Heretic Dawn (46 page)

To this, which moved me greatly and set me thinking, I had no answer, but decided to consider it at my leisure—a leisure I didn’t have
and, indeed, we never seem to have, since existence rides us and spurs us along so constantly and with such appetites, an appetite for love, another for ambition, that we arrive at the end of our path without ever having resolved, in our intimate struggles, where truth lies. And this is true today, as I write this, the ribbon of my life having been unwound so far, still as uncertain and confused as I was on that day, back in 1572, when I debated with Fogacer the connection between cruelty and our beliefs.

“Fogacer,” I answered after a moment, “I am, as you know, very beset with this question of my petition to the king for a pardon. Do you think that, through Anjou, I could get to the queen mother and, through her, dispose the king in my favour?”

“Ah! The queen mother!” said Fogacer. “The queen mother thinks only of herself and fears only for herself. Imagine, Siorac, the humiliations of her reign, given that she played second to Diane de Poitiers in Henri II’s bed. When he died, she dressed herself in black so as never to leave him. And she dressed herself in power as well. Now Catherine is regent, first under François II and now under Charles IX, dominating her sons through her manipulations, her cajolery and her tears. She reigns, but must share her power perilously, since she’s threatened on the right by Guise, and on the left by the Huguenots. She’s a strong woman, but for the last thirteen years of her power, she’s never ceased trembling, and trembles today more than ever.”

“What does she fear?”

“She fears losing her great love: the sceptre. Your Coligny has confused the king with this dream of conducting an expedition into Flanders. Charles IX wants it, then doesn’t want it five minutes later. And if Coligny wins on this matter, Catherine imagines she’ll be sent off into exile in Florence. Now, Catherine, who is a woman of infinite cunning, but narrow views, has only one idea: to stay in power. So do you really think that, in the predicament she’s in, she’ll dare confront
Charles with some favour for a Huguenot whom he already hates because he thinks he’s his brother’s man?”

“Ah, Fogacer!” I said, shaking my head sadly, “I understand that I don’t count more than a speck of dust in the great winds that are rising across France, but, my friend, from what you’re telling me, Coligny is in the greatest peril.”

“My son, do you think he doesn’t know it?”

And, pivoting on his heels, Fogacer began to stride back and forth across the atelier on his long spidery legs, casting his glance now at the fireplace, but keeping an eye on the window, now at the staircase that led up to the floor above, and then, stopping suddenly, he crossed his arms and gave me a knowing and happy smile.

“Mi fili,”
he laughed, “if, as they claim,
amare est gaudere felicitate alterius
,
‡‡‡
then I love you a lot, for I’m very happy that I can flood your soul with joy.”

“Oh, Fogacer,” I exclaimed, “if there’s any happiness in my situation, tell me! I could use a dose of merriment! Ever since I arrived in Paris, I’ve encountered nothing but misadventures and difficulties. Nothing is working out for me, not even my women!”

“Siorac,” he answered, his cheeks swollen with his good news as with a good wine that he didn’t want to swallow too quickly, “do you remember the judge who was my friend in Montpellier, thanks to whom I could warn you to flee before the tribunal could put you in prison?”

“Of course! I’m infinitely grateful to him! And to you as well!”

“You will be now! My friend, who left Montpellier when I did, is presently living in the capital, and though he’s given up his official position, is a good friend of a judge here in Paris.
Asinus asinum fricat.
§§§
Though I really shouldn’t call them asses since they’re both very intelligent.”

“Monsieur,” broke in Miroul, who had rushed into the room and was unaware of Fogacer’s presence, “shall I saddle your horse or will we go on foot?”

“Saddle it, Miroul!” cried Fogacer, gesturing with his long arms. “And yours as well, and put wings on them too, like Pegasus, to run with the wind! You’ll need them straightaway!”

“What about this judge?” I asked, amazed that Fogacer was giving orders to my valet, who didn’t move a muscle, but just stood there, eyes wide in surprise, as though nailed to the spot.

“This judge has just delivered his verdict in a case involving a mill where a certain lord was the plaintiff, and the verdict went in his favour. But, the Devil take me, I can’t remember the name of this gentleman! Please, Siorac, help me!”

“How can I, when I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Well, perhaps you’ve heard tell of this mill, which is situated in a village just to the north of Paris, very famous for its good flour and the excellent breads that are baked there and that are sold in the capital. But, the Devil take me, I can’t remember the name of this village!”

“You’re teasing me, Fogacer,” I cried, becoming increasingly impatient with his delays. “Why should I know anything about this mill? How does this relate to me?”

“Very closely, my friend! Especially since this gentleman I was mentioning, and who, I believe, has a chateau in the southern provinces, inherited this mill from a cousin, an inheritance that was hotly contested by the cousin, hence this interminable suit—and now it’s a happy outcome for your friend.”

“My friend! What friend? Ah, Fogacer, you’re driving me mad! Are you just playing with me?”

“Wait!” muttered Fogacer. “It’s coming back to me little by little: the village where this mill turns its beautiful sails, such apt symbols of your own hopes, is named Gonesse.”

“Gonesse?” I gasped. “Gonesse? I know that name!”

“Monsieur,” said Miroul, “I believe that was the mill you told me someone was trying to sue Monsieur de Montcalm for.”

“Montcalm!” I cried, suddenly beside myself. “Fogacer! You know where he lives in Paris! And you’re not telling me!”

“I knew it once,” smiled Fogacer, arching his diabolical eyebrows, “but the Devil take me if I can remember the name of the street! My memory just isn’t what it used to be!”

“Dammit, Fogacer!” I yelled, throwing myself at him and grabbing him by the shoulders. “You’re toying with me! Tell me, for God’s sake! Speak!”

“’Sblood! What kind of behaviour is this?” And seizing my wrists, he laughingly broke my grip on him with a suppleness and force I wouldn’t have expected in him. “Lovers can be so ungrateful!
Ingratis servire nefas!
”
¶¶¶

“Their lodgings! Fogacer, where do they live?”

“But how, my ungrateful Pollux, can I fill up the gaps in my memory, which is more riddled with holes than a cheese full of mice? All I can remember,” he laughed, keeping the table between us for protection, “is that the door knocker of their lodgings is in the figure of a giant Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.”

“The street, Fogacer, the street!”

“Miroul,” cried Fogacer, “saddle the horses! And make it snappy, my son! Let’s be off!”

“The street, Fogacer!”

“Ah, yes! The street bears the name of those bronze figurines that are used as door knockers and that we call here
marmousets
.”

“The rue des Marmousets!” I shouted. “On the Île de la Cité? In l’Université?”

“On the Île de la Cité! But where are you running to, Siorac?”

“To help Miroul!”

“I’m right behind you, Siorac!” he cried, on my heels. “A horse! A horse for me as well! By all the good devils in the impossible hell,” he shouted, his voice sounding loud and clear behind me, “I insist on showing you the shortest route to your Eden, which should be all the dearer to you, since there isn’t any other! On this I’d wager my perishable soul!”

O
H HEAVEN!
What happiness filled my heart as I trotted down the grand’rue Saint-Denis on Pompée, with Fogacer leading the way and Miroul on my right. On this Sunday, every shop was closed and not a cart did we see as we crossed the deserted Pont Notre-Dame to the Île de la Cité and found ourselves in the rue des Marmousets. Given the oppressive heat, most of the Parisians had withdrawn into their homes, but as clear as our passage was, it nevertheless seemed to take for ever, given the sting of my impatience.

“Fogacer,” I stuttered, trying vainly to control the terrible beating of my heart in my chest, “have you spied the house yet whose door has the knocker you described?”

He turned to me, his mouth wide open, but as I heard no word issue from it, I galloped up to his side and repeated my question.

“I was just there, before visiting you, and it’s precisely this house where you spy that coach onto which the group of valets you see is loading all manner of trunks and packages.”

At the sight of this I thought I would faint from my sudden apprehension. I dismounted and, tossing my reins to Miroul, staggered towards the open door on legs that trembled so violently I thought I would fall. The group of valets passed busily in and out, under the watchful eyes of a major-domo, who commanded them gruffly in Provençal. I approached this fellow, who looked familiar
to me, and asked him to announce my arrival to the master of the lodgings.

“Ah, Monsieur de Siorac!” he replied. “I remember you well from having seen you once or twice at Barbentane five years ago, and am well aware of what infinite obligations we all owe you, having heard Madame often exclaim that, without you, not a soul, animal or stone would still be standing today! I’ll go and tell Monsieur de Montcalm you’re here.”

“But,” I replied as courteously as I could through my knotted throat, “will I not be a bother? Are you not preparing your departure?”

“Indeed we are,” he replied, raising his hands heavenward, “and God knows how happily! For this Paris,” he continued in
langue d’oc,
“is a dreadful place and its people are even worse. We would have been gone by eight o’clock if this coach had arrived on time. But you can’t trust anything these rascals tell you! But wait a bit, I beg you. I’ll let the master know you’re here.”

“Lord,” I thought, “I’ve found my Angelina only to lose her! But I shouldn’t bewail my fortune completely, since, without the impertinence of this coachman, I would have missed her entirely.” As I attempted to console myself thus, the major-domo reappeared, but with less warmth, it seemed, than before, and, begging me politely to follow him, led me inside to a small cabinet, where he left me, quite unhappy with the change in his manner, which did not bode well. And, indeed, when the door opened, Monsieur de Montcalm approached me with a smile on his lips but a cold look in his eye, his manner hurried and brusque.

“Well, well, Monsieur de Siorac, how happy I am to see you!” (But he bloody well didn’t look it!) “I haven’t forgotten how very much obliged we are to you” (but never was gratitude less gratefully expressed), “and had you not arrived just as I was leaving, having won my lawsuit, I would have loved to invite you to dine with me and to spend more time with you than I’m able to at this moment.”

“Monsieur,” I replied, “I’d be most unhappy to delay you, but having just had the good fortune to learn of your whereabouts, I wanted to present my respects, having come to Paris only a month ago to ask for the king’s pardon.”

“Yes, I learnt of your arrival from Nançay the first day I was at the Louvre, and, of course, communicated my sincere wishes that you be successful in your quest.”

“Aha,” I thought, “these ‘sincere wishes’ didn’t go as far as making any attempt to find the lodgings of the man who, five years previously, had snatched him from the hands of the bloodthirsty brigands of the Barbentane woods, and saved the honour of his wife and daughter.” This thought so froze my tongue that all I could do was stand there and look at him in silence. He seemed to me to be extremely ill at ease, visibly torn by the manifest contradiction between his outward appearance, which was quite imposing, as he was a large man with bushy eyebrows, piercing eyes and a severe face, and his inward feelings, which must have been a good deal less assured than he would have wished—his conscience no doubt painfully pricked to have so badly recognized the obligations that he so loudly proclaimed he owed me. And thus, as he was unable to dismiss me outright—however much he must have wanted to do so—and since I did not take my leave, being determined to see his daughter—a desire I gathered he did not intend to satisfy, since it was so contrary to his designs—we stood there, facing each other, mute but polite, each waiting for the other to make his move. And we would have remained standing there face to face like two statues if we’d not been interrupted by a richly clothed, somewhat portly young gentleman, smiling broadly, who entered the cabinet and proclaimed, “Good my father, it’s time to leave! Madame de Montcalm and Angelina have taken their places in the coach and are waiting for you.”

“Monsieur de Siorac,” said Monsieur de Montcalm, “this gentleman is Monsieur de La Condomine, who will accompany us to Barbentane where he intends to marry my daughter.”

I was speechless at this frightful news, so calmly announced, and felt myself so near to fainting from the shock that I bowed more deeply than would have been appropriate, just to get the blood flowing back to my face.

“Monsieur,” I said, finally, trying to keep my voice steady, “I am at your service.”

At that, Monsieur de La Condomine, who looked like a complete fop, and who doubtless knew of my connections to Angelina, said not a word, but made a deep bow of his own. And at this, looking Monsieur de Montcalm straight in the eye, I decided to burn my bridges, since it was obvious that I was being cast into the outer darkness, and said loudly but with such exaggerated courtesy that it was obviously a challenge:

“Monsieur de Montcalm, I would be infinitely obliged if you would consent to allow me to present my respects to Madame de Montcalm and to your daughter before you leave.”

Monsieur de Montcalm, who was of a naturally choleric complexion, reddened with rage at the idea that I would thus hold a knife to his throat, since he could not honourably refuse to grant to the man who had saved his life the courtesy of saying goodbye. But intending nevertheless to deny this courtesy, he behaved exactly as his future son-in-law had done, and refused to say another word. Instead, he simply turned away, took Monsieur de La Condomine by the arm and left me standing there in the cabinet.

I followed them, and, emerging onto the rue des Marmousets, I saw that the window curtains of the coach had been lowered, despite the crushing heat of the midday sun. I had no doubt that this was done at Monsieur de Montcalm’s orders, to keep Angelina from catching
sight of me and to prevent me from speaking to her. Indignant at this odious violence practised upon my beloved, and taking courage from the realization that Monsieur de Montcalm, who was not an inherently bad man, would never have inflicted this harm on his daughter (whom he doted on) if she’d consented to his wishes, I rushed up to the coach, hoping to find a way to let her know of my presence. Seeing this, Monsieur de Montcalm murmured a few words to the coachman, who leapt quickly onto his seat and seemed ready to whip his horses into motion as soon as his master and Monsieur de La Condomine had taken their places opposite the women. But this could not be accomplished, of course, without raising the window curtains and revealing my presence.

My decision was made in the blink of an eye. Unafraid of displeasing a man who’d so cast me aside, I rushed to the other side of the coach, raised the curtain that was shrouding the window and, greeting mother and daughter, looked Angelina in the eye and cried hastily, “Angelina, I will always love you!”

I couldn’t say more since the coach was shaking, Monsieur de Montcalm was shouting like a madman “Whip them on! Whip them on!” and the coachman began lashing his four steeds mercilessly into a gallop. In all the din of the whip lashes, the ironclad wheels grinding on the pavement and the horses’ hooves clattering noisily away, I couldn’t have been heard anyway, nor could I have heard any response from my beloved (though I saw her opening her mouth), so I ran alongside the door as the coach pulled away. Holding the raised curtain with my left hand, I unsheathed my sword with my right and managed to strike with the flat of the blade a horse that one of Montcalm’s valets wanted to trample me under. As I did so, I received a longing look from Angelina’s beautiful eyes (since words were of no help to us now), which glowed with a marvellous light, despite the darkness of the coach where her father, mother and suitor
were moving about confusedly like creatures of the underworld. And in this glance I believed I could read the confirmation of the vows she’d made me, and a promise to hold out for ever in the teeth of this paternal tyranny.

With a bitterly wounded heart, all desire to live extinguished and a knot in my throat so tight I thought I would faint, I watched the coach bearing my Angelina away turn the corner and disappear. Sadly, I sheathed my sword, remounted my horse and set off towards our lodgings, still breathless and bathed in sweat from my pursuit, my legs shaking still and my voice so choked in my throat that I couldn’t possibly have spoken a word had my life depended on it—but what words would I have found? My very thoughts abandoned me in my despair; the world become as black as ink, my whole life suddenly deprived of the bright star that had lit my path these past five years.

“Ah!” I thought. “Angelina can but weaken when she marries this fat idiot and I’ll never see her again.”

The apprehension I felt at this unspeakable misfortune was so painful that it now appeared inevitable. Giving no thought to the faces I passed in the street as I rode slowly along on Pompée, I gave way to the tears that now flowed freely down my cheeks and fell in large drops on my hands, which held her reins with such abandon that she would not have known which direction to take had not Fogacer’s horse preceded us. Whichever way I turned my inner thoughts, blurred as they were by these storms of tears, all I could imagine in a world without Angelina was an immense, harsh, stony, sterile and meaningless desert. Certainly I did not doubt that she still loved me! And I could only imagine the valour that had spurred her on these past five years against her father’s will. But his resolve had finally hardened into a pitiless inhumanity and had fallen into the violence that I’d just witnessed. And if Monsieur de Montcalm dared to do that, wouldn’t
he do worse to make her bend to his will? And how far could the poor girl push her rebellion before he decided to imprison her, as he had so often threatened to do, in a papist convent, killing off any hope of either marriage or motherhood, which were so deeply imprinted in her character that even the promise of my love could not overcome them? I couldn’t help imagining my adorable girl buried in some cloister where everything was as cold and hard as the stones from which it was built. There, the rules were barbaric, the cell incommodious, the food repulsive, the nuns tyrannical, and I could imagine her, still so beautiful despite her funereal veils, slowly abandoning her will to live. I supposed I must face the awful truth that, no matter how much trust I had in her vows and in that last look that confirmed them, the time would come when the daily torments she faced would end up wearing down her constancy, and that anything, even the fatuous La Condomine, would seem preferable to such a fate.

How can absence be endured when it is without remedy? What? Would I never see her again? How could I pronounce the word “never” without perishing, even though loss is part of our everyday lives, like a little death, a shred torn from our hearts, a pleasure ravished from our sight, delights that have fallen through our fingers? Oh, heaven! How can it be that in the fortress of our joys a wall can collapse without the entire edifice completely crashing to earth?

As soon as we’d returned to our lodgings, I threw Pompée’s reins to Miroul, nodded a sad adieu to Fogacer, who looked on mutely, ran to my tiny room and locked myself in so as not to be seen in the state I was in. My tears had dried up. All I could feel now was a kind of grief-stricken daze, a terror of what was to come, a degree of despair that would have led me to kill myself had I not been revived by my bitter anger towards Monsieur de Montcalm for having thus treated this girl whose tenderness, mildness and goodness had never seen their like on this earth.

In his letters to my father, Monsieur de Montcalm had given as a reason for his refusal the impecunious situation that befell me as a younger son. However, when my father and Uncle Sauveterre assured him that they would grant me a proper living when I married, Monsieur de Montcalm changed his tune, or rather revealed the real reasons, which he’d hidden till then and were, as you will agree, of an overwhelming magnitude. He revealed that when he told his confessor about the alliance he was contemplating, the priest threw his arms heavenward and imposed an absolute barrier to such a union: a Huguenot could not marry a Catholic! If Monsieur de Montcalm had the weakness to accept such an infamous marriage, such an unnatural union, one so obviously inspired by Beelzebub, his salvation would be immediately forfeited.

I now saw to what depths zeal could bring the heart of an honest man when it was inspired by the absolutes of religion. It had been sufficient for this stupid priest to brandish his lightning, and Monsieur de Montcalm, by submitting to it, had banished from his breast all the gratitude he owed me for having saved his life in the Barbentane woods, as well as all courtesy, honour and friendship, and even the simple, rough connection that exists between men when they have shared the same perils—and did he not remember that it was in the act of blocking the shot that would have killed him that I had been so severely wounded at Barbentane? But a priest had got hold of him and nothing merely human counted any more.