by Robert Merle
“Well,” said my hostess, “it’s all a matter of taste among our gallant ladies. Some want their popinjays to be as smooth as their chambermaids, while others prefer them all hairy as the style used to be. And do you,” she added, lowering her voice, “require some company for the night so the hours will pass more quickly, if you have trouble sleeping?”
“Thank you, no, good woman!” I replied shaking my head. “I’ve no taste for it since my head is so full of dreams!”
“Well,” whispered the mistress of the baths, “appetite grows, you know, by what nourishes it!”
And certainly, to see her massive heap sitting there on her stool, one could not doubt she spoke the truth!
“No doubt you’re right. But some nourishment must come first,” I smiled, “and tonight I have too much to dream about to be tempted by other food.”
“Well, come to think of it,” said my hostess with a wink, “it’s better this way, Monseigneur, since Alizon, whom you like so much, is engaged with another gentleman tonight.”
“What?” I said, as if stung by a honey bee. “Is she here?”
“Not yet. She’s due to arrive at eight.”
“Then, good woman, disengage her from this fellow, and send her straight to me!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said with a foxy smile emerging from the folds of her visage, “since the gentleman isn’t French and must pay double the usual price.”
“Then I’ll pay triple,” I snapped coldly, well aware of the extremities to which this disputation might lead.
“Triple?” said my hostess. “That would hardly do!”
“Good woman,” I frowned, “don’t go flying too high. I might not follow!”
“There, there, my good man,” she countered, “don’t get your dander up! This gentleman finds great satisfaction in his commerce with your pretty Alizon, and I’d lose his business if I didn’t satisfy him!”
“You’ll lose mine if you ask too much of me!”
“I doubt it!” she hissed, her eyes disappearing within the folds of her eyelids. “You care about Alizon, and Alizon needs me, in order to pay for the care of her little Henriot. Moreover, I’m not without a conscience! I promised Alizon to another gentleman and I always keep my promises. That’s my rule. I wouldn’t break it for less than an écu.”
“An écu!” I stammered, open-mouthed. “An écu to assuage your conscience! An écu instead of six sols! That’s usury! And of this écu, how much will go to Alizon?”
“Three sols!” replied my hostess as if it went without saying.
“’Sblood!” I fumed. “Is that justice? Believe me when I tell you that for so meanly wishing to win everything, you risk losing everything—this gentleman’s business, mine too and Alizon’s services. I’m going to see to this right now!”
Having said this, I angrily turned on my heels and had reached the door of the baths when I heard her whistling, raspy voice croak, “Thirty sols, then!”
So distressed was I by this ugly and sordid business that I threw the thirty sols on the counter and, without a word, followed Babeau, who was waiting for me with the towel and robe pressed to her bosom. I needed, moreover, to wash and enjoy Alizon’s company for as long as possible before leaving Paris, which I expected to do soon, though it would be under circumstances I could never have imagined.
I was, in my unappeasable anger, more mute than a carp in a torrent while Babeau undressed me and led me to the bath, where she soaped me down, as I’ve described before.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she counselled, “there’s no pleasure or solace to bathe in such a state as you’re in, all embroiled in your anger! There’s no use getting so upset at the way the world is, where the fat cats gobble up the little mice. What can you do? In my village there’s a saying that goes: ‘There are no good masters, just some who are less wicked than others. You just have to take ’em as the Good Lord made ’em.’”
“Did you know, Babeau,” I frowned, “that I was accused of spoiling you last time by giving you a sol.”
“Blessed Virgin, do I know it? God knows I heard an earful about it! And what a fool I was to go crowing about it in front of you-know-who!”
“So don’t go crowing about this one,” I cautioned, when she’d pulled my robe about me as I stepped from the bath. “And you’ll find the herbs you need stuffed in my stockings.”
“Oh, Monseigneur! A thousand thanks for what you’ve done for me!” gushed Babeau as she slipped the coin in her pocket and stood before me, her strong red arms crossed over her large breasts and gazing at me with great fondness. The poor wench earned but two sols a day and yet she was strong and dedicated in her work and happy to be alive. “Alizon was right,” she added, “when she said that, nobleman that you are, you’re as good and generous as an angel.”
“She said that?” I laughed, realizing that my thoughts at this moment, as I appreciated her womanly charms, made me feel more like a devil than an angel.
“She said that and a lot more,” replied Babeau, “she’s so fond of you. But Monsieur, may I take my leave, I’ve got my work to do?”
“Be off with you, then, Babeau.”
And off she went, after depositing a quick kiss on my cheek. Comforted by her kindness, I threw myself onto the cot in my little room, remembering how my father had observed, after the plague in Sarlat, that the poor possessed a kind of rough, courageous thirst for life that astonished him. ’Tis true enough of all the Babeaus, Alizons and Babettes, and of so many other wenches whose ranks fill our kingdom but whom we scarcely see, so focused are we on the those who parade themselves across the centre of the world’s stage shining like foam and yet who consist of the same empty brilliance.
Babeau having taken her leave, and although I felt quite relaxed and refreshed by the bath, I couldn’t help feeling a little apprehensive as I waited for Alizon to arrive, unable to guess how she might feel about my having bought another night with her, as she was so quick to take offence with me. And fleeing the thought that she might be upset with me, I fell into a deep study, no less painful, reflecting on poor Dr d’Assas, who had drifted into the other world just as he had lived in this one, very sweetly and without taking any pains over the transition, being happy and easy about everything, even in death. But this thought was of little comfort when I considered that the grim reaper makes no exceptions for those we love, be it d’Assas, Uncle Sauveterre or my father, who, at more than fifty years, though still happy and vigorous, I never thought of without some apprehension about the day of his departure, when he would leave me alone on this earth entirely cut off from him.
But then, to relieve my chagrin, I administered to myself some of that mental medicine that never failed to cure me of my melancholy, at least for a while, and which consisted of thinking about the wenches who had shown me such kindness from time to time, about the way their eyes shone and about their comely bodies. And, soothed by these memories, I never failed to find marvellous comfort in them, and finally, my anger and sadness assuaged, I drifted off into sleep. And into the dreams that awaited me there, dreams of holding Alizon naked in my arms, a joy that, had I been awake, I would have banished from my thoughts—but sleep, as everyone knows, allows us to sin without sinning, since our will has no part of the visions and emotions that are born in us by the agitation of our animal spirits, our conscience itself being asleep. These delights gradually became so acute and so lively that I awoke and, blinking in the candlelight like Adam on that first dawn, I saw that Alizon herself, and not merely her ghost, was lying in my arms, as naked as I had dreamt her, an encounter in which I found such marvellous contentment. When the tumult she couldn’t have failed to provoke had subsided, I discovered an ardour and a lust for life I hadn’t experienced since our departure from Mespech: proof positive that my medicine and my severe Calvinist theology could never peacefully coexist.
“Ah, Monsieur,” whispered Alizon when we recovered our ability to speak, “when I came and saw you here p
lunged into such a deep sleep, with such a smile of delight on your lips, I wanted to find my way into your dreams without waking you. I don’t believe I succeeded.”
“Ah, but you’re mistaken, my sweet,” I replied, holding her close, “for it was you I was dreaming of!”
“Oh, Monsieur, are you making sport with me? Would you swear ’tis so by the Blessed Virgin whose medallion you wear on the chain around your neck?”
“Absolutely!” I replied, happy to be able to swear without blasphemy, since I do not consider Mary to be the idol that papists have made of Her.
“Oh, Pierre,” she laughed, her black eyes shining, “it makes me so happy to hear you say it, since I’ve doubted you had the same appetite for me that I’ve felt for you—which is why, when I saw you sleeping naked on the bed, I undressed and lay with you so that you’d be too sleepy not to caress me.”
“Alizon,” I laughed aloud, “is this the latest style in Paris, that the women have their way with their men by force?”
“Oh, Monsieur!” she replied, her smile radiant with candour, “I would have done so when first we met if I’d had the means to best you!”
Her witty retort seemed so Parisian in its effrontery that I nearly split my gut laughing, but I also felt deeply moved by the great tenderness Alizon had felt for me and that she’d concealed so artfully all this time.
But having laughed with me, Alizon suddenly fell silent, and since all I could see was her hair, with her pretty face buried in my shoulder and neck (where I felt her breath), I thought that she must have fallen asleep after the hard work she’d put in at Recroche’s atelier. But suddenly she exclaimed, “What a beautiful medallion you have here. Pure gold! And so finely worked, and so old!”
“My mother gave it to me on her deathbed, and asked me to wear it always.”
“Oh, Monsieur,” she continued, “I’m so happy to discover your pious zeal! And also to have caught sight of you in your bejewelled doublet at the good priest Maillard’s sermon, since that hypocrite Recroche, who has no love for you, told Baragran and me that he thought you were a heretic in disguise, you and your pretty brother.”
“But wait, Alizon!” I gasped, trying to laugh. “You mean that you’d love me less if I were a Huguenot?”
“Oh, Monsieur,” she groaned, grinding her teeth, “if that were the case, I would not only refuse to touch you with the tips of my fingers, but I’d consider you more horrible and disgusting than a leper, so much do I abhor these offspring of the Devil!”
Hearing this, I was glad she was nestled into my neck and couldn’t see my face and the horrible grimace I couldn’t repress, feeling devastated to be so suddenly the object of such violent hatred.
“You really detest them so much, Alizon?” I said when I’d regained control of my voice.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she wailed in fury, “I consider them the most abominable monsters in all creation, and I’d toss them alive into the most cruel torments and from there into hell, to be slowly roasted for the rest of eternity.”
“What?” I gasped. “You really hate them so much? What have they done to you? Aren’t they human beings after all?”
“What they’ve done to me,” replied Alizon, with such fury that I felt her body trembling against mine, “is to want to take away our saints!”
“Our saints?” I replied. “But many people even in the Catholic Church believe that there are too many saints.”
“Oh, Monsieur,” she cried, “believe me! There will never be enough of them!”
“And why would that be?” I said, bewildered.
“Because we don’t have to work on saints’ days! Because these good saints (whom God the Father and the Blessed Virgin will bless for ever in their goodness) lighten our workload by fifty-five days a year, giving us every month four Sundays more. So, for example, this August, we have three—not counting the Assumption: St Lawrence, St Peter and St Bartholomew. Unfortunately, St Bartholomew’s day falls on a Sunday this year.”
“Which means one less day off, my poor dear!”
“Well, not really,” she explained, “since the custom is that if a saint’s day falls on a Sunday, we get to quit work at noon on the day before. And this custom is so established and so supported by our priests that even Maître Recroche wouldn’t dare oppose it.”
Having said this, she fell silent, and, being so exhausted from her long day in the atelier and the tumult I’ve described, as well as from the fury that had just shaken her, she instantly fell into a deep sleep like a child, her head in the hollow of my shoulder, and her light breath on my neck. And as I thought about what she’d just said—which had so shaken me—I realized that if Fortune had so arranged it that I’d been born into her condition, I wouldn’t have thought any differently, exhausted as she was by her fourteen hours of labour every day, not counting the nights she had to spend here. At which point, I reflected that the Catholic Church, as tyrannical and occasionally cruel as it was in the application of its power, as excessive as its complacency was about popular superstition, was perhaps more attuned to the needs of the poor than was our Church, providing them, in all the feast days of its innumerable saints, both the pleasure and repose without which their days would have been an endless and unbearable Calvary. So one can understand that, in addition to the bloodthirsty sermons they heard from the priests on Sundays, the hardworking Parisians had their own reasons for feeling for the Huguenots a great and strident detestation: a Calvinist victory would have extended their living hell by fifty-five days a year. I remembered how our miller Coulondre had made the same observation when my father had, on his own authority, converted all the servants of Mespech to the Protestant faith.
“Alizon,” I thought—saddened by her words, yet moved so deeply by the fact that her head on my shoulder weighed no more than a sparrow, “it’s by an accident of birth that I’m a Huguenot, and isn’t it a pity that you love me for my person, but hate me for my Church, to the point that I must hide who I am to preserve your friendship. Poor girl! And poor kingdom as well, that we cannot hold a tender young wench in our arms without having our hearts at war over the way we worship God!”
The next morning, I was overwhelmed with joy at the reception I received in the fencing room from the Baron de Quéribus, who did not share the zeal of his Church and didn’t give a fig whether or not I was a Protestant.
“Ah, Siorac!” he cried, embracing me warmly. “How happy I am to see you! It feels like for ever that you’ve been away! I don’t know what I’ll do when you leave Paris, as I understand you’re intending to do. Giacomi tells me you’ve given up on obtaining your pardon.”
“Quéribus,” I answered, taking him by the arm and strolling up and down the room, “I’m no baron but a younger son, so I have to get started on my practice of medicine without further delay.”
“But why don’t you establish your practice here in Paris?” cried Quéribus, pulling me to a halt and entreating me with his azure eyes. “I’m sure I could get the Duc d’Anjou to set you up with Dr Miron and your friend Fogacer!”
“Quéribus, I’m deeply touched by your friendship and concern, and offer you a thousand thanks. But my heart is in Provence and I couldn’t live anywhere else.”
“You mean to say that you’ve been bewitched by a beautiful lady from your region to the point that you want to marry her?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, then, why don’t you marry her?”
“Her father fears his own damnation if he takes a heretic for his son-in-law.”
“This kills me!” laughed Quéribus. “God’s truth! Such stinking superstition! Do you think the king of France has condemned himself to hellfire by choosing a Huguenot brother-in-law against the advice of the Pope? But, to come back to your immediate problem, what can we do to solve it? Shall we carry the girl off by force and have you marry her afterwards? ’Sblood! I’ll help you with all my heart and all my strength! Your wish is my command and my fortune and all my men are at
your service!”
“Oh, my brother!” I said, embracing him. “I cannot express my gratitude for your exceeding generosity, but Angelina is the sort of girl who would never consent to be carried off. She respects Monsieur de Montcalm too much, however much she disagrees with him in this.”
“Montcalm!” said Quéribus, raising his eyebrows. “The Montcalm from Nîmes? That’s her father? I know him well, though I’ve never met him. We are even distantly related. Listen, Siorac, I’m going to write him,” Quéribus continued with a smile, “to tell him in what extraordinary esteem Anjou holds you—you and your brother. But, by my faith, what have you done with your beautiful Samson? He who never leaves your side, like Castor and Pollux? The Duc d’Anjou saw him only once but is quite taken with him and often speaks of him.”
“I left him in Montfort-l’Amaury with an apothecary.”
“Well, perhaps that’s best,” replied Quéribus with a sly smile and a wink. “This court is perhaps too dangerous for such good and upstanding types. Siorac, I’m going to write Montcalm a letter, which, I dare hope, will soften his position. After all,” he continued, lowering his voice and casting a careful look around, “Montcalm cannot fail to realize that the duc is our future sovereign, with Charles being so ill and having no heir. From what I’ve heard, Montcalm is tired of being a magistrate and aspires to be the seneschal of Nîmes. Perhaps,” Quéribus laughed, “hell will seem less hot and its flames less intense if he can be brought to understand that his future son-in-law, heretic though he may be, is so well placed at court that he can advance his earthly fortunes.”
At this point, a salute from Silvie signalled that he was ready to begin their bout, so Quéribus took his leave of me with a warm embrace, numerous kisses and pats on my shoulder. His sword unsheathed and his doublet removed, he returned to my side once more to make me swear to take all of my meals with him, since, he said, he didn’t want to lose sight of me that day. And, as I watched him fence with the supreme grace that comes from the adroit management of one’s strength, I couldn’t help feeling moved by his friendship—he seemed so thirsty for mine—nor help being surprised that he was, as many important personages of the court had claimed, a “sceptic” (as Montaigne would say) in matters of religion.