The Blood of Toulouse

by Maurice Magre

  I lifted in my arms the suave form of election, and I placed her on the ground, surprised within myself that I had not been consumed by the contact. She stood there like a statue, still piercing me with the cold sword of her eyes. With her two clasped hands she held her veil over her breasts, but it was translucent. There was nothing beneath the veil but pure light. She stood before the somber mass of the forest, clad in the splendor with which one imagines the gods to be surrounded, foreign to the forms of the trees, the color of the air and the earth that did not soil her feet.

  From all directions I heard human voices that were drawing nearer. I had a desire to fall to my knees and weep. But the instinct of survival was stronger. In a few bounds, I reached the nearby thickets, and I lost myself therein.

  III

  The setting sun caused the helmets of the watchers at the top of the barbicans to glitter like steel lamps. I saw looming up before me the Babylonian accumulation of Toulousan roofs and turrets, and perceived the city huddled within its circle of ruddy ramparts like a knight in the crimson of his body-stocking.

  I went through the Montolieu Gate at the moment when four men were beginning to maneuver the iron-studded battens in order to close them. Afraid of having been identified by the soldiers of the guard, or mistaken for one of the cagots to whom entry to the city was forbidden,6 I slipped into a group of peasants and beggars who were going over the drawbridge at the same time. And as I had lost the habit long ago of contemplating the animation of capitals, my feet bore me naturally toward the Rue de la Pourpointerie, in order to enjoy its splendor.

  Toulouse, in the time of its Comtes, could only be compared to Byzantium or ancient Alexandria. Knights returning from the crusades had brought back Oriental fashions, the taste for sumptuous colored fabrics. Via Aigues-Mortes and Narbonne, boucrans arrived from Tripoli, haïks from Gerba and ivory and ostrich-plumes from the Mahgreb. There were shops filled with multicolored parrots in aviaries, dazzling goldfinches on perches of precious wood, ibises from the Nile standing on one thin leg; others in which lapis-lazuli from the land of Ketama steamed in metal caskets, and whose walls were hung with coral branches of all hues; and others so stuffed with musk and aloes, amber and rose, that merely by passing along the street one could retain the perfume in one’s garments for months. One crossed paths with negroes from Barbary, reminiscent of joyful demons, Moors from Seville or Granada with green silk turbans, Byzantine merchants with cunning eyes, and the Toulousan noblewomen glimpsed behind the muslin of litters gave the impression of princesses of Bagdad.

  But the shutters were banging and the lamps were being blown out. People were wishing one another goodnight before shutting themselves in their houses. The magnificence of the dazzling Rue de la Pourpointerie was extinguished, like a jewel-box whose lid is closed. I recognized a few familiar silhouettes in passing, a few faces of young women with whom I had once exchanged smiles; I lowered my head and avoided their gaze.

  I turned into the Rue des Augustins and reached the outlying district. It was in going along the street of the Jews that I perceived that someone was following me. A mendicant from the group with which I had mingled as I came through the Montolieu gate was marching behind me obstinately. I made a long detour in order to lose him, going as far as the Rue des Trois-Piliers; but the hour had already come when, in the quarters of the center, chains were being extended at the extremities of the streets. I would be obliged to wait until the next day to knock on my father’s door.

  I headed toward Saint Sernin. In the shadow of the sacred basilica, the pavement on which I would sleep would be like a feather bed to me. It was a mild September night. The church reposed on its naves in the form of a cross like an immense stone bird settled for eternity. The five octagonal stages of its tower seemed to be launching themselves toward the starry sky, and there was an ardor in that movement of superimposed architectures that was communicated to my human heart. Alongside the church, like its brother, the ancient oak of Toulouse deployed its branches over the sleep of thousands of birds.

  As I wandered through the garden full of tombs and cypresses that surrounds Saint Sernin, I heard footsteps, and saw a man advancing toward me. It was an exceedingly ugly old man, as wretched in appearance as myself. I recognized the beggar who had been following me obstinately since the Montolieu gate.

  I have always inspired a spontaneous sympathy in many people. I was not extremely surprised to learn that that old man experienced one for me.

  “I recognized you immediately,” he said to me. “You’re among the believers of the Church of the Paraclete, the one to whom the heavy task has devolved. And here you are, arrived faithfully at the appointed hour. For know this: the time is now imminent. The reign of the Antichrist is about to end.”

  It was thus that the heretics designated our Holy Father Pope Innocent. I tried to explain to him that, quite recently, I was a novice in the Order of Cîteaux, but he was not listening to me. He was speaking incoherently, sometimes darting a glance at me full of pity.

  “Poor child! You are young and you are strong, but your shoulders will buckle and your heart will break because of the blood that you will have to shed.”

  I thought that the miseries of an errant life had deranged the man’s brain. I told him that I was looking for a comfortable place in which to sleep.

  “Yes, sleep while you can,” he replied. “It is easier to escape a furious wolf in the mountains than the actions one must accomplish. We both have our mission, but you are commencing and I am about terminate.”

  I had headed for the old dwelling of Pierre Maurand, in order that his entrance porch would shelter me from the nocturnal dew while I slept. I lay down on the ground. The old man sat down beside me. Suddenly, he pointed with his finger at the cross that, at the extreme summit of the steeple of Saint Sernin, gave the impression of cleaving the blue-tinted accumulations of the constellations.

  “You see that cross,” he said. “It’s necessary that, before I die, I wrench it from that steeple, where I placed it myself fifty years ago. I was then the boldest of apprentice masons, and on the day of the inauguration of the bell-tower, before the Comte, the Capitouls and the Bishop of Toulouse, I received the perilous mission of going to plant the cross in the sky at the moment when mass was celebrated. It was necessary not to be afraid of the immense space and the internal funnel that vertigo creates in the soul. At the place where the fifth stage finishes there was nothing more than a few shaky planks in the void. I climbed up with the cross at the end of my raised right arm. At the extremity of the spire I lifted a trap and, clinging on with my hands and feet, I plunged the cross into an iron groove. Then, full of pride, I looked around.

  “I found myself in the middle of the sky, in a perfect solitude, and the verity of the world appeared to me. There was no basilica beneath my feet. The murmur of the people in the streets, the liturgical chants that resounded: all of that had no reality. It was above me that the true basilica was deployed, so beautiful with its transparent stones, its altars and its Christs of dream. For we only see the appearance, the material double of the ideal reality. I heard songs in the clouds, I saw a prodigious mass celebrated there, under the luminous curvature of arches, between columns that split the sky, of which the host was the sun. I was tempted to launch myself toward that divine world, but my destiny was to live and yet to support many woes. It is since that day that I have had the power of distinguishing in the atmosphere of every man the future actions that he must accomplish.”

  I had a desire to drive that insensate away from my presence, but there was a sort of inspiration in his voice that made me reflect. He started talking to me about the sadness of the times and the misfortunes that were in preparation. He attributed them to a single cause: the presence in the world of gold. At the same time as gold had penetrated into the churches, God had emerged from them. A gilded Christ, a tableau in the painting of which there as a parcel of gold, became symbols of evil, like a very pure wine into which a
drop of deadly poison had been poured. The church of Saint Sernin was full of gold; there was gold in its crypts, in the ornaments of its altars, in the reliquaries of its saints. It was no longer worthy to bear a cross on the spire of its tower. It was up to him who had placed the cross, to remove it.

  The heretic’s discourse ended up interesting me in spite of the blasphemies with which it was mingled. It was at the moment when I resolved to listen to him that I fell into a profound sleep.

  I must have slept for a long time. The sound of a trumpet woke me up. I thought immediately about death and the trumpet of the Last Judgment, but this one did not make a noise loud enough to have originated from the breath of an angel. I observed that the old man was no longer beside me and that the door of Pierre Maurand’s house was wide open. Furniture and objects of every sort were heaped up around me. They must have been carried out while I was asleep. There were oak dressers, Roman seats, damascened tabled, copper standard lamps, silver cups and vases in Pyrenean stone. Brocade cloth, fabrics laminated with gold, belts and weapons made enormous sparkling piles. A marble goddess, half reclining, was smiling at me in an enigmatic fashion.

  A tall, thin man was standing on the threshold. He was the one that had blown the trumpet. He stopped, and as I stood up he advanced toward me. He had long white hair and an expression of such great mildness on his face that I did not recognize him at first. It was the former Capitoul Pierre Maurand.7 I was still a child when Toulouse had been thrown into upheaval by his condemnation as a heretic. The Papal Legate had only left him his life on condition that he departed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In spite of his eighty years he had gone on foot to embark at Aigues-Mortes. It had been thought that he would not return. I remembered his harsh, irritated face when I had seen him going along the Rue du Taur surrounded by soldiers. He was another man now, who seemed stripped of all passion, like a tree that no longer has leaves and yet remains charged with sap.

  “Take what you please,” he said to me. “Everything is as much yours as mine.”

  He must have considered the wretched state of my garments, for he picked up a robe with a fur collar and sleeves and held it out to me.

  I perceived behind him a group of servants who were whispering, and seemed consternated. Their eyes were fixed on the robe. One of them made a movement to throw himself at his master’s knees, but Pierre Maurand stopped him.

  Heads had appeared at windows. I saw forms running from the streets behind Saint Sernin. There were debauched women, and those people with astonishingly pale and monstrous faces that one only sees by night in the hovels of cities. They were questioning one another. I heard one shout that there must have been a fire. A young woman with sagging breasts and a cunning smile, seeing my sumptuous robe, thought that I was an important seigneur and came to circle around me, simpering.

  Pierre Maurand had seized some of the objects distributed on the ground at random, and he was striving to distribute them to the audience.

  “Take away this furniture, take these clothes,” he said. “I no longer want to possess anything, I give them to you.”

  At first there was a moment of stupor. In the light pallor of the morning, which was about to appear, I saw suspicious gazes and fearful grimace on the faces of the wretches who were forming a circle. The poor always think that generosity conceals a trap.

  But Pierre Maurand did not cease to exclaim: “Take, take!”

  As there was a slight eccentricity in the tone of his voice and the gesticulation of his thin arms, they thought it was an act of folly from which it was necessary to take rapid advantage. Abruptly, they rushed forward. I saw arms opening to seize, silhouettes that gave the impression of breaking and falling on to all fours. Furniture rolled on the pavement with a sound like carts. A sort of dwarf was almost crushed by a bed with an awning that he was dragging. A man who had thrown a carpet over his head fled with a candlestick in each hand. Everyone gave the impression of having stolen what had been given to them.

  Stupefied, I was still standing still in my splendid robe. Pierre Maurand doubtless thought that I was retained by my timidity, for he placed a silk bonnet on my hirsute head and then picked up a necklace of precious stones and threw it around my neck.

  At that moment, a partly-dressed man who seemed to have been woken up by the noise people were making emerged from his house and stated running back and forth shouting: “My God! My God!”

  I understood that he was the steward of the house. He criticized the servants, reproaching them for not having warned him, and not having gone to fetch the soldiers of the watch to disperse that rabble.

  “You have no heir,” he said to Pierre Maurand, severely, “but you might live a long time yet. At least let me save something, for the time when you become more reasonable.”

  Pierre Maurand shook his head gently.

  I saw, like little flames on my breast, the stones of the necklace that he had placed there. I had a burning sensation there and a sentiment in which anguish was mingled with delight. It was the first time that a precious object had been in my possession. And as if that object communicated to me an abrupt appetite for greater riches, I threw myself to the ground to dispute with prostitutes and prowlers what remained on the pavement.

  I had seized a Cordovan leather belt with diamond buckles, which I pulled toward me. An old woman had taken possession of the other extremity, proffering threats. And as I was there, like a dog pulling a bone from the remains of a dead animal, I heard Pierre Maurand reply to his steward: “Yes, wealth is bad for everyone, even for these wretches”—and he extended his hand in my direction, with a gesture of pity. “But everyone must undergo a proof. It is in the putrescence of gold that humans find their purity.”

  Another Albigensian heretic had said something similar to me at the commencement of the night.

  “And this? Is it also necessary to give them this?”

  As if it were an irresistible argument, the steward placed before his master’s eyes an object that he had kept under his arm. It was a painting in which a skillful artist had reproduced a woman’s face, in the manner of the ancient painters of Greece.

  Pierre Maurand made an avid gesture to seize the painting and to tilt it in the direction of the sky in order to see the image more clearly. The slightly crazed expression of his face gave way, for a second, to the unconsolable sadness that beauty lost forever produces. He raised the portrait of a woman toward the crimson that bathed Saint Sernin, as if to steep it in the eternal light. Then, turning his head, he threw it away.

  “All material attachment distances us from the spirit,” he said, softly, as if to himself, but with an alteration in his voice.

  In the distance, the sound of chains being lifted in the streets was audible. The bells began to ring. A file of monks emerged from the convent of Saint Sernin and walked through the cypresses. The ancient tombstones had tints of gilded ivory.

  I let go of the belt that my hand had continued to grip. I got up and I let the furred robe fall from my shoulders. I snatched the necklace of drops of fire from around my neck and threw it on the ground. It suddenly seemed to me that I could see Esclarmonde standing before me such as she had appeared to me on the threshold of the Ariégois forest. I experienced beside Pierre Maurand the same sentiment of an inexplicable and superior presence that I had experienced before her. But as it is dolorous not to understand what is above you, I preferred not to think about it any longer and I headed toward my father’s house with a rapid stride.

  IV

  My father and my mother experienced a great joy in seeing me again. I understood that the joy in question was tempered by the fear of seeing me devote myself to some insensate action, but I reassured them rapidly be the rationality of all my words. I learned that during my absence, my sister Aude, who was five years old, had returned to Blagnac, where she had been confided to peasants because the country air was necessary to her delicate health. I only paid her scant attention; at that time children only inspir
ed me with surprise because of the smallness of their proportions.

  When I was suitably dressed, my father’s first concern was to accompany me to the Arab steam-baths that the architect Bernard Paraire had just constructed in the Rue Saint-Laurent, on the model of those in Granada. He left me on the threshold and headed toward Saint Cyprien. He was going to inform the charcoal-burners who brought charcoal twice a month from Ariège to Toulouse of my return. In order to avoid my being killed by the Comte de Foix’s men-at-arms, he had charged them with finding me and taking possession of me.

  He had a hesitation in quitting me. He retraced his steps to tell me that he would wait for me at the gate when I left. It was not the pursuits of the ecclesiastical authority that he feared. He assured me that the Capitouls and the Comte de Toulouse would be able to protect me against the bishop. I thought that he feared a danger of another order.

  The steam-baths were full of people. One could not arrive there in a litter, the threshold was so crowded. Under the porch I passed women of an extraordinary beauty. They glided with a supple gait and gave the impression of having no other garment than the fur robe that covered them. I could not tell whether they were great ladies or the low-born prostitutes that our lords maintain in the most beautiful house of the city.

  There were two swimming-baths, one for men and the other for women, but they communicated by means of a small stone staircase and a gallery bordered with sculpted arcades. I was astonished by the familiarity with which people called to one another and the words they exchanged. How had mores become so licentious in a matter of months? Was I really in the same city where, a few hours before, Pierre Maurand had distributed his property to beggars for the sake of a mystical love of poverty?