Authors: Robert Merle
But to return to our pleasant, copious and Périgordian meal, I can’t remember how or why we got to talking about love and marriage, but Monsieur de Montaigne was remarkably open on this subject, loving, it’s true, to talk endlessly about himself—not for small-minded, mediocre or egotistical reasons, but because it was the entire condition of man that he painted in talking about his own experiences and habits.
“When I was a young man,” he said with his customary abandon, “I gave myself over as licentiously and inconsiderately as any other to the desires that governed me. And not without glory, though in a lasting and durable way rather than in quick sallies:
sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices
.”
‡
“Six, Monsieur!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “I can’t understand how anyone could be dissatisfied by such a number! As for me, I’d be very happy!”
“But I’m not,” said Montaigne, “since voluptuousness is too often vicious and sudden—it makes love too rapid and precipitous. And I end up feeling like that fellow in antiquity who wanted to have a neck as long as a crane’s in order to savour the food that traversed it for as long as possible.”
At this I laughed heartily and Giacomi along with me, but not my poor Samson, who was secretly so uncomfortable with these wanton subjects that he kept his eyes lowered and his expression as pensive as possible to give the impression he hadn’t heard them.
Montaigne then asked me, with his slow smile, how I treated the wenches I’d known once they were mine.
“Very well!” I said, caught off guard.
“Then you’ve done well,” said Montaigne, “and unlike most men, for I believe that we should behave with them as conscientiously and as justly as in any other relationship. As for me, since I desire neither to fool them nor to cheat on them, I’ve never pretended to have feelings I didn’t really have. I was so chary of making promises that I think I’ve kept more of them than I actually promised or owed. And finally, I’ve never broken with any woman out of scorn or hatred because the intimacies they’ve shared with one oblige one to some regard for them. Monsieur de Siorac,” he continued with a smile, “I’ve heard that in Montpellier you were the protégé of a lady of high birth and means and that she even called you her ‘little cousin’, though you were hardly her cousin.”
“I had,” I confessed, with a respectful nod of my head, “this immense privilege.”
“It was your luck and your privilege, Monsieur de Siorac,” said Montaigne. “When I was your age, I had such an appetite for the honest women I might meet that I eschewed, shall we say, commercial opportunities, wishing to sharpen my pleasure by conquest. I was a little like the courtesan Flora, who would sleep with no one less than a dictator, consul or senator: I counted as my reward the dignity of my lovers.”
“To tell the truth, Monsieur de Montaigne, it’s not the case that I despise common love affairs. On the contrary, I’ve found them satisfying and sometimes emotionally very fulfilling!”
“I don’t despise them either,” said Montaigne, “especially since I could never be content, like the Spanish are, with a glance, a nod, a word or a sign. Who could ever dine, as our Périgordian proverb says, on the smoke of a roast? I need more fulfilling meats and more
substantial flesh. For I feel some emotion in love, and am not satisfied by dreams alone!”
“Well!” I thought. “There’s the difference between this great man and me! For when I think about my Angelina, do I not feel such emotion as to lose my appetite for food, drink and very nearly for life? And in her absence do I not lose myself in the most amazing dreams?”
“I gather, Monsieur de Montaigne, that you’re somewhat impatient with courtly love?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered with a smile, “when it doesn’t lead to anything. We must always keep our wits and our discretion in love. We want to enjoy ourselves but not forget ourselves. Love, Monsieur de Siorac, should not lead men to sighs and tears. In essence it’s an awakening of lively and happy agitation. It is harmful only to fools. My idea of the best conduct of love is a healthy emotion, enabling us to lighten our minds and bodies. And as a doctor I would prescribe it to a man as willingly as any other to keep him healthy well into his old age.”
“Well, he’s certainly not wrong about that,” I thought. “All you have to do is compare the way my father and Sauveterre have aged to see that my father has done much better by proliferating bastards than Sauveterre has by his implacable virtue.”
As we had arrived at the fruit course, Jacquou served each of us a melon, which neither I nor either of my companions was able to finish because of its size, but I observed that Montaigne loved this fruit so much that he ordered and devoured a second that was just as big as the first.
“Marriage,” Montaigne continued as he wiped his mouth, moustache and beard with the napkin the chambermaid had brought, “is meant to be a very dull pleasure with neither sting nor heat. And it’s no longer love if it lacks arrows and fire.”
“But,” I protested, thinking of my Angelina, with whom I expected a great deal more than dull pleasures, “can’t one teach one’s wife the special delights which make voluptuousness so lively, acute and exciting?”
“Absolutely not!” cried Montaigne, raising both hands heavenward. “Be very careful not to introduce into this venerable estate the extravagances of amorous passion! You should be careful, as Aristotle advised, that you do not caress your wife to the point where pleasure makes her lose her mind! And if she must learn such rashness let it at least be at the hands of another!”
“Well,” I thought, “our sage is, for once, not making sense, even though he’s lined up Aristotle, the Church and common wisdom on his side. Gracious! I shouldn’t instruct Angelina in the delicious caresses I’ve learnt? I shouldn’t make sure her pleasure is as great as mine? I should wait for a rival to teach her how to enjoy love?”
However, I said nothing, not wishing to argue with this great mind, who, because he dared differ from what was considered common sense and dared envision deeply original approaches to every subject, abounded in new and exciting perspectives, and expressed these so beautifully, mixing into his French here a Latin maxim, there a Périgordian turn of phrase, that ultimately his combination of rustic and learned locutions provided music to your ears and fruit for your understanding.
I was in the midst of these reflections when Montaigne, gulping down his last slice of melon, suddenly cried out and clapped his hand on his mouth.
“Monsieur,” I cried, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he groaned. “From wolfing down my melon, I ended up biting my tongue. But it’s nothing, though it hurts terribly when I do it. And so now, Monsieur de Siorac, you’re going to Paris. You will find great comforts there,” he continued, as though he’d entirely forgotten the grave reason that drove me there, and the favour my
father had asked of him: that he compose a request for my pardon. “And when will you set off?”
“I’m afraid it must be tomorrow, Monsieur.”
“What! You would deprive me so soon of your youthful faces! You’ve scarcely arrived and how you’re off again!”
“But, Monsieur, we cannot tarry here! We’re outlaws and may be seized at any moment and thrown in jail!”
“Ah, ’tis true!” he sighed. “How I would have loved to ride alongside you on this trip, though I do travel quite a bit and was in Paris just two years ago, leaving the governance of my house to my wife—who, among her many other excellent virtues, knows how to run a household. Some people complain that travel interferes with one’s marital duties. I don’t believe it. The pleasure of seeing each other every day is trumped by the joy we derive from the emotion of parting from and returning to our loved ones. In any case, there is no agreement in marriage that we must always remain tethered like dogs. I believe that a wife should not be so greedily focused on her husband’s front that she can’t see his rear from time to time!”
I laughed at his witticism, and Giacomi as well, but not Samson, who kept his eyes rigidly fixed on his hands in his lap, wishing he were leagues away, so wounded was his modesty.
“Monsieur de Siorac,” Montaigne continued, “I hope you will allow me to be silent for a while since I’m tired of talking on a full stomach. While I rest my voice, however, be so good as to tell me the story that has been attributed to you about a diabolical witch in a cemetery in Montpellier.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” I laughed, “although the wench was eventually burnt at the stake, she was no witch as I first believed, and the Devil was only metaphorically dwelling in her petticoat.”
“So, tell me about it!” urged Montaigne, folding his hands over his stomach and looking at me intently, his eyes shining.
I obeyed, though I was ashamed to recount this affair in front of my beloved Samson, from whom I’d managed to hide it until this moment, and I watched with some distress as his blue eyes opened wide in amazement to hear of such mad goings-on—which is why I prefer to gloss over it here, not wishing, as I’ve already explained, to offend the delicate ears of the ladies who have objected to my liberties with the fair sex.
“As for witches,” agreed Montaigne, when I’d finished my tale, “I am distressed to see that almost everyone believes in them—or pretends to—and Ambroise Paré is first among these believers, which doesn’t shock me, since he was a great physician, but outside of medicine not a very learned man. In Bordeaux, some witches were put on trial. Everyone was crying ‘Devils!’ before the trial, the priests along with the crowds, but I didn’t want to be influenced by this mob, so I went and talked to the poor women without threats or torture. I found them mad as hatters, to be sure, but there was no devil in them other than their imaginations, and their visions were more likely due to hallucinogens than to hemlock.”
I was very glad to hear Monsieur de Montaigne’s thoughts on this subject, since I’d found so few people in Montpellier who doubted what the judges and priests held as truth, when they sent to the stake so many of these unfortunates. In their warped minds, these poor creatures believed their accusers, attributed their deviations to the work of Satan and ended up convinced of the power of their rites, in which they mimicked the rites of the Church, but backwards.
Meanwhile, Monsieur de Montaigne, apparently no longer concerned that our discussion was detrimental to his digestion, returned to the subject of Paris. He had great admiration for the capital and eloquently sang its praises—a speech that was as diverting as it was enchanting since I still remembered Captain Cossolat’s description of this sewer city, its stench, its difficulties, its buffeting crowds, the
unbearable uproar of its carts and wagons, and the infinite arrogance of its inhabitants.
“Monsieur de Montaigne,” I said, “your description has a very different ring from what I often heard in Montpellier.”
“Pure prejudice!” replied my host. “As for me, when I’m most dissatisfied with our kingdom, I feel the most positive about Paris; she won my heart when I was young! The more I’ve visited beautiful cities, the more the beauty of this one has won my affection. I love her for herself, and not for her pomp and foreignness. I love her tenderly, including all her warts and stains: I am French only by my love of this great city, great in her people, great in her cuisine—but especially great and incomparable in the variety and diversity of her commodities. She is the glory of France and one of the most noble ornaments in the world.”
At this speech, we three looked at each other with delight, inflamed with the beauty we’d be heading towards the next day as we took to the highways of the kingdom. So inflamed, indeed, that I almost forgot the purpose of our visit. And I only remembered it when, after this eloquent portrait of the capital, Monsieur de Montaigne rose and excused himself, explaining that there was a task he must perform before he went to bed, adding that, if we were indeed resolved to leave at dawn, we should bid our adieux now, since he was accustomed as an old married man to rising late. And, not knowing whether he had completely forgotten my request, or whether his silence on the matter was a sign that he refused to comply, I was trying to decide how to bring the subject to his attention when he concluded the evening by saying,
“Monsieur de Siorac, I am going now to dictate to my secretary your plea to the king. He will give it to you tomorrow morning as you leave. All you’ll have to do is sign it.”
“Oh, Monsieur,” I cried, “what a debt of gratitude I owe you!”
“Not at all. Injustice committed against one man is an injustice to humanity. It is every man’s duty to work for justice, lest he himself be unjust.”
“Monsieur,” I replied, “one last question. May I say that my request to the king was written by you?”
At this he frowned, and, his expression becoming quite circumspect, he seemed unsure as to whether he should say yes or no, but finally, his generosity overcoming his prudence, he decided on a compromise, and said with a smile, “If you’re asked, and if you believe that it will be useful to the outcome you seek, yes. But otherwise, say nothing.”
W
E REACHED MONTFORT-L’AMAURY
without incident towards evening on 1st August, and finding we were still a good day’s ride from Paris, I decided we would spend the night in this beautiful market town, whose ancient towers stand at the edge of the forest of the same name. But the two inns of Montfort refused to open their doors to us since there was not a closet or even corner of either that was not filled, given the veritable tide of gentlemen from Normandy and Brittany who had been invited by the king to come to the capital for the marriage of Princesse Margot. So we would have been in the most extreme discomfort (being unable even to sleep in a field, since this 1st August was so rainy and cold), had not the hostess at the second inn, seeing us in such a fix (and, no doubt, swayed by our honest faces—and Samson’s beauty), suggested that we go knock on the door of Maître Béqueret, the apothecary, whose shop stood just to the left of the church, and who, given the size of his house, would likely have room for us.
When we got there, his valet tried to slam the door in our faces, given the number of importunate people who had already tried this address, but I was so earnest and polite that he hesitated long enough for me to slip a few coins into his hand and finally agreed to fetch his master. This gentleman did not open the door of his house to us, but received us in his shop, which was as large as Maître Sanche’s in
Montpellier and, in addition, so new and beautifully arranged that Samson was immediately bewitched. His wide blue eyes gazed with wonder at all the druggist’s bottles, with their gold lettering, that filled his shelves from top to bottom.
Maître Béqueret, a tall, brown-haired, black-eyed man with a sympathetic face, listened courteously while I explained who we were and what we were asking. But when I’d done, he refused quite civilly but firmly my request, saying that, as the wealthiest master apothecary in the town, it was beneath his dignity to rent out rooms, even to the sons of the Baron de Mespech—though he was, he added, very honoured to meet us.
He bowed quite coldly and I returned his bow, but before giving up entirely, I said in as casual a way as I could manage that he ought to know that I was a doctor of medicine from the Royal College in Montpellier, hoping this would soften him a bit, but he refused to change his mind.
At that moment, the rain redoubled its force against the window-panes and my heart fell flat and my hair stood on end at the thought of spending a night at the mercy of this storm.
Defeated, however, I began to take my leave of Maître Béqueret, when Samson, who, lost in wondrous contemplation of the shop, hadn’t heard a word of our conversation, suddenly burst out, “Oh, Maître Béqueret, what a beautiful display you have here! And what noble bodies and substances you have in your jars! It’s quite clear that you spare no expense to provide the greatest quality in your medicines!”
“How can you tell, young man?” said Maître Béqueret archly.
“Because, for example, your senna is from Alexandria and not from Seyde, which, though less costly, Maître Sanche considered vile, dirty, full of mud and gravel and unworthy of feeding to an ass.”
“What! You worked under the illustrious Maître Sanche in Montpellier?”
“For five years,” replied Samson, “before I was promoted to master apothecary myself on 24th August 1571.”
“Heavens!” gasped Béqueret. “You are a colleague! And the student of Maître Sanche! Why didn’t you say so immediately instead of brandishing your titles of nobility? Make yourself at home, my dear colleague! And you too, venerable doctor of medicine,” he added, looking my way, but with perhaps less warmth, since I was from a related family, but not of the same lineage as an apothecary.
And what a welcome the good apothecary provided I leave to your imagination, inviting the four of us to stay there, and stable our five horses in his barn for the entire month of August, since we would assuredly not find lodgings in Paris given the masses of guests who were flooding the capital for the wedding of Princesse Margot—“may the Blessed Virgin watch over her!” To which I said, “Amen!” and Giacomi as well, but Samson was visibly offended in his Huguenot rigour by such an idolatrous invocation. I thanked Maître Béqueret a thousand times for his invitation, but explained that I could not tarry in Montfort, but had to go immediately to Paris and would have to spend the entire month there—not just Margot’s wedding day—since I needed to present to the king a plea, on which my entire future depended.
“Well then, Monsieur,” interjected Dame Béqueret, who was, like her husband, dark-haired, with a pleasant face, though it was somewhat more pinched looking than his, “why not leave us your amiable colleague?”
“Oh, Madame! Samson, here for a whole month! It would be too great an expense for you, I fear!”
“Not at all!” said the lady. “No expense whatsoever, by my Norman faith!” (For she was from that province.) “Your brother would provide great help and service in my husband’s shop, especially at a time when he’s so overwhelmed by the demand, since there are so many people in Montfort this August.”
Samson’s eyes lit up, but how could I have consented to his holing himself up among these phials when Fortune had provided him a chance to visit the most beautiful city in the kingdom, or perhaps of the whole world, according to what Monsieur de Montaigne had said? And although my host was now as reluctant to see us leave as he had been but minutes before to provide us lodging, I decided that we would all leave the next morning. Hearing this, Miroul, who was helping their chambermaid to serve our table—a sweet and frisky little mare with whom he’d been flirting throughout our dinner—said, “But Monsieur, we can’t do that! Your Pompée has lost both shoes on her forefeet! You can’t possibly ride her until we get her shod!”
“Well, we’ll take care of it tomorrow!” I answered with some annoyance.
“But we can’t,” he reminded me, with another amorous glace at the wench. “Tomorrow is Sunday. The smithy won’t be available.”
“What’s more,” said Maître Béqueret, “with all the gentlemen stopping here on their way to the wedding, he’s got more business already than he can handle. I’d be surprised if he could shoe your horse before Wednesday!” At this, of course, Miroul’s brown eye glowed with pleasure.
“Three nights we have to wait here,” I groaned inwardly, “when Paris is so close!” And angered by this turn of events, I gave Miroul and then the maid each a nasty look, as if this whole delay were a ruse meant to accommodate them. But my valet, seeing this frown and realizing that, indeed, his own interests were secured in any case, gave me a big smile, and said in Italian, “
Il saggio sopporta pazientemente il suo dolore
.”
*
“
È vero dio!
”
†
cried Maître Béqueret, who was proud of his Italian, which was now in vogue in Paris ever since the Florentine queen had taken the reins of the kingdom.
The next morning, as I was standing shirtless in my room, there was a knock at the door and Maître Béqueret entered, bowed politely and said, “Ah, Monsieur de Siorac, how comforted I am to see the medallion of the Blessed Virgin you are wearing! From certain signs I thought I detected yesterday, I was convinced you were Huguenots, and didn’t know how to go about inviting you to join me at Mass this morning—it would be very dangerous for me and my family in Montfort were I to give shelter to heretics, since here, as in Paris, they are so furiously hated.”
“Venerable Maître,” I said, “you were right in your first guess: with the exception of Giacomi, we three, masters and valet, are of the reformed religion. And as for me, I wear this medallion only because it was my mother’s dying request that I do so till the end of my life. However, Maître Béqueret, you have been so welcoming and so gracious that I would not wish to compromise or endanger your house, and so I will agree to accompany you to Mass.”
“I thank God and you!” sighed Maître Béqueret. “This is a great weight off my chest! Although I am a sincere Catholic, I am not so zealous as to dream, like some in my religion, of disembowelling and burning those of the new religion. But you’ll see, alas! in Paris, that there are many, many fanatics, and I’m very sorry to see you and your brother have to go and get embroiled in such hatred. You’re risking your lives!”
“But venerable Maître, is it not true that our leader, Coligny, enjoys the king’s favour at the moment?”
At this, Maître Béqueret frowned. “Yes, of course! But some people think that the king has only embraced Coligny the better to smother him, and with him all the Protestant nobles who have come to Paris for the wedding.”
With this observation, which, the more I thought about it, weighed heavily on my heart, my host departed, very gratified by my compliance with his wishes. And since I was much less assured of Samson’s
compliance, I went immediately to his room to tell him of Maître Béqueret’s invitation.
He had just awoken, and was so handsome and so vigorous, his visage so innocent, his eyes so azure, that I felt an immense joy just looking at him stretching lazily in his bed, running his fingers through his copper-coloured hair. But his eyes darkened when I told him about the invitation to Mass.
“I won’t go!” he said emphatically.
“Samson,” I explained, “we cannot put our gracious and welcoming host in such discomfort and danger.”
“I won’t go,” he said, more rigid than Calvin himself.
I was suddenly so angry I could not restrain myself from shouting, “You
will
go! I command it!”
“Well,” Samson said, visibly troubled and hurt, “so you’re scolding me! Would you dare speak to me this way, Pierre, if I were not a bastard?”
“Samson,” I moaned, taking him forcefully in my arms, and showering his cheeks with kisses, “that’s crazy! Who’s talking about birth here? Do we not have the same father? And as for the shepherdess who bore you, she must have been a worthy, good and beautiful wench, since you resemble her!”
Hearing me speak with such respect about the mother he’d never known, the poor girl having died of the plague when he was still in his infancy, my beloved brother burst into tears, and seeing him crying, I hugged him to me and again kissed his freckled face, saying, “I order you by the authority I have as your older brother, none other.”
“Older brother? Whath thith?” he lisped charmingly. “Weren’t we born in the thame month and year?”
“Yes, but I was a week earlier than you.” At this he laughed through his tears, and seeing him brush them away with the back of his hand, and the sun coming out again after such a storm, I said,
“Samson, our father gave you authority over our purse, and to me he gave the command of our little troop since I’m better at negotiating our worldly paths. You must come, I beg this of you.”
“Then I shall,” he said, lowering his head like a ram, “but it does not please God that I shall be praying among all these idolaters.”
“Well,” I thought to myself, “what a noble zeal that leads to abstaining from prayer!”
“You must trust your conscience,” I counselled him. “But just remember that the papists worship the same God that we do.”
“But not in the same way!”
“Samson,” I asked, “is it the way we pray that matters, or the love we owe to our Creator?”
To which, though not persuaded, he at least found no answer and so fell silent. And since this silence continued, I asked him if he would prefer to remain in the apothecary shop of Maître Béqueret for the month of August, as I’d been asked, and he answered yes with a huge sigh, since, as he explained, he loved his work so much that he was besotted with it and yet he understood that it was not his duty or even reasonable to do so. And then, as I was heading for the door, he said, very awkwardly and blushing to the roots of his copper-coloured hair:
“Did you know that Dame Béqueret is Norman and from the same village as Dame Gertrude du Luc? Do you think she knows her?”
“Oh, Samson,” I thought, “so you’re not implacable in everything!”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said, smiling to myself.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare!”
“Then perhaps you think I might dare?”
“Yes,” he mumbled, lowering his eyes.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, enjoying this little game. “In the meantime, Samson, you should get dressed. Mass is at ten!”
*
As soon as he saw that he couldn’t keep either me or Samson in Montfort-l’Amaury, Maître Béqueret put in a word for us with the farrier and the good smithy promised that my Pompée would be shod by dawn on Monday.
We thought that at this hour we’d be alone on the road, but as we approached the capital, we were amazed by the number of travellers: gentlemen on horseback or in carriages, innumerable carts loaded with hay, wood, milk, fresh meat, vegetables, barrels of wine or basketfuls of eggs that came from the villages surrounding Paris, to feed the Pantagruelian hunger of a city whose workers and inhabitants number more than 300,000, from what I’d been told—an immense and incredible number, I concede, but one which was confirmed by reliable sources.
As all of these good folk from the flat countryside moved very slowly, some pulled by workhorses, others by mules and others still even by oxen, we couldn’t help passing them as we trotted along, looking at them and being looked at in return with astonishing effrontery, and yelled at in an amusing and often derisive way in French, which greatly surprised us since this language is entirely foreign to the peasants in Provence, and used only by well-educated people.
As I came alongside one of these open carts, full of jugs of milk and baskets of eggs, a comely milkmaid, a pretty bonnet on her head and her scarf revealing more than a little of her full bosom, round as the eggs in her baskets and whiter than the milk in her jugs, observed my hungry looks and cried out with a laugh:
“Handsome fellow, pretty eyes! So you like my wares?”
“Alas, my friend,” I replied with a wink, “as the Périgordian proverb says, you can lick beauty, but you can’t eat it!”
“Well, that’s already a lot that you can lick it,” replied the maid with a belly laugh, “whether you’re in Paris or Périgord, if Périgord exists, for the Devil if I know where that place lies.”