Authors: Robert Merle
“Giacomi,” I whispered, “I don’t see their ‘honourable’ leader. Do you!”
“No, Monsieur doctor,” said the Italian, who, even in the teeth of death, remained suavely polite. “He’s way over there, giving commands, but he’s not attacking. His honour forbids it.”
“I see him!” said Miroul.
“Is he within range of your knife?”
“Yes!”
“Give me your torch to free up your right hand,” I said, placing my dagger between my teeth and reaching towards him with my left hand.
This movement almost cost me dearly, a sword tip glancing off my forearm, which would have pierced right through had I not been covering it with my cape, which was fastened by a copper pin and which the blade glanced off, as I determined the next morning, leaving only a scratch that I hadn’t even felt.
I seized the torch and held it aloft, truly amazed that Miroul could
fight so well in such an awkward posture, and feeling badly exposed myself with my dagger in my left hand. I kept my eyes glued on the sword tips that threatened my chest like so many mortal wasp stings, so I saw only out of the corner of my eye the gesture Miroul made of seizing his knife from his boot and throwing it. But I definitely heard, over the strident clashing of swords, the grunt of the one-eyed man as the knife lodged in his chest, and then the shouts of the rabble: “Old dead-eye’s croaked!”
And at this we sensed a hesitation among our assailants that we quickly took advantage of, having at them with our good blades a good deal more effectively than they ever would have wished. Some of the rascals fled the engagement, melting back into the shadows whence they’d emerged, while others, as if enraged, redoubled their attack, shouting vengeance and death, and so savage was their impetuosity that this time we laid out a good half-dozen of them on the cold ground before their bellicose fire was extinguished.
In the calm that followed, Miroul reclaimed his torch and Giacomi whispered, “Monsieur doctor, are your lodgings far from here?”
“Forty paces.”
“And you’ve got the key?”
“I have it.”
“Monsieur doctor, throw them a handful of écus and couronnes! We’ll run for our lives. Dagger in mouth. Sword and pistol at the ready.”
Oh reader, you can imagine how hard it was for a Huguenot heart like mine to toss a handful of coins to the winds! How it hurt to hear the tintinnabulation of these coins sown on the paving stones with no hope of any harvest! So, as the beggars threw themselves on the coins as they rolled here and there, we set off at a run, bounding like madmen, and met no more than four of them in our path, two of whom we shot like pigeons at a fair, the other two immediately ceding us the right of passage.
However, the rest of the bunch, having regained their courage, pursued us, and we had barely reached Maître Sanche’s door before they were at our heels. To keep from being cut down from behind, we had to turn on them suddenly, our swords flashing. It was their final assault and their most furious, and I had to marvel at the crazy courage of these desperate rascals, who, having harvested my money, now sought to take my life at the risk of their own, in the name of this bizarre and very particular notion of honour, which, among the least of men as among the most powerful, makes war an inevitable condition of our species. Giacomi and Miroul, feeling more at ease in defending this narrow gateway in which they no longer had to worry about being attacked from behind, relished the chance to dispatch what remained of this horde.
Having opened the door behind them, I had to call them twice before they would consent to take shelter, whereupon Miroul with a great curse (and he a good Huguenot!) hurled his torch in their faces.
Once inside and the door bolted, Balsa, Maitre Sanche’s one-eyed assistant, appeared, lantern in hand, looking quite terrified. “Ah, venerable doctor, you’re bleeding!” he cried.
And, indeed, as I caught sight of myself in a small mirror that hung in the entryway, I saw that the left side of my scalp had a gash two inches long. The wound was neither deep nor serious, but it was pissing blood like a cow in a meadow, and my cheek, neck and collar were all crimsoned. “Ah, Miroul,” I exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was missing, “I’ve lost my handsome doctor’s bonnet all festooned with gold braid! It must have fallen off when I received this wound!”
I nearly went back to look for it, so mortified was I that, on the very day I’d received high honours at the Royal College from Chancellor Saporta, those ruffians had stripped me of my trophy. But instead, I needed to clean and dress my wound and bandage Miroul, who’d been slashed in the shoulder—Giacomi alone having escaped injury,
so excellent was his skill in battle, his sword point sharp, his reach long and his thrust lightning fast.
We hadn’t yet gone off to bed when an archer came to ask after us on behalf of Cossolat, who, finally appearing at the place des Cévennes—since the night watch had been beaten earlier in the evening in another part of town—had arrested the rascals we’d wounded and, without even taking them to jail, had sent them with their boots on to the gallows. (“With their boots on” is, of course, just an expression, since none of these beggars could afford a decent pair of shoes, much less boots.)
I sent the archer back to Cossolat to ask him if he would mind looking for my doctor’s square bonnet, which I desperately needed for my triumphal parade the next day. However, the next morning, having received no news of it, I sent a town crier through all the neighbourhoods of the city promising a reward to two écus (the only money I had left) for anyone who would return it to me. But this promise of a reward was to no avail, other than to spread the news among the workers and inhabitants of the city of our previous night’s clash in la Caussalerie, which Cossolat’s guards (who, of course, had not seen it) recounted everywhere they went, embellishing the numbers of our assailants with each retelling so that, in the end, we three were reputed to have killed or wounded at least a hundred brigands in one night.
Meanwhile, the loss of my doctor’s bonnet bothered me no end and so I wrote a letter to my doctor-father Saporta, which Miroul delivered. The chancellor replied quite reasonably that, since I’d received a nasty scalp wound, I couldn’t wear a bonnet and so would be dispensed from having to wear one in my triumphal procession.
And what a triumph it was! I was acclaimed throughout the city by large crowds—not, of course, because I’d been promoted to doctor, since there were a dozen or so of these parades each year, but because I and my two companions had so stoutly manhandled an army of
bandits, who were the terror and scourge of the good people of the entire city, and who nightly committed horrible excesses, stoving in the doors of houses, killing noblemen and rich merchants indiscriminately, and raping their wives and daughters.
My mare Accla’s black coat shone with all its mirroring light after Miroul brushed her down that morning, despite his wound, though luckily it was only to his right shoulder. With infinite patience he had braided her mane and her tail, weaving ribbons of red silk at every tuft and fitting a crimson blanket under the shiny pigskin saddle that Petremol had made for me. In this finery, preceded by the beadle Figairasse and my musicians playing happy tunes, and followed by the royal professors and the ordinary doctors, the assistants and medical students, all in their academic robes and some mounted on horses, others on mules, I rode through the most beautiful streets of Montpellier amid a crowd of people applauding me vociferously as if I’d just slain the dragon that was terrorizing them. You might well imagine that being so appreciated by the people—in the same city where I’d been a public enemy after having shortened the suffering of the atheist abbot Cabassus—I felt like a peacock on my beautiful Accla, though I was careful not to let it show, but maintained an inscrutably serene expression throughout, except, here and there, to give a wink to some of the beauties who were applauding me from their windows decorated with flowers.
My parade complete, I hurried to the Joyeuse residence, but of what happened there I shall say not a word, having offended some of the ladies who read the previous volume of my memoirs and were shocked by some of the descriptions of our love-making. And though I believe that these same ladies have much more reason to be offended by what’s going on around them in their daily lives than by the spiciest of tales they read in books, I set too much store by their friendship to risk wounding them further.
Isn’t it amazing how like the teeth of a saw is a man’s destiny! Promoted to the rank of doctor with high honours after my
triduanes
, I was nearly brought low the next day by the knives of a group of brigands. And, barely having escaped these assassins, the following day I find myself acclaimed as an angel and a hero by this sheepfold of a populace. And that very evening, I receive the laurel wreath from the hands of the most suave, beautiful and noble woman in Montpellier, who, having heard of my losses, rushes to compensate and comfort me. Ah! Life is but a dream! I have come to see that the fatal Tarpeian Rock lies but a stone’s throw from the Capitol’s glory, and that ’tis Fortune’s whim to send us scuttling back and forth between them.
The only thing missing from my present happiness was my beloved Samson, who was being held tightly in the arms of his Circe at the needle shop and was unable to escape the hungry ogress’s charms for the entire five days she spent in Montpellier on her pilgrimage to Rome—and during these five days, they left their bed only for the dining table, and the dining table only for their bed. Of course there was another, much higher pleasure, which I longed for, and whose marvels I continued to hope for in my heart of hearts. But of that, more later.
My purse brimming over, I left the Joyeuse residence, overcome with gratitude for the woman who resided there, and returned at a gallop to my lodgings, with Miroul and Giacomi riding at my sides with swords unsheathed, since Cossolat had advised me not to walk the city’s streets at night, fearing that the brigands, thirsty for revenge, would ambush me.
As soon as I was back in my room, there came a knock at my door.
“Ah, Giacomi! Come in!” I smiled. “Did you ask Balsa whether anyone has returned my bonnet?”
“Alas, Monsieur doctor,” sighed Giacomi, “no one has come! I’m sorry for you, both for the loss and for the augury.”
“Augury, Giacomi?”
“But don’t you see?” replied Giacomi, standing at attention before me. “It couldn’t be clearer! If your bonnet has disappeared on the day you obtained it, then fate has decreed that you will never exercise your calling!”
“Giacomi!” I replied, very put out. “That’s nothing but superstition! Fortune does not provide signs that allow us to foretell the future. I dearly love my new profession and I’ll practise it with or without the bonnet! It’s not the bonnet that matters, but the head beneath it, and this one I’ve done my best to fashion so that it can cure—God willing!—man’s diseases.”
“Monsieur doctor,” Giacomi replied without giving me one of his usual Italian bows, which, however low, never communicated baseness but rather high breeding, “whether the augury is good or bad we cannot know!
Che sarà, sarà!
††
I would be very unhappy to have offended you in any way, especially when I have to take my leave of you.”
“Take your leave, Giacomi? To go where?” I gasped.
“In truth, I know not,” he replied, his visage radiant as usual, as if the uncertainty of his future were a laughing matter.
“Then why must you leave me?” I said with some heat. “Without you, Giacomi, without your marvellous swordsmanship and your wise counsel in the face of danger, I would certainly have died.”
“Without you, Monsieur doctor,” answered Giacomi, his black eyes protruding out of his smiling face, “I would be locked in a jail. But…” he continued with an elegant gesture of his long arms, at the end of which he fell silent.
“But, Giacomi?”
“Monsieur doctor, I would not wish you to think that I do not like Miroul, whom I hold, on the contrary, as one of the best fellows in all creation.”
“But, Giacomi?”
“But I’m not completely comfortable sharing a bed with a servant. Monsieur doctor, do not, I beg you, think I’m arrogant. In Italy, only gentlemen of good breeding may become masters-at-arms and I’m held by everyone in the town where I was born to be a noble man if not exactly a nobleman.”
“Ah,
maestro
!” I replied. “I confess I wasn’t exactly sure of your condition, though I’ve heard tell that master swordsmen from Italy, whether in the king’s or the Duc d’Anjou’s service, are considered gentlemen at the French court. Here, as you know, a master-at-arms is considered only a soldier, expert in the exercise of his skills, but not necessarily in the knowledge of his art, limited in his understanding, rustic in his manners. I place you,
maestro
, well above the best of them, and if this is so important to you, instead of Miroul, I shall invite you to share my own quarters for lack of separate chambers in which to lodge you.”
“Ah, Monsieur doctor!” cried Giacomi. “How grateful I am for your amiable, courteous and infinite beneficence, but again, I beg you not to think that I’m acting out of pride or silly posturing. It’s not so much for myself that I want respect, but rather for my sword, which is, for me, at once a rank, an art, a profession and a philosophy.” This said, he placed his long, delicate hand nervously on its sheath. “And if you would condescend to one more thing, Monsieur doctor, and, out of your goodness, address me with the polite form
vous
rather than the familiar form
tu
, you would complete my happiness.”
“
Maestro!
” I laughed. “If that’s all it takes to keep you, I’ll call you
vous
from matins to vespers! In my arms, my friend! Give me a hug!” And pulling him towards me, I gave him a hug and kissed both his cheeks, though he had to lean over a bit so I could reach them; but he returned my kisses frankly, then stepped back and patted my shoulders and back with his long hands.
“Monsieur doctor,” he said when we’d finished our endearments (which, I noticed, brought tears to his shining, black eyes), “I believe that you are of the religion?”