither wine nor the lascivious ardour of women?”
While Giacomi was dressing and Samson was washing, both had fallen silent, and I went to sit down on a stool, full of my thoughts, astonished at my brother’s fury, yet still able to admire his smooth, polished beauty, which Babette hadn’t needed to work on to make it conform to the current Parisian customs. I doubted as I looked at him that there was any connection between hair and strength, since Samson certainly possessed the latter without being able to lay claim to any of the former; Delilah, in her fatal designs, certainly wouldn’t have had to cut very much of his hair since, despite its profusion of curls, it was very short. Yet as beautiful as this feminine smoothness was, it did not hide his muscles—though they were not hard and bulging like Monsieur de Nançay’s, but enveloped in his pleasant rounded flesh, all of which suggested that Samson wasn’t a man so much by the hardness of his flesh as by the design of his body, with his large shoulders and slender waist.
Meanwhile, Giacomi had finished dressing, and made a sign that he wanted to speak with me, so I left their room and returned to mine, where the master-at-arms soon joined me.
“My brother,” he said, “why not let Samson leave for Montfortl-’Amaury, since he wants so much to go! He’s not in his element here, since he’s developed il dente avvelenato‡ and is so set and rigid in his beliefs that it’s dangerous for him to wander the streets, given how bitterly and stridently the Parisians hate the Huguenots.”
“Giacomi,” I agreed, “everything you’ve said I’ve been repeating to myself ever since the fanatics of the procession of Notre-Dame de la Carole nearly lynched him. And yet, I still can’t make up my mind. My father gave him into my care and I hesitate to send him so far away.”
“But you can’t watch out for him any better here than there. You’re so busy in Paris with so many different affairs,” he said with a smile, “that all Samson can do is sit around and mourn his distant glass bottles. Empty hours weigh on us much more than full ones.”
“But what about you, Giacomi?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s not the same for me! I’m going today to work in my new position as assistant to Sergeant Rabastens, which we discussed while you were with Monsieur de Nançay.”
“What, Giacomi?” I cried. “Assistant to Rabastens! You, a master-at-arms? You, a person of quality?”
“I’m not ashamed,” said Giacomi with a smile. “Rabastens is a good man, and I can’t live without working on my art, which is as necessary as my daily bread. And, to tell you the truth, life being as expensive as it is in Paris, I wouldn’t mind earning a few sols to help maintain my beloved brothers’ purse.”
“Oh, Giacomi,” I gushed, embracing him fondly and planting kisses on both cheeks, which he returned just as enthusiastically, “everything I have is yours, you know.”
“And all I have is yours,” echoed Giacomi gravely, “including my labour and the few coins I might earn. Maybe in a week’s work in my new position, I could squeeze out enough money to buy you a new doublet!”
“Ah, Giacomi,” I said with such a poignant sigh it could have turned a windmill, “who could have guessed, when I had this one made back in Montpellier with Madame de Joyeuse’s écus and which I went proudly to show off to her, that it would be so utterly despised in Paris! And despite this tiny repair—this repairette, as Maître Recroche would say. Good God! Am I nothing more than my clothes? Are my bravery and my knowledge worth nothing? Oh, Giacomi, the world and its customs please me so little, that if I were a papist, I’d put on a monk’s habit.”
“L’abito non fa il monaco!”§ Giacomi laughed. “In any case, there are habits and there are habits and yours must be of the finest! You wouldn’t rest until you were the abbot!”
At this, we both laughed. And on the promise I made him to go to watch his lessons at the Louvre that afternoon, he left me; I, taking my writing case and my paper down to the atelier, joined Baragran and Alizon at the large table there. They interrupted their work with a series of jokes as soon as they saw me carving my pen.
“Go ahead and mock me,” I told them, “it won’t make me write any worse!”
“Oh, Monsieur! I’d never dare!” said Alizon. “How clever you must be to put words to paper! I can’t write but I can read a little,” she said modestly, “but it’s a challenge to be able to read even a short letter! Now I’ve spoken, and won’t open my mouth while you’re doing your writing.”
“Me neither!” said Baragran.
“Nor I!” added Coquillon, giving me a wide smile with his big mouth. And this said, the apprentice went back to his labours, which consisted of annoying the cat with a ball made of rags that he waved here and here on a thread.
“I thank you, all three,” I replied.
But of the three, only two kept their word. For when I was at the end of the first page, Alizon said, “What a long letter, Monsieur! Are you writing to a lady?”
“No. To my father.”
“And to Madame, your mother?” she asked.
“No, she died in childbirth.”
“That’s how we’ll all die, we women,” sighed Alizon, “and without ever reaching the end of our natural lives.”
“Quiet, there, Alizon,” said Baragran. “Can’t you see you’re disturbing our gentleman?”
“Quiet, yourself, you big idiot!” Alizon shot back, with her back up and hissing like a snake. “Monsieur,” she said, softening her tone and sounding more like a baby lamb, “did I disturb you with my babbling?”
“Not at all.”
“A thousand pardons, even so, Monsieur. In the future I’ll be as mute as a log,” she continued with a knowing smile as she pronounced this last word.
But this was, like the first one, an empty promise, for, seeing me put my seal on the first letter and immediately take up another, she said, “Ah, Monsieur, now you’re writing to a lady.”
“Not at all. I’m writing to an apothecary in Montfort-l’Amaury.”
“In Montfort-l’Amaury! I know a Guillaume who’s going there tomorrow to his farm and he could bring you back the response in two days’ time.”
“But would he take my letter? He doesn’t know me.”
“Yes, but he knows me,” insisted Alizon, “and he’ll do it if I ask him.”
“Marvellous, Alizon! A thousand thanks!”
So I gave her a grateful look, thinking to myself that patience is a great virtue, since, having allowed the girl to chat while I was writing, I had gained a much more rapid dispatch.
When my letter to Maître Béqueret was waxed shut with m
y seal, I gave it to Alizon and she immediately placed it in her lap as though it were a love letter I’d written her, and sent many smiles and glances my way, just as she’d described Henriot as doing. All of this couldn’t help but warm my heart in the midst of all the thorns that I’d felt concerning my doublet, though it didn’t yet blunt their points.
Such is my nature, however, that from every difficulty I manage to rebound just as quickly as a ball once it hits the ground. Just as Alizon was giving me that tender glance, eleven o’clock sounded on the clock tower of the chapel of the Saints-Innocents, so I set forth from my lodgings to go to the rue Trouvevache, blessing at every step the beneficence of Monsieur de L’Étoile, and my heart beating eagerly at the thought that I was going to dine in such learned and famous company.
Whether it was his salary as Grand Audiencier or an inheritance from his parents that was the source of his wealth, the lodgings of Pierre de L’Étoile were neither miserly nor poor, and the dining room where he received us (situated on the first floor) was set off by its beautiful, well-polished oak woodwork, a fireplace so large you could have roasted an entire calf in it and a series of large windows which were furnished not with small, leaded stained-glass panes, but with large, square, transparent ones, as was currently the style in the noble houses of Paris. Pierre de L’Étoile was alone and was clothed, as usual, in black, and seemed especially melancholic when I arrived. I complimented him on this room, adding, “Ah, Monsieur, what wonderful light this series of windows gives the room!”
“Ah, yes,” he replied after embracing me warmly, “but as light as my lodgings are, their inhabitant is sombre.”
“In what way, Monsieur?” I answered in surprise. “Are you suffering?”
“Infinitely. This year has been a most unfortunate one for me, afflicted as I have been by divers ills of both body and mind, hit with extraordinary losses of goods, overwhelmed by lawsuits, rejected by my family, despised and hated by all, even my churlish valets and chambermaids… And, on top of all that, so worked by my sins,” he added, lowering his voice and his eyes downcast, “that I fear both death and life itself equally.”