Jean de Fodoas

by Maurice Magre

  That evening, the Emperor was in a somber mood. He had received bad news about his son. The rumor was running around that the Sultan Mourad, whom he adored, was preparing a rebellion against him. He forgot the hour of his prayer. He lingered with the astronomers at the summit of the tower. He came down again precipitately. I was in the courtyard when he went into the little room where he put on his linen robe. He made me a sign that he had no need of me, and I heard him murmur, following his train of thought: “Even the stars lie to us.”

  The servant charged with lighting the candelabras had been nicknamed in jest by the Emperor “the Pig” because of his resemblance to that animal and the stupidity of which he gave evidence. Had he thought that the Emperor was no longer coming to pray? He had extinguished the candles and had fallen asleep at the foot of the candelabras.

  The Emperor went into the dark room, tripped over him and fell full length. His nose collided with a silver candelabrum, which fell over noisily.

  The entire palace was aroused. It was thought to be an assassination attempt. The Emperor was bleeding from the nose, but the subtle element of wrath emerged from his soul, more abundantly. It had obscured his mind to the extent that he expressed himself in the Tchagatai language, which he never employed.

  “Send for Noureddin!”

  Noureddin was, with Assad Bey, one of the two Saibanis, or chamberlains charged with the administration of the palace. He was particularly precious, because he was the only one able to call all the Emirs by their names in the ceremonies. He appeared immediately. The Emperor gave him the order to leave Agra forever, and as his gaze fell upon the Pig, who was still prostrate, his forehead to the ground, he cried to his guards: “Take that to the top of the tower and throw it in the Jumna.”

  That was executed immediately, without any noise, for the unfortunate fellow made no protest.

  Hakim Ali,22 the palace physician, came running with bandages and dressed the wounded nose. The white robe had a long red streak. The dagger-thrust of an assassin would not have given rise to a fit of rage that took so long to appease. Other instances of negligence in service came back to the Emperor’s memory, and several functionaries were summoned and threatened with severe penalties.

  It was only an hour later when the Emperor asked, negligently, whether his order relative to the Pig had been executed.

  “But of course!” said servile voices; and one of them added: “His body was entirely smashed against the rocks.”

  And words rose up on all sides. The wretch! Death was an insufficient punishment. That death was an act of clemency.

  The Emperor contented himself with saying: “That’s good.”

  But I saw that his lips were trembling slightly, from a cause other than anger.

  A few days later, I learned that an officer of the palace renowned for his seriousness, had been charged with an enquiry regarding a certain Mirza, son of Tahir, born in Gujarat, known in the palace by the nickname “the Pig.” He was very surprised to have received from the Emperor himself the order to make that investigation.

  Did the Emperor prefer that the step he took remained quiet, and did he confide it to me because he knew that I had little contact with the men of the Court? Doubtless it was for that reason, for my ignorance of the local tongue did not mark me out particularly.

  He summoned me and handed me a leather bag that had to contain a very considerable sum. He gave me minute details of a little by-road where here was a very poor house, some distance from Agra. There, he said, lived an old man named Tahir, whose son had died recently. I was to give him the money without saying where it came from and come back.

  That was only simple in appearance. I was obliged to have recourse to Father Monserrate in order to have a guide. He gave me a child of the only Hindu family converted to Christianity, the only one that justified the presence of the church and the appeal of the bell.

  The child enabled me to find the house. In that epoch it was a great problem for me to know how certain Hindus, and even the greater number, could live without any of the accessories employed by the majority of people, such as garments, furniture, plates and glasses.

  I found myself in the presence of a naked old man sitting cross-legged on a square of beaten earth between bamboos imperfectly united by the mud that formed the walls of his house. He had nothing around him that could assist him for nourishment or sleep.

  He was gazing fixedly at his feet, and when I raised my voice he stared at me with a strangely clear gaze, full of meek sadness. I gave him the bag, making him a sign that it belonged to him.

  His face expressed a great surprise at first. He palpated it with exceedingly thin fingers, and the rustle of metal only make him comprehend what it contained at the moment when I was about to withdrew, glad to have fulfilled my mission.

  A profound disgust replaced the mildness on his face. I had already taken a few steps along the road. He spat in my direction, and threw the bag with such great force in my direction, at the same time as he pronounced a few guttural words whose meaning I did not comprehend, but among which I recognized the name of Akbar.

  One cannot leave a bag of gold on a road. I picked it up and drew away.

  “Great saint!” repeated the little Hindu on the way, assuredly speaking about a sanctity foreign to his new religion.

  When I rendered an account of my mission to the Emperor he listened to me in silence. Then, having reflected, he said: “Power, however great it is, is limited by the evil one has caused. I might be the Emperor but I cannot modify the consequences of my actions. Thus, a man placed at the summit of a mountain, if he rolls down a stone down it, has no possibility of modifying the velocity the stone, or the bounds it makes.”

  THE TEMPLARS’ BAPHOMET

  My cousin Pierre Du Jarric asked me to meet him by sending the little Hindu of the unique Christian family. I hastened to run to the mission.

  It was, in truth, a long time since I had been there. I had horses and weapons. Everyone showed me a good face because of the Emperor’s favor. Only Assad Bey, the chamberlain, with whom I had dealings on the first day, feigned to ignore my existence. I had perceived quite rapidly that men are not different because they have a complexion more bronzed and beards and hair of another quality. I had recognized the hirsute Afghan lords and the seemingly savage Rajputs as similar to my comrades in Toulouse. They desired women equally, uttered cries when they were playing at archery, drank immeasurably like them and amused themselves in the evenings reciting verses. I now spoke Persian and Hindi almost without an accent. I could satisfy my love of garish costumes. I did not think about the morrow. I had almost forgotten the existence of those grave men in somber robes who lived around a deserted church and nourished a dream that I knew to be forever unrealizable: the conversion of the Emperor Akbar to Christianity.

  An old Hindu with white hair introduced me into a large hall full of benches, prepared for the future catechumens. Christs and Virgins ornamented the walls. Something indefinable spoke of abandonment, of futile effort. There were muffled footsteps in the neighboring rooms. My visit was awaited. I had the disagreeable sensation of entering into a tedious domain, and that sentiment was aggravated by the sudden notion of my ingratitude.

  When my cousin appeared I nearly uttered a cry, so visible did it appear to me that his nose had elongated. He still had the same fashion of being jovial without appearing to be, and passing abruptly from one subject of conversation to another. That was natural to him, but he made use of it deliberately when it was necessary for his convenience.

  Certainly he was glad about my unhoped-for situation, but Providence alone had done everything. He thanked it every day. No, no! All the protestations that I attempted on that subject were futile. I had come to the mission often enough, very often, in sum. It was not a matter of that. I had not shown any ingratitude, far from it.

  “You see, it’s me who is culpable in your regard. I haven’t told you everything. I ought to have told you everything,
judged you capable of understanding. I know, in any case, without you telling me, that you’ve been working silently for the Order. Oh, how glad I am to see you again today and to speak to you with an open heart. I even sense between us a communication that didn’t exist before.”

  I experienced a painful sentiment, because it was exactly the contrary. The communication that had once existed between us was no longer the same. I felt a sincere pain in consequence, because I loved my cousin in the measure in which it is possible for a young man of twenty to love.

  After a silence during which he had considered me attentively, he went on:

  “It’s because I know your character. It’s only superficial in appearance. Father Octave is the only one to have understood you. Do you remember that he called you his brother? We’ve had news of him. He’s had great disappointments. That’s because it’s very difficult to go abroad in the world with a skeletal physique. I say this in confidence, but I believe that Father Octave is secretly proud of resembling a skeleton. Fatal vanity!

  “As he arrived one evening at the entrance to a mountain village, primitive and superstitious peasants thought they recognized in him a man buried some time before. Those vulgar beings thought themselves threatened by that phantom, and stoned him. He was able to get away, but was covered in wounds. He dragged himself through the woods for several days. But perhaps it is written that he will find the Cross of Bartholomew in spite of the improbability that sensate minds accorded to that enterprise, for he was able to reach our mission in Lahore, where our brothers cared for him. Between us, however, it appears that he only consents to eat what is strictly necessary, so frightened is he of losing his precious resemblance to the dead.

  “My child, you have been built in the most living image, and you know that the Order is counting on you to utilize those gifts. I’m sure that you have not the slightest thought of avoiding your duty”—and here my cousin Du Jarric’s eyes turned to look at one of the Christs suspended from the wall—“but I ought to remind you accessorily that if you had a whim to forget those duties, it would be necessary for you to deploy a great deal of prudence.”

  I interrupted my cousin to ask him what he meant, exactly, and I told him that it was an unfortunate particularity of my nature to respond to threats by revolt.

  He started to laugh and responded to me that another particularity of which I was unaware was the excessive promptitude of the revolt—but that revolt was as fecund as submission.

  With the gesture with which one drives away importunate flies, he chased away the thoughts to which his last words might have given birth.

  “Do you wonder sometimes why Genghis Khan, who only had a few pasturelands and a few men, became the greatest conqueror on earth, why his sons and generals were always victorious, and why Timur, his descendant, saw all the cities he besieged fall before him, and was master of Asia? You have never asked yourself that question or, if you have asked it of yourself, you have done what everyone else does and believed in the simplest explanations. And how Babar, Humayun and after them, Akbar, have created an empire of more than a hundred million subjects, that too has appeared natural to you, and appears natural to the majority of men. The Mongols traveled rapidly on fast horses and attacked in tight formations, that’s the secret of their victory, it’s said. Or else Babar and Akbar were courageous and skillful captains.

  “Well, the man who reads the story of events related by those who witnessed them is obliged to search for another explanation, an explanation more probable and more secret. There is a great mystery in the victories of those conquerors, and a mystery of which once can follow the trace. Bagdad, the capital of Islam, was impregnable when Hulagu took possession of it after a few days of siege. And Delhi, the city with three thousand war elephants was sheltered from any attack behind its ramparts, so high that their like had never been seen. Delhi fell at Timur’s first assault. There was an eagle’s nest called Batnir, a fortress situated almost in the snows. Timur had reduced it before Delhi—it and many others, notably, all the castles that the grandmasters of the Assassins, who had succeeded one another for two centuries, had patiently erected in impregnable places.

  “There is a secret to conquest that does not reside in the improvement of weapons, nor in the courage of soldiers, nor in the strategic skill of leaders. The fall of Jericho is a legend with a foundation of truth. But this is not a matter of legend. Well-guarded as the secret is, one sometimes finds a trace of it. It is reported that when the Occident sensed the threat of the Mongols, Henry of Silesia gathered all the Christian forces available before Legnica in Bohemia, in order to deliver battle to an army commanded by Kaidou.23 He had with him the Templars and the Teutonic Knights, the elite of the warriors of Europe. His numerical superiority was crushing and he was about to be victorious.

  “At the moment when the Mongols began to disperse, a bearded human head of horrible appearance was suddenly seen to loom up in their midst on the end of a pole. It is added that around the head there were designs. And the Mongols won the victory by virtue of an abrupt reversal that had a magical character. A head! There is every chance that the unparalleled power that dominated the world had its source in a magical sign, and that sign was a head surrounded by designs.

  “You know that the Jesuits believe in magic and that they even practice it in a certain measure. Not all magic is diabolical. There is a pact with God, and Saint Ignatius signed it on our behalf. It might well be that the great conquerors, those who have had an empire over the peoples of the world, were men who made use of magic and channeled the forces of the world to their advantage by means of signs.”

  Perhaps my face, which I was striving to render impassive, expressed a doubt involuntarily, for Pierre Du Jarric stopped. Although it was impossible for anyone to overhear us, he went to the window, and then to the door, and resumed in a low voice in order to give his words more force and verity by the faintness of his tone.

  “The Jesuits utilize the virtue of signs, and they suppose with reason that those who have conquered an enormous power have conquered it by similar means to theirs. It is necessary to have experimented in order to take account of the fact that the reproduction of a certain image, a certain geometrical figure, is susceptible of directing human actions. It requires another element, of course, a will that commands. Ah, the power of emblems! You’re smiling, naturally….”

  I was not smiling at all. Surprise had frozen my features.

  “But you who are smiling, without being aware of it, are perhaps benefiting from the magic of a sign. I’ve given you that of our Order, and you ought to have it around your neck. If you’re no longer wearing it, you are the phantom of its design, for one never liberates oneself according to one’s caprice, and it is not sufficient to throw a scapular into the nettles. Our Order has attached you with its sign, you have its bond around your neck, whether you want it or not.”

  I made an involuntary gesture toward my neck, surrounded by a lace collar, but my cousin stopped me.

  “Let’s speak seriously and without detours. Our Order has saved your life. In spite of the unusual success that you have at his moment, which you only owe to yourself—let us say that you only owe it to yourself and that Providence has nothing to do with it—the Jesuits can have a great deal of influence over your destiny. You can render them a service and they know how to pay for services, be sure of that. That is what it is important to know, the first link in the chain that will lead us to the goal we are pursuing.”

  Père Du Jarric took from beneath his robe a scroll of cloth that he had in an interior pocket and he unrolled it cautiously. It was an exceedingly old fabric, on which something was drawn or painted, which I could not make out at first.

  “Look carefully,” he said to me.

  I saw that it was a human head, bearded and rather ugly. The mouth was enormous and one could see teeth protruding. That head gave a strange impression; I had never seen its like.

  “It’s a head,” I said; and
I thought within myself: How puerile these Fathers are to occupy themselves with such trifles, instead of firing bows or riding horses in excursions to which I could have the Emperor invite them.

  “Well, we would like to know whether you have noticed a similar head in the palace, and especially in the immediate vicinity of the Emperor.”

  I started to laugh. No, I had not noticed anything.

  My uncle’s eyes stared at me with the expression that one has in order to measure someone’s stupidity.

  “Come on, you’ve studied history. You’ve heard mention of the Templars, The Fodoas had a château in Ariège that had belonged to them.”

  “My father took me there when I was a child. There was a tower to the west, of the form found in all the edifices built by the Templars.”

  “To the west! That’s the tower of conquest. They marched westwards. Well, the head that you see there is the Baphomet of the Templars.24 There were reproductions of it in all the command-posts of their Order, but of the model, only two exist: the Baphomet of the Orient and the Baphomet of the Occident. This Baphomet was in the chamber of Jacques de Molay, the grandmaster of the Templars, whom Philippe le Bel had burned. How it entered into the possession of the Jesuits is another story, which I won’t tell you, firstly because it’s too long, and secondly because I only know it incompletely. A most astonishing story—incredible, even!