Jean de Fodoas

by Maurice Magre

  Finally, fate favored me. A venerable man who was sitting in front of a door gave the impression of understanding what I said to him.

  “The temple of the bell?” he said to me. “It’s there.”

  My joy was keen on seeing at the end of a steep side-street a small new church surmounted by a cross.

  I learned subsequently that the church was called the temple of the bell because the bell that the Jesuits had installed on finishing the church had provoked complaints from the people of the neighborhood, whom it woke up too early. I knew that thanks to Akbar’s protection, two Jesuits had obtained permission to build a church and teach the Christian religion.

  They ought, at that moment to be awaiting the arrival of the mission. I knocked on the door of a white house adjacent to the church. I was very surprised to be poorly received by a Father with a thin face devoid of gaiety. I tried to give him details regarding the arrival of other Fathers, but he was scarcely listening to me.

  “You’re not standing straight,” he repeated, indicating a room and telling me that the best thing to do was sleep. He said severely, as he left me: “There’s a certain odor of tari around you, which, I hope, will have dissipated tomorrow.”

  THE REQUEST OF BENOÎT DE GOËS

  The most favorable situation for studying the human heart is to have a profound knowledge of life and to be the favorite of a great sovereign. It’s true that it is not a career that one can advise a young man to follow. Destiny, even more than sovereigns, decides the choice of favorites.

  It seemed that the Emperor had forgotten me during the first days of my arrival. If a favorable star was protecting me, it had flown away for a time. I could not find my way again in the immensity of the imperial stables. I did not know the name of the man who had lost me and I suspected him of having done so deliberately. Bearded chamberlains refused me indignantly when I asked to see the Emperor.

  Fortunately, the missionaries arrived, and with them, the mule that was carrying my luggage. I adopted a course that had always succeeded in Toulouse. When I experienced some difficulty, of whatever order it might be, I dressed myself in the most magnificent garments, to which I added a singular detail, such as an excessively long plume or an extravagant necklace of gems. An incident always resulted from which I extracted myself advantageously. I therefore took out of my trunk what seemed to me to be the most eye-catching.

  After a few days, the missionaries asked to be received by the Emperor. They took me with them into the city of canvas and carpets.

  We found the Emperor sitting on his heels and very cheerful. His tent was decorated with ancient Mongol shields, on the metal of which strange heads with horns and enormous eyebrows were sculpted. There were also Chinese miniatures representing delightful landscapes. The Emperor was in the process of listening o verses that were being recited by the poet Faizi, the brother of Aboul Fazi.18 The two brothers were sitting side by side to his right. Faizi hesitated sometimes, as if his memory failed him. He must have been reciting a famous poem, for the Emperor immediately continued in his stead. He did not interrupt himself when we entered and he made us a sign to wait until the end of the poem.

  To his left he had an individual of military appearance, who was, I subsequently learned, the warrior Todor Mal.19 He did not appear to understand anything of what was being said, but he was smiling and nodding his head. A group was standing behind him. They almost all had hooded eyes, yellow robes and black bonnets. What simplicity of costume compared with mine!

  I recognized among them the man who had lost me on the day of my arrival. He was Assad Bey, a courtier who had no well-defined function but who was a friend of the Emperor. I stared at him, but I encountered in his gaze such a perfect indifference that I thought for a moment that I was mistaken.

  I thought I discerned that Faizi was losing his memory by design, in order to permit the Emperor to give evidence of poetic erudition. And I also saw on the face of Aboul Fazi a clear disapproval of his brother’s lapses of memory, for he was above flattery.

  When it was finished, and after a few words of welcome, the Emperor pointed out to the missionaries a poorly-dressed man, a negro, who gave the impression of having been forgotten in a corner and seemed to consider poetry a profane thing of no interest.

  “He comes from Cochin,” said the Emperor. “He’s a very erudite rabbi. He excels in arguments about the gods and about God. You’re to measure yourselves against him.”

  Father Monserrate’s face darkened. He had not quit Agra for several years, animated by a tenacious hope. He knew that Akbar’s dream was to convene a great council of priests of all religions, in order to bring out of it a unique religion, better and purer, that might serve as a means of the union of peoples. But he believed that, thanks to his power of persuasion, the Emperor would convert to the Christian religion and would extirpate the other religions by violence.

  I sensed that all the missionaries were enveloping themselves in an arrogant gravity at the idea of having to sustain theological discussions with a black rabbi of wretched appearance, all the more so because the black rabbi was looking at them angrily.

  Benoît de Goës hastened to explain his request. He was very timid and spoke in a low voice, but an obsession always confers strength. He explained at length the itinerary he wanted to follow, the kingdoms he wanted to traverse on foot.

  The Emperor was obliged to interrupt him. He gave him all the necessary letters of credit. He even added three hundred gold mohurs of his own. And as Aboul Fazi did not make a note of it quickly enough he seized a little ivory wand that was within arm’s reach and nervously gave him three strokes in the palm of his hand, repeating: “Three hundred! Three hundred!” Then he laughed softly, amused by what he was about to say.

  “There is only one difficulty in this courageous missionary’s journey,” he said, and that is that the city of Xambalu,20 in the kingdom of Cathay, which is, according to him, situated far beyond my states, has no real existence.”

  Everyone smiled and approved.

  Benoît de Goës resumed speaking with an authority unexpected in such a timid man.

  It was beyond a sandy ocean, vaster and more redoubtable than the great ocean with salty waves. The wind blew up waves there as high as the sky; the trails were effaced as soon as they were traced. Caravans disappeared in unknown depths. But when one had marched for a long time holding the image of Christ in one’s right hand, one finally saw the city of Xambalu looming up on the edge of the desert like a port overlooking an immense sea. And above Xambalu there was a bell-tower with a cross, because the inhabitants of the city were Christians. They were distant brothers that he was going to find.

  “Very distant,” aid Akbar, thoughtfully. But how was it that he, the Emperor, with all the means that were in his power, had never heard mention of Xambalu and of Cathay, while Benoît de Goës, in the Occident, on the other side of the world, seemed to have a very precise knowledge of it?

  Benoît de Goës lowered his eyes. He hesitated. He had a sort of modesty in expressing himself. Finally, he spoke in a very low voice.

  Although he was entirely worthy, without there being any reason for it, he had been visited by certain divine inspirations. The Lord had sometimes accorded him visions. He had seen the stone walls of Xambalu, a procession in a street. He had even distinguished that the Christ that was being carried in order to appease the whirlwinds of sand had a beard divided into three points, by which the Christ worshiped by the first Christians was recognizable.

  By the gravity of the faces I understood that visions were respected in this milieu. Benoît de Goës raised his eyes momentarily and went on, with more firmness:

  “I also know that there is a poor monk that I must save. One evening, in my cell, I saw him on a mountain, far beyond the extents that you call Gobi. I saw a little church abandoned because the tempests blow at every new moon a layer of sand that is increasing. The monk has remained beside it. He is alone and he labors all day transp
orting the sand away from the church. In the evening, he rings the bell. Out there, in the Occident, I heard it and I recognized that it had a tone of despair. There is, in that direction, a fir-wood of which only the treetops can be distinguished.”

  “Long meditations all have the same result,” said the Emperor in a low voice, turning to Aboul Fazi, as if he were continuing a conversation begun long before. “Often, the images born of them have a rigorous exactitude.”

  “The images that Christ inspires are the only true ones,” said Benoît de Goës, with his eyes still lowered but raising the tone of his voice slightly.

  Father Monserrate and my cousin Du Jarric started speaking at the same time, and I saw that Father Pignero was tugging Benoît de Goës’ robe. Fortunately, the Emperor’s gaze settled on me. He examined me, and I saw a gleam of amusement in his gaze, almost of wonderment.

  “Is that the latest fashion among Spanish gentlemen?”

  Pierre Du Jarric, delighted by the inoffensive character of a conversation about fashion, hastened to say that I was French, and that in France, what was worn at Court was not always worn simultaneously by provincial gentlemen.

  “But it’s the young man from Nader,” said the Emperor, leaning very close to Aboul Fazi’s ear. And even though he was speaking in a low voice, I heard him say: “I had asked the mission from Goa to send me one of those marvelous horses such as the Dutch in Java have. It appears that horses die during the crossing, so they’ve given me the rider without the horse.”

  He must have been in a very good mood, for he laughed, as if it was funny.

  The missionaries took their leave, but he followed his train of thought, and that thought related to me.

  “My first judgment has always been the best,” he said then to Aboul Fazi. “You can write his name in the book of friends.”

  I thought that was a manner of speaking. Imagine my surprise when I saw Aboul Fazi pick up a book placed next to him. It was bound in the skin of a stillborn lamb and had a golden clasp. The minister interrogated me with his gaze.

  “Jean de Fodoas,” I said, and added: “Chevalier,” emphasizing the word in order to mark that I knew full well that I was only there was a replacement for a horse.

  EMPEROR AKBAR

  I had always believed that the men who occupy important situations in cities, and even nations, had only conquered those situations by their mediocrity and their similarity to the vulgar. I thought that veritable genius was only encountered among young and independent men like myself. I was obliged to revise that opinion. I found myself, in Akbar’s court, among individuals who combined power and intelligence simultaneously. But of all of them, Akbar was the greatest.

  He appeared to me thus because one only sensed high virtue in him as the result of a weakness that he had vanquished. He was an old man full of faults, who had drawn his elevation from inferior elements.

  But I am not undertaking a life of illustrious men, or even a life of that great sovereign. I have attached myself to another task, and if it is necessary for me to report aspects of the life of Akbar, it will be in the measure that those aspects had an action on my own soul.

  I lived in the palace, and after a time I even had a tent not far from the one in which the Emperor slept. He sent for me at the most various times and did not become angry when, being absent, I did not come immediately—which appeared to me to be an extraordinary trait on the part of someone who saw his slightest caprices satisfied immediately. The fashion in which I expressed myself in Persian made him laugh, but the causes of that hilarity disappeared quite rapidly because of my great facility in speaking foreign languages.

  I made him laugh for other reasons. I informed him of the mores of a land he did not know, and which interested him a great deal. He had only heard it mentioned in a conventional manner by Jesuits who were only thinking about converting him, or by a few adventurers of the least order who had no other objective than to extort money from him. The private life of the magistrates of Toulouse excited his curiosity, as well as that of the judges of the Parlement of Languedoc.

  He was surprised, above all, by the importance that was attached in France to women. He questioned me about the administration of cities and the comfort of dwellings. He marveled at finding in everything I said to him unexpected features of civilization. The Occident gave him the impression of a very barbaric region, and he summoned Aboul Fazi to laugh with him when I told him—with oratory precautions, of course—that for the majority of the inhabitants of Toulouse, India was a land where there was nothing but naked men, tigers and savage forests.

  Several times he had me give descriptions of Saint-Sernin, and when I told him that it was the most beautiful church on earth he replied that when there were many Christians in Agra he would have one built that would be much more beautiful. He counted on building alongside it a synagogue, a mosque, a Buddhist pagoda and a temple of fire.

  When I talked to him about “la Belle Paule,”21 and the great renown for beauty that she had conquered, he contented himself with smiling and replying that there were no women more beautiful than those of Lahore, because the climate there was disposed to the forms of beauty. He asked me, however, whether had a portrait of the beautiful Paule.

  I replied that I did not, but I had the imprudence to show him the miniature of Bérangère de Palassol made in paste by my friend Thomas Capellan. I always carried it on my person in order not to lose it.

  The Emperor considered it for a long time, and declared to me that it was an exquisite work, worthy of the school of Ispahan, and that he would be very glad to possess it. I hastened to tell him that it was the portrait of a young woman who was very dear to me. He did not hear me, or pretended not to hear me. He put the portrait of Bérangère de Palassol in a little cupboard of ebony and ivory that was in a corner of his tent, saying: “I’ve tried to give it up, but I always hold on to that which is beautiful. That miniature will give me great pleasure.”

  I was heartbroken, but dared not persist. Commerce with the great has inconveniences of which the characteristic is to be neither foreseeable not avoidable.

  The Emperor often took me hunting, which he adored. I took great pleasure in it, and the fact of savoring common joys together is always a cause for sympathy.

  “You’ll understand it later,” he said to me, “but the Buddha is the greatest of known prophets because he extended his love to animals and all living beings. I understand that it’s necessary not to kill without reason, and yet I kill for my pleasure alone. The other day, I organized camel combats within an enclosure and I’ve enabled you to witness duels between frogs and spiders.”

  I had indeed been present at that spectacle and I had found it infinitely amusing.

  “The more one knows the extent of one’s fault, the more the culpability is augmented. Conscience is the measure of justice.”

  I always listened to him respectfully, but I permitted myself to remark there could not be any fault in making animals as ugly as spiders and frogs kill one another.

  “No fault for you, evidently! It’s necessary that the conscience be born.”

  It is only from an emperor that one can hear such things being said without protesting. The idea that I had no conscience appeared to me, in any case, to be implausible.

  “The sin only commences when one knows that one is committing it. And how difficult the reparation is! Thus, listen, for a time I had a mania for leopards. I wanted to have one of every sort. Every prince in India sent me some. There are now more than thirteen hundred in my menageries. And now a remorse has come to me for retaining in captivity those animals made to live in the midst of forests. That remorse was so powerful, the other morning, that I nearly had the cages opened immediately—cages that are in the most populous suburb in Agra.”

  He remained thoughtful momentarily.

  “On has, in liberating oneself from past actions, the same difficulty as in setting thirteen hundred leopards free.”

  Once, he t
ook me hunting wild donkeys. Those animals are very wily, and in order to be able to fire at them, it is necessary to approach them crawling through the undergrowth, without making a noise. One of the inconveniences of that kind of hunt is that while one is crawling one can find oneself face to face with a tiger that one has woken up. Those animals are so numerous that one night, one was pursued in the suburbs of Agra.

  We were alone with Alaf and Kaouf, who were carrying rifles, and who passed them to us when, after taking a great deal of trouble, we were within range of a herd of donkeys. Those rifles were operated by a system invented by the Emperor and were very accurate—for the Emperor had a genius for discovery that enabled him to find all sorts of astonishing things. He was an excellent shot; the herd was very distant but he killed seven donkeys. When we went to see them there was one that was still alive. At the sight of it, the Emperor uttered a dolorous cry. He ordered his servants to finish it off quickly, and he turned his face away while they did so. He stayed with the donkeys for a long time, meditating. I waited alongside him.

  He said to me: “Aboul Fazi claims that there is a soul—only one soul—for the entire family of donkeys. I am begging that soul’s pardon.”

  And he did not pronounce another syllable until he returned. I thought, without letting anything show, that he simplest thing would have been not to go hunting donkeys.

  “What is difficult,” he Emperor said to me, “is not accomplishing good deeds. Good deeds are of scant importance. You can, whenever you want, take a handful of rupees and heap wretches with ease. The real difficulty is in the transformation of oneself.”

  He was to demonstrate how great that difficulty was the same day.

  He happened to be residing, for a certain time, in the palace that is within the walls of Agra. That palace is formed of a series of marble courtyards surrounded by galleries with three rows of colonnades. The Emperor’s apartments are in the edifices that surround the ultimate courtyard, and they overlook the banks of the Jumna. They are surmounted by a high tower, where the Emperor often went to spend his evenings, examining the stars and having their march explained to him by astronomers. At the base of the tower is a white marble hall, where every evening, at sunset, having put on a white linen robe, the Emperor meditated and said a prayer to light, which he assimilated to the universal spirit. For that, a servant, always the same one, came to light three silver candelabras, the five branches of which were in the form of a flower, the candle depicting the pistil.