by Robert Merle
“Azaïs, Madame! It’s not just Azaïs! All the women in God’s creation would be at Samson’s feet if he wished! But he loves, and will never love anybody but you, I solemnly swear to you. And as for me, I’ll watch over his fidelity as carefully as I’d watch over mine if I were so lucky as to deserve your love.”
“Oh, my brother,” she cried, giving me a fierce hug, and covering my face with kisses, which, in the extreme emotions she was feeling, weren’t perhaps entirely innocent. “You’re lifting a huge weight from my heart! You know,” she added with a look that pierced my heart, “I love you like a brother and much more than that. Watch over my beloved Samson and, if he doesn’t do it himself since he tells me he’s not good at composing letters, write to me in Rome, telling me how he’s getting on, and I’ll be eternally grateful!”
Thereupon, after the promise I’d made, she gave me another kiss, with such gratitude and so much tenderness that, after she’d gone, I had to sit down on a stool and cry copious tears.
“What’s this?” demanded Thomassine as she entered the kitchen. “You in tears? This Norman lady has turned both my Périgordian boys into fountains. Pierre, are you caught up in her charms?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Or is she caught up in yours? The wave that covers one rock can, in the next breeze, cover another one. Beware, Pierre, women are like winds and tempests, no one can predict them.”
But since I sat there silently, sadly looking at the ground, Thomassine said with a smile, “I see you are badly wounded. But as you are a doctor, Pierre de Siorac, you know very well that the soul can be healed by working on the body. Come along, my Pierre, let me take care of you. I have the sovereign cure for what ails you!”
Certainly of all the remedies that Monsieur Rondelet forgot to include in his Methodus ad curandorum omnium morborum, hers is the least costly, the surest and the most delicious, for from Thomassine’s arms I emerged as healthy as the giant Antaeus after he’d re-established contact with the goddess Earth, his mother. So I too believe that I’m a son of Earth and of earthly women like Barberine and Thomassine, whose milk of divine kindness has never failed to nourish me throughout my life.
But an entire month went by before I could console Samson, ever so little, for whom the particular remedy I’d just enjoyed was, as you would imagine, of no help whatsoever. Every week I wrote, not without a secret pleasure, a long letter to Dame Gertrude du Luc, to which Samson would add a few words whose simplicity was heart-rending.
Since not a week passed without some roumieux appearing in Montpellier, either on their way to Rome or returning therefrom, the letters in both directions arrived with marvellous speed. Our letters even crossed at times, for although Dame Gertrude was presumably in Rome for her devotions, she managed to cover numerous pages (using spelling that recalled little Hélix’s), addressed to Samson and me, filled with feelings so tender and caressingly sweet that if you closed your eyes you could almost see her generous heart beating between the lines. At least, that’s how I imagined it, since I felt I was included in her effusions.
On the other hand, towards the end of August, the apothecary’s shop received two other letters that had taken an infinitely long time to reach us, having been passed from merchant to merchant and from town to town: a very auspicious one from my father and a very inauspicious one from a lawyer named Coras living in Réalmont in Albi, addressed to the very illustrious Maître Sanche, which plunged us all into despair, as I shall explain.
You can easily imagine the mixture of feelings evoked by my father’s letter, since, in reading his vivid description of life at our beloved Mespech, now so far away, we could not help being overwhelmed with a sense of pride, accompanied by a wave of homesickness. Everyone seemed happy and healthy within its walls; the harvest was plentiful, with the hay already safely in the barns and the vineyards and the orchards heavy with ripe fruit; the cut stones from Jonas’s quarry, Faujanet’s barrels and Sarrazine’s baskets were fetching good prices in Sarlat; Cabusse’s sheep were bearing wool; the mill’s pigs were fat and ready for slaughter; and Coulondre’s mill was prospering under his adroit management, since townspeople brought him their grain not by fiat, as the rule used to be, but by choice, trusting in the integrity of this honest Huguenot—something that did not prevent him from making a fair profit. And it wasn’t just grain that was milled, but walnuts were pressed on another millstone in late autumn to produce oil for our lamps. Even Petremol got into the act, since, after making harnesses for Mespech’s horses and mules, he’d turned to making saddles so beautiful that the Brethren had no trouble selling them at very good prices to the Catholic nobility in Sarlat, who were always interested in fine saddlery, for show.
All of this was recounted in my father’s lively and communicative style, which made him seem so present: his light-blue eyes, his way of standing straight, his sonorous laugh, his off-colour jokes and the warm love he bore all of his people, whose names he cited in the letter without omitting a single one.
“As for Samson,” he wrote,
far from discouraging the extraordinary appetite he has shown for the apothecary’s trade, I’m wholly satisfied and give my enthusiastic blessing to his learning this science. All the more so since it reminds me that my father Charles de Siorac wanted to make his eldest son a chemist and his second son (myself) a doctor so that we could both work in Rouen treating our patients from first symptoms to final cure, and God willing, greatly prosper from their collaboration. And who knows whether what my father failed to accomplish with his sons might be accomplished with mine.
My sons, you will be no doubt happy to learn that your older brother, François, and your gracious sister Catherine are well and my young bastard son David is turning into an exceptionally beautiful young man—seemingly profiting from some mysterious grace that attends children born out of wedlock. [This was written, I thought, as much to comfort himself as to comfort Samson.] Such is the case with Little Sissy, as brave and pretty a lass as any wench in the Sarlat region, though she’s not the daughter of a Gypsy as la Maligou claims.
My dear Pierre, I’m as proud of you for attempting to master logic and philosophy as for your exploits in the Corbières hills. Art lasts so long, life is so short. And as you know: absque sudore et labore nullum opus perfectum est.* As for skirts, if you find a good one, stick with her and only her. But I trust your wisdom, which far surpasses that of most young men your age.
So much for the flowery part of the communication, which my father always reserved for himself, never liking to scold, the role of disciplinarian having fallen to Sauveterre—but no one should imagine that censure didn’t come from both of them. After the roses, then, the thorns. For there was, alas, a postscriptum to this lovely letter, and this addition, like the rattles on a poisonous snake, excessively bitter and stinging, was signed by our Uncle de Sauveterre. In his inimitably acerbic style he chastised us for spending far too much on food and drink at the Three Kings, and rejected as “futile and frivolous” my suggestion that Samson and I order suits of blue satin with red slashes, matching shoes and plumed velvet hats. “My nephews,” wrote Sauveterre, “dress in black, as befitting your learned pursuits, and not like vile ladies of the night who parade the back alleys of Montpellier.”
That’s our Huguenot style, I thought, despising proper dress and appearances, and skimping on everything, even necessities, in order to fill the coffers. “Samson,” I said, after having read the letter, “remember the time Sauveterre found a needle in the courtyard of Mespech, and limped all the way up to my mother’s chambers to tell her, ‘This is yours, I believe. My cousin, don’t go losing your needles, they’re too dear.’”
“But he was right!” countered Samson stiffly. “Waste is godless, and as for ostentation, she is the mother of lust!” I made him no reply, but there were many things I might have said. I could, for instance, have cited to my naive brother instances of lust that, far from being daughters of excess and ostentation,
hadn’t cost a single sol to those who had wallowed in them. But I preferred to remain silent for fear of troubling my dear brother, for in his dove-like innocence Samson had never asked who had paid for his love nest at the needle shop, or where the delicious meals had come from on which the two lovebirds had feasted for six days.
Dame Rachel, whom we’d caught sight of sitting very pregnant in front of the house when we arrived in Montpellier—and who, as you remember, while hidden behind a curtain in the common room, had given birth to a daughter, in violation of our medical rule that dictates that babies born under a full moon will be male—had returned to our midst after her churching, brilliantly regal in her oriental beauty. As Fogacer had said, Maître Sanche had displayed excessively good taste in his choice of wives, and the most recent version, younger still than the previous one, being some forty years her husband’s junior, was of a beauty that overshadowed even Typhème, who was not her daughter any more than Luc was her son, both being children of Sanche’s first wife. This lady was as cold as a diamond, whose brilliance she shared, and had no love for these, his other children, nor, for that matter, for me, Samson or Fogacer. She was feared, moreover, by the entire household like the plague in Lent, and especially by the cook, Concepcion, by Fontanette and even by the cyclopean Balsa. To her very illustrious master, she gave the respect he was due, but nothing more, and gazed at him with cold eyes, which were never tarnished by tears—at least as long as I was a guest in this house.
The letter from the lawyer named Coras, which arrived two days after my father’s, was, alas, of an entirely different ink from my father’s, which breathed his habitual gaiety and joy of life.
At dinner that day in Maître Sanche’s common room, we all stood at our stools, waiting for our illustrious host—Dame Rachel, given her condition, or perhaps because of some permanent decree that exempted her from this form of respect, was seated, leaning easily against the back of her chair, hands on her knees, seeming to look at no one with her cold eyes, but perhaps at the spectacle of her own beauty inside her head.
But our wait for the master being prolonged more than usual, imagine our surprise when he appeared, finally, his head lowered and looking very dejected, holding in his right hand a piece of paper folded in four, sadly stroking his long grey beard with his left. Placing this paper next to his plate with a deep sigh, he undid his silver belt and removed his silk robe, but he was so lost in thought that he accomplished these rituals with a great deal less pomp than was usual. Then, hanging his robe on one of the antlers of the stag’s head behind his chair, he sat down looking wholly devastated.
“But, my dear husband,” said Rachel, “you’ve forgotten to remove your plumed hat.”
“By my faith, ’tis true,” said the master, who, rising without the least trace of a smile, his face still contorted in sadness, took off his bonnet and hung it next to his robe. This done, he put his little black silk brocaded hat on his head of curly grey hair and, with another deep sigh, sat back down, posing his trembling hand on the paper he’d brought.
“But, my dear husband,” said Rachel, “you’re sitting down!”
“Yes,” he returned with some impatience at being distracted from his reverie, “why shouldn’t I?”
“My dear husband,” repeated Rachel, stung by his tone, and raising her nose even higher than usual, “you’ve forgotten the benedicite… Are we going to dine like Turkish pagans?”
“Ah, to be sure,” admitted Maître Sanche, and, rising, he waited for Fontanette to bring him water to wash his hands. He remained standing, eyes cast down, while the good wench passed round the table, giving each of us water to rinse our hands, which she did without her usual smiles, Dame Rachel’s cold eye watching her throughout like a hawk its prey.
Fontanette having retired to the pantry, Maître Sanche pronounced his particular benedicite in Hebrew, facing the wall and bobbing his head back and forth, as was his custom, and then turned to us to say: “In the name of the Lord Adonai, Amen.” To which Luc added with his throat in knots and in a hushed voice, “And of the Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.”
However, instead of inviting us to be seated, and sitting down himself, Maître Sanche remained standing, and, reaching with reluctance towards the paper on the table, he unfolded it with trembling fingers and said in a mournful voice: “Oh, Fogacer! My good nephews, my beautiful children and you, Madame, my spouse! I am so sad to have to read you this unhappy letter and sad you will be to hear it! But in truth I will not read it to you. My heart fails me. I can only tell you its substance and that will suffice.”
With the paper still trembling in his hands, and tears gushing from his eyes, Maître Sanche went on, although in a somewhat stronger voice, as though he were ashamed of the weakness he was displaying: “This letter is from my great and learned friend, the lawyer Coras, who is from Réalmont in Albi, who studied law in Montpellier at the time I was studying pharmacy here, and Rondelet was studying medicine.”
“Rondelet!” cried Fogacer as though seized with terror. “It’s about Rondelet?”
“Read it, Fogacer, read it and weep!” said the master. “I cannot go on.” And handing him the letter across the table, he fell onto his stool, savagely stroking his beard with both trembling hands.
Fogacer, his eagle’s beak of a nose pale and pinched, his eyebrows raised, first read the letter, which was full of Latin phrases, as I could see by sneaking a look over his shoulder, in silence. While this was happening, seeing the great torment that had overcome his master, my beloved Samson, angel of God that he is, approached the apothecary and placed his hand on his shoulder, a bold gesture that was appreciated, since Maître Sanche left off stroking his beard and placed his hand on his nephew’s. Luc, too, came over to his father, but so great was his respect for him that he dared not touch him. Typhème was crying in her corner, not so much in apprehension of what she feared to hear, but out of sympathy for the terrible emotion she saw in her father. For her part, Dame Rachel, ever sufficient unto herself, made up like a china doll, not a hair out of place, sat in serene silence, her eyes as dry as the agates they were made of.
“Here is what Maître Coras writes,” said Fogacer at last, his voice and countenance laden with grief. “I will not read it but give you a summary. As was expected, and as I myself had foreseen at his departure, Monsieur Rondelet was afflicted greatly by his illness both during the ride through hill and vale to Toulouse, but also during his stay there, where he suffered from the terrible heatwave and from the great fatigue that ensued from his extensive consultations with the lawyers who were trying to sort out the affairs of his brothers-in-law. Hardly had he finished his work with these lawyers and started to look forward to some rest from his labours when he received a letter from Coras (who knew nothing of his friend’s illness) begging him to hurry to Réalmont to care for his wife, who was suddenly stricken with a serious and mysterious illness. Although his stomach ulcers had only got worse since his arrival in Toulouse, Rondelet nevertheless decided to leave immediately for Albi, despite a dangerously high fever and the pleas of his brothers-in-laws to take to his bed. Thoroughly exhausted and shaking with fever, Rondelet set out from Toulouse the very morning he received Coras’s letter. Réalmont is a day’s ride from Toulouse, but it took the doctor two days to make the journey, as he was forced to stop at every inn, tortured by the pain from the inflammation in his stomach. Once in Réalmont, he went immediately to Coras’s wife’s bedside to try to determine the cause of her illness and to prescribe a remedy—which, in fact, cured her. But scarcely was she back on her feet before the doctor took to his bed, never more to rise from it. Deciding that his case was beyond help, he refused any remedies, dictated to the notary his last will and testament and spent his final hours making his peace with God. He died on the twentieth day of July.”
As soon as Fogacer had finished his account, Maître Sanche, who’d had time to regain his composure, bid us be seated and then spoke with the same quiet despair in his v
oice as before. “And so it’s because of his astonishing devotion to the sick that this great doctor rendered up his beautiful soul to God. He was as exemplary in death as he had been in life. His brief life has not completely ended, however, since the work of this humanitarian will live on in us and in those who will come after us. Brevis a natura nobis vita data est, at memoria bene redditae vitae est sempiterna.”†
As he quoted this adage, Maître Sanche’s voice gained its former assurance and his face recovered some of its colour, as if the Latin words had had a restorative effect on him and, simply by the magic of their sonorities, given him back his courage and faith in the conduct and purpose of his life. Thus fortified, the master seized his spoon, less from force of will than from force of habit, and plunged it into the humble broth that Fontanette was serving us, her manner very sombre to see us all so desolate. She nevertheless found a way to touch my hand as she served me, but I withdrew it immediately, since I could see that Dame Rachel’s agate eyes hadn’t missed a single gesture made by this poor wench. But I must admit, without too much shame, and hoping not to annoy my reader, that, despite the afflictions of the moment, and my sincere participation in the general grief, this touch gave me extreme pleasure, given how difficult it was, in the bloom of my youth, to linger too long on thoughts of death, or to believe, swollen as I was with sap, that one day it might catch up with me.
Meanwhile, this tragic news, coming as it did after the letter from my father, caused me to long even more for my nest at Mespech, Barberine’s enclosing arms and the friendship of all our people. I wish to God I’d been as wise beyond my years as my father claimed in his letter. But, alas, as the following will demonstrate all too well, my blood boiled too hot in my veins and neither solitude nor sadness could hold me back for long.
That same evening, still feeling stirred up by the death of this good man, and by the effect it had produced on Maître Sanche and Fogacer—for whom Rondelet had served as “doctor-father” during his studies—I was unable to fall asleep in my room and went to tap on Samson’s door, but got no answer. No doubt he was already asleep, naked on his mat in this suffocating heat, and dreaming of the sweet embrace of his lady. Without my beloved brother’s company, my solitude weighed all the more heavily upon me, so I headed for Fogacer’s room, and entered without knocking, since he never bolted his door. But my tutor was not in his lair, having, no doubt, gone off to seek comfort I knew not where, nor from whom, since Fogacer was always so secretive about his love life. As for me, no matter how much I needed tender arms to comfort me on this particular evening, there was no recourse since it was Friday, and on Fridays Thomassine entertained her canon, who, being a very sensible man, put to the best possible use the generous sums he received from his parishioners for the indulgences he granted them. And so these pennies for salvation passed from the purse of the sinner under the pillow of the temptress, without anyone in this world or the next being hurt, the sinner gaining access to Purgatory, the bishop achieving his personal serenity and the temptress getting paid for her services and then being absolved of her sins. For although Thomassine had told Espoumel that she no longer sold her bodily wares, in truth she loaned them out at very advantageous interest rates to two or three very well-to-do members of the community. These activities did not make me jealous, but I did find them inconvenient since I didn’t have access to my consoler as often as I might have liked.
