by Robert Merle
But when Maillard had finally reached the end of his list of the frightful torments awaiting the sweeter half of humanity when they arrived in hell, in retribution for the activities they’d carried on with the other half, he again fell silent and prayed for a long time, and then started up again in a hushed voice:
“However great the excesses of you women and however just the punishments that will be visited upon you in hell, these are nothing in comparison with the frightful and ongoing crimes against our Holy Mother the Church, against the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, against all our saints, against God Himself, by the bloodthirsty adherents of the so-called reformed religion. Oh, my brothers! For a month, we’ve seen these damned Huguenots flood by the hundreds and hundreds into our city of Paris, laughing and sneering like devils hiding in adulterous alcoves, to attend the infamous wedding—and I say infamous wedding!—that is to unite (God Himself has veiled His eyes) a great Catholic princesse, the sister of our sovereign, with the false and sly reformed fox, Navarre. Oh, heaven! Can one really unite fire and water in an unnatural, and, I dare to say, prostituted union? Will they be able to find a single renegade bishop in this entire kingdom willing to celebrate this union, when our Holy Father the Pope opposes it with all his might? And if misfortune should prevail and this marriage take place in the teeth of his opposition, will it not be the work and fruit of Satan, who allowed the sinister leader of the Huguenots to get the ear of our poor king, who has been incited by this perfidious and corrupting counsellor to send help to the outlawed Huguenots in Flanders against the armies of the Rex Catholicissimus, Felipe II of Spain, who today stands on the ramparts of our Roman faith in Christianity?… Oh, my brothers! Will we continue to tolerate being poisoned in our city by these undesirable guests, who, swarming like maggots in a corpse, have infiltrated our houses to corrupt our beliefs and, failing that, dream only of destroying us completely, body and soul? Oh, my brothers! Believe me! All we need is a little heart and a little courage to rid ourselves for ever of this swarm of vermin and set about the holy extermination that has been recommended by our Holy Father, and that will forever assure your safety and your repose—yours, your wives’ and your children’s. Oh, my beloved brothers! If you will join in this good work, that of seizing the most sacred of swords, to extirpate the human roots of this evil heresy, condemned by God, then, I tell you, in the name of God the Father, Christ and the Holy Ghost, your salvation shall be assured and you will enter directly into Paradise with His most happy saints, and not pass through Purgatory. The blood of a single heretic, I mean a single one, will purify you of all the sins you’ve ever committed.
“Yes, my beloved brothers, verily I say unto you, had you committed up to this very minute the most heinous crimes, offences, lewdness or atrocities, even had you killed your father, mother, brother, sister and cousin, all these sins would be forgiven when you arm yourself to avenge God of these miscreants and save the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church from these stinking heretics who are trying to destroy her.”
Having bellowed these hideous words, while hammering away at the lectern with his fists, Maillard fell silent again for a few moments, before continuing in a smoother, more soft-spoken manner:
“This is the most profound grace, my brothers, that I could ever wish for you here, and now bid you pray to God that in His bountiful mercy, He assist you in the success of the just and laudable enterprise that I’ve just explained. My brothers, let us commune in the edifying and comforting thought that we will soon have extirpated all heresy in this kingdom ad maximam Dei gloriam,†† and recite together a paternoster and an Ave.”
“For the love of Heaven, Siorac,” L’Étoile whispered, “stop shaking like a decapitated duck and, for goodness’ sake, pray! Pray out loud! Everyone in here is spying on everyone else, and it would be your death, and mine as well, if anyone suspected that you oppose what you just heard.”
Casting a quick glance around me at all the eyes burning with zeal, anger and hatred, I hastened to obey the good L’Étoile, and, my heart breaking, I joined my voice to those around me who were devoutly invoking God’s help in giving them the courage to kill a significant swath of Christendom. And so I managed to recite the prayer out loud, though with some difficulties here and there in remembering the Ave Maria, despite the fact that Barberine had taught it to me as a child, and that I’d all the more happily recited it twice a day since I mixed together the Virgin Mary and Barberine in my childish imagination.
It would have been mere lip service to recite it now, among these misguided souls, had I not given it a particular inflection, praying instead for the fraternal reconciliation between the papists and ourselves so that neither of these parties should ever repeat on one another the massacre of the Michelade, which had marked my youth with such unforgettable horror.
“Siorac,” hissed L’Étoile as we finally left Saint-Eustache, “not a word, I beg you, until we reach your lodgings: someone might overhear.”
And so I had to hold myself back and swallow my anger until we were back in Maître Recroche’s atelier, which was empty, since all work was forbidden on Sundays and saints’ days, these latter having become way too numerous to suit Maître Recroche, who had little love for priests, because, he said, “every time they preach, they invent another saint and we lose another day of work: a benefit for the collection box and a disaster for us artisans”.
“My dear L’Étoile,” I said, my throat all knotted up from what I’d just heard, “are they preaching this infernal message in all the churches, chapels and abbeys of Paris?”
“The truth is that there are priests who are less rabid than Maillard, but there are also some who are worse.”
“Well,” I said, full of fear and confusion, “my good, honest friend, what was that? What was that if not an incitement to massacre?”
“Clear and obvious. The reason you’re surprised is that in the provinces you don’t go to hear Mass. But I hear this kind of language every Sunday, and if it appals me each time, it hardly surprises me any more. Oh, my dear Siorac, believe me! Don’t remain here a minute longer than you need to for your petition. Leave as soon as you can! You’d be safer in the hands of the Grand Turk than in Paris as it is now!”
As he was speaking, there came a knock on the door, and since there was no one else at home at this hour, I went to open it and, distracted as I was by the sad conversation we’d been having, I saw in front of me a tall, well-dressed woman, whom I should have recognized despite her mask, but I greeted her with reserve and asked quite coldly who it was she wished to see in our lodgings.
“But, you, my gentle brother!” she gushed, lowering her mask. “You first of all, and then, you-know-who!”
“What?” I cried. “Dame Gertrude du Luc! Well, I’m happy to see you!”
“Well, my beloved brother,” said the blonde Norman, throwing her arms around my neck and hugging me so hard I could hardly breathe, “what a comfort to have you here after so many months!”
As she said this, she pressed me even harder against her bosom, and I wouldn’t have known how to avoid her hot lips, which were peppering my face with kisses, had I not spied over her shoulder, just in the nick of time, my good L’Étoile, looking very disapproving of these goings-on, and on his way out the door. Indeed, he slammed the door shut behind him, since he detested extramarital affairs, despite—or because?—of the fact that he’d found so little love in his own marriage.
“Madame,” I said as I took her by the hand and seated her on a stool, since, seated, she seemed less dangerous to me, “what are you doing here? You’ve appeared miraculously, like a dea ex machina,‡‡ at the very moment I need you the most!”
“It’s no miracle,” she explained. “Like everyone else, I’ve come to see the marriage of Princesse Margot to that infamous heretic, though my heart bleeds at the idea of this unnatural union. And when I was passing through Montfort-l’Amaury, Dame Béqueret, who’d just received a letter from you, told me where you
are staying. But is it really true, my pretty brother,” she said, batting an eye and attempting to rise—a movement I arrested with a hand on her shoulder, “is it true that you have such an urgent need for me?”
“What, Madame? Didn’t Dame Béqueret tell you what request I’d made of her?”
“She told me she’d agreed to your request, but didn’t tell me what the nature of the request was.”
“And you, yourself, Madame—”
“Oh, Pierre,” she cried, “don’t call me Madame! Do you love me so little?” she cooed, feigning such affliction that I was worried she was going to renew her assaults on me.
“My gentle sister,” I soothed, increasing the pressure of my hand on her shoulder, but this only made her turn her head and bury her face in the back of my hand, on which she planted hot kisses (and, oh heavens! such feminine wiles are sure to make me weak at the knees and break down my resistance!), “if I asked you, would you consent to lodge with Dame Béqueret in Montfort? Would she welcome you back?”
“Assuredly so! But what would I do there? Why would I want to be so far away from my Samson, and from you, and Paris, and all these festivities surrounding the marriage of the princesse?”
“Ah, Madame,” I cried, “for Samson’s sake, you must! Here in Paris, because of his religion and his candour, he risks such cruel dangers.”
And I quickly recounted our nasty dust-up with the religious procession, where my beloved brother, for failing to doff his cap before the mutilated statue of Notre-Dame de la Carole, nearly lost his life.
“Ah,” she gasped, “I feared as much! He’s so pure and noble and is as innocent as an angel, my gentle little Huguenot!” (“Ah,” I thought, “at least you didn’t call him an ‘infamous’ Huguenot!”) “But by the Blessed Virgin, my vengeance would be swift and terrible if they killed him,” she cried, placing her hand on a little dagger she wore in her sash, by which I could tell that our beautiful Norman had only just arrived from her journey, and yet she looked as fresh and vigorous as if she’d just got out of bed.
“Your vengeance wouldn’t impress me much,” I said, “or you either, if Samson were no longer alive. My sister, we must decide and decide immediately. Samson cannot remain here, announcing on every street corner that he’s of the reformed religion and that he abominates idols and saints!”
“But what can we do? What can we do?” cried Dame Gertrude, very alarmed.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do: forget all the wedding festivities, which you have so little taste for. Take my Samson and carry him on your lap to Montfort-l’Amaury. By day, put him in the druggist’s shop among the glass bottles in the office; by night, where you know; on Sunday, at Mass. And by God’s will, he’ll be safe. I fear the worst, if he remain here.”
At this, Dame Gertrude fell silent, her eyelids half-closed over her green eyes (in this she reminded me of the beautiful cat we have in Mespech), and as she was biting her lips I could see that she was hesitating between the joys she’d promised herself at the splendid princely wedding festivities and, on the other side, the great love she bore my pretty Samson—though she was hardly a faithful lover. Moreover, seeing her all bedecked like a queen, and almost as resplendent in all her finery as Madame des Tourelles, I imagined that she had as much desire to be seen in the capital as to see—that she would have wished to go shopping at her leisure along the grand’rue Saint-Honoré and around the Pont Saint-Michel, to stick her head in at the court where her beauty might lead to some gallant encounters, and not just to observe the royal marriage ceremony, but to be able to tell her friends and relatives back in Normandy all about it. Instead of that, I was inviting her to go isolate herself in the deserted countryside, where she would even be unable to see my pretty brother by day (buried as he would be among his jars), and have nothing to do but lie around in bed, like a marmot underground, harbouring her strength for the coming night.
“My sister,” I said somewhat icily, “whatever you decide, since Maître Béqueret wishes to have Samson there, and Samson wishes to be there and continue his work as an apothecary, and since he’s dying of boredom here, I’m resolved to take him to Montfort-l’Amaury tomorrow, whether you join us or not.”
“Ah, my brother!” she cried as she stood up, an opportune teardrop lighting up her green eyes. “You’re so stiff, mean and abrupt with me! Fie, then! Is this any way to recognize the great and fraternal love I bear you? Scarcely have I arrived in Paris before you take Samson away from me—or, if I agree to follow him, you keep me from these beautiful festivities!”
“Well, Gertrude,” I laughed, “this is what I expected: you want it all! Both Samson and the festivities! And what else I know not. But my sister,” I continued, “why don’t you leave for Montfort-l’Amaury tomorrow with Samson. Stay one week with him. After which you can return alone—and I mean alone!—for the princely festivities. Once the wedding is over, you can go straight back to Montfort.”
“Oh, my brother! What a saint you are!” she cried. “You’ve found the only happy way out of my predicament!”
This said, the little teardrops in her eyes evaporated in the rush of pleasure she felt, and she planted two or three kisses on my face and spun round, her skirts ballooning around her, crying: “It’s all decided! I’m leaving! I’m leaving! Oh, my brother! I’ve got wings! Where is this angel of God that I can carry him off?”
I looked back at her as I bounded down the staircase, and saw her lift her skirts to go faster, her beautiful, pale complexion reddening with happiness, her green eyes as intense as those of a cat who has just caught a sparrow in its little teeth.
When she entered his room, she saw nothing of the tiny chamberette where Samson was still sleeping—Giacomi being, I thought, still at his devotions. Neither the badly laid flooring, nor the dirty walls, nor the miserable furnishings, nor the open window overlooking the Cimetière des Innocents, nothing except my pretty brother lying naked on his mat in the stifling heat of August. He lay there, resplendent in his virile symmetry, white skin, copper-coloured hair and azure eyes—though of his eyes, since he was still asleep, nothing could be seen.
“Oh, Blessed Virgin!” cried Dame Gertrude, joining her hands together. “Doesn’t he just look like Jesus! And aren’t I right to claim that he’s divinely beautiful?”
“Divine, Madame?” I smiled.
“Oh, my brother,” she cried, giving me a little tap on my hand, “what an evil man you are, making me remember my sins when I’m trying to forget them as soon as I commit them, hoping to put off my repentance till later!”
“My sister,” I said, kissing the hand that had tapped me, which was warm, sleek and perfumed, “I ask your pardon a thousand times for having been such a spoilsport—I who place such joys above all the others! But, my sister,” I continued, “not a word more. I’ll leave you to your beautiful sins. I’ll come and fetch you for supper. And tomorrow we’ll leave for Montfort at daybreak.”
And placing two kisses on her sweet cheeks, I left, closing the door on her—or rather on them, not without a bitter sigh and a quarrelsome ache in my heart.
The solitude of my little room was too horrible, so I went downstairs into the atelier, feeling all dreamy and immersed in my thoughts. I didn’t think that anyone was there, since Miroul was out tending to the horses, but then I saw Fogacer, who, dressed all in black, walking back and forth on his long legs, his long arms behind his back, when he saw me, arched his diabolical eyebrows and said with a sinuous smile:
“Well, you’ve come back down rather quickly from your little perch, mi fili. So the Delilah I saw in front of me as I walked along the rue de la Ferronnerie was not directing her fatal charms to you, but to Samson. But perhaps, mi fili, if I may believe what I’ve heard, the noble ladies who have their gallants’ hair removed are not unknown to you either. Women are so like grasshoppers in a field! Causa mali tanti femina sola fuit.”§§
“Heavens!” I objected. “Is one example sufficient to determine the lot?
Parcite paucarum diffundere crimen in omnes,¶¶ said Ovid.”
“What?” gasped Fogacer. “Ovid! Why, everyone knows he was a petticoat-chaser! What kind of authority is that? Trust rather my Plautus: qui potest mulieres vitare vitet.”||||
“Ah, but Fogacer,” I laughed, “listen instead to wise Seneca, multum interest utrum peccare aliquis nolit an nesciat.”***
“Ah, how well I know!” groaned Fogacer. “I know all too well! But I’m not so inclined! Trahit sua quemque voluptas.”†††
Having thus pedantically traded Latin maxims in the spirit of morning courtesy and fun, we gave each other a big hug. This kind of jargon exists in every social group: venerable medical doctors exchange Ciceronian phrases in Latin, while the lordlings of the court exclaim “by my conscience!” and “I could just die!” which are certainly less profound and substantial than our beautiful Latin, since these gentlemen’s memories are not garnished with such gems.
“I saw you at Maillard’s sermon yesterday,” said Fogacer, “looking superb in your new pearly doublet, but seeming very disgruntled at having to listen to his calls for carnage, which I found, quite to the contrary, most pleasing and a comfort to my philosophy.”
“What? Pleasing? A comfort?” I gasped. “Isn’t this precisely the opposite of God’s teachings?”
“But which God are you referring to, mi fili?” asked Fogacer, arching his diabolical eyebrows. “The God of the Evangelists, who is sweet and beneficent? Or the God of the Old Testament?”
“But it’s the same God!”
“Oh, no, it’s not! The God of the Old Testament strikes down Onan for having sown his seed on the ground, and burns Sodom, destroys the Sodomites, massacres untold numbers of honest idolaters by the hand of Israel and tortures sinners in hell. Isn’t it obvious that, far from having created us, it’s man who created Him in his own sad, cruel and spiteful image?”