City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  As soon as they saw him, the crowd began cheering him and denouncing us with shouts and insults, claiming we’d burnt one of the effigies and brutally assaulted the people who were carrying it.

  “What’s this?” trumpeted Cossolat, frowning, but managing a quick wink at me to show me that he’d recognized me despite my mask. “What? Destroyed an effigy at carnival time! That’s an odious crime! You there!” he said to us. “Not a word out of any of you! I’m taking you to the jail where you’ll discover what it feels like to be locked behind bars! Archers, surround them!”

  Merdanson opened his mouth to protest, but a quick elbow in the stomach shut his mouth and got him to understand that the jail was a much better alternative than this murderous mob.

  When we emerged from the crowd, Cossolat leant over in his saddle and said, half severe, half in jest, “Siorac, I can’t believe my eyes! Everywhere there’s fighting, there you are!”

  “Captain, we had no choice. Did you see this infamous effigy?”

  “I saw it,” said Cossolat, lowering his voice and looking quite sombre. “I saw it before you destroyed it, and I think it’s a very bad omen. Behind these idiotic law students who are simply pawns and don’t understand what they’re being told to do, there are terrible people who work underground and know how to sabotage things. Pierre, remember this! When they start going after the Sephardics, the Inquisition’s not far behind and is polishing its arms to use against the Huguenots. Rumours are flying, which never spread without cause, that Catherine de’ Medici is courting the Spanish king, and you know very well what the price will be of any alliance she makes with him. We’re going to see a return of our persecutions.”

  He’d spoken very quietly and didn’t say any more until we reached the jail, where we were crowded into a fairly spacious room with a table and some stools. He made us each take an oath not to make jokes about our exploits of the evening, and never say a word about this to anyone.

  We were stunned by this admonition, for we hadn’t imagined that this business was anything but a dust-up between law students and their medical counterparts. He added: “The people who created this effigy are not going be happy that you destroyed their work, and they have very long memories.”

  “Captain,” asked Merdanson, “when will you release us?”

  “At nightfall. One by one, and by a back door. Except for Siorac, for whom I’ve got other plans.”

  And indeed, an hour later, a carriage drew up before the door, curtains drawn, and Cossolat said, taking me aside, “Pierre, leave your harness here. Madame de Joyeuse has sent for you. Go put on your blue satin doublet before you visit her. And Pierre,” he said, placing his index finger on my sternum, “not a word about this effigy. You weren’t there. You saw nothing. On the other hand, regale her as much as you want about the orange battle. In short, amuse her, please her. Give her lots of reasons to remember that you spent the afternoon of carnival day with her.”

  It’s not hard to imagine that I was very much at ease in the luxurious coach, far from the dangers we’d just encountered with the mob. But Cossolat had astonished me. Remembering his final warning, I realized that he had a pair of fine ears listening in on the Joyeuse household, which kept him informed of everything.

  “Monster!” cried Madame de Joyeuse as I threw myself on my knees before her and kissed her plump hands. “Monsieur,” she continued, “what a tyrant you are in your play! You shock everyone! You knock everything down! You eviscerate your enemies! No quarter! Everyone has to give way!”

  “Ho, Madame! So many reproaches for a little tussle!”

  “Little? When people are talking about you in nasty little verses pinned to an effigy of Maître Sanche!”

  “I saw no effigy,” I said quickly. “I was in jail for the battle of the oranges.”

  “But Justin saw it, and Aglaé can repeat the pasquinade.”

  “Oh, Madame, I wouldn’t dare!” cried Aglaé, putting on her virginal and fierce airs.

  “Well then, I will dare! Listen, my friend:

  “This old goat, now emasculate,

  Likes boys, not she-goats, for his date.”

  “Madame, that’s an infamy! Moreover it’s bad poetry and lacks metre!”

  “Forget the metre!” said Madame de Joyeuse. “Monster, answer straight out. What’s going on between this old goat and the boy I see before me?”

  “Madame,” I replied, suddenly serious, “if it were true, the honour of a certain lady would seal my lips. But the thing is as false as a monk’s modesty. The truth is I hate the old goat from his horn to his hoof.”

  And so I recounted to my benefactress the story of my poor Fontanette.

  “Oh my God!” said Madame de Joyeuse, who, though she had a good heart, had no interest in the fate of a chambermaid. “So much ado over a simple girl? The wench has gone back to her village, that’s obvious. But, Pierre,” she said, suddenly severe, “did you really need this wench as well? Wasn’t Thomassine enough to satisfy you?”

  “Thomassine, Madame?”

  “Oh, don’t bother to deny it. Cossolat has told me all. Now, my little cousin, don’t go off pouting to the window seat. Come back here. And don’t make any claims about Thomassine’s honour. Tell me everything. I demand it.”

  “What, Madame? Everything. In front of your ladies-in-waiting? Some of whom are virgins!”

  Madame de Joyeuse seemed delighted by my answer, and, turning to her women, her head to one side and her eyes shining, she said, “Siorac is right. Please withdraw, all of you. There are certain things a girl shouldn’t hear before she’s married.”

  To which Aglaé replied through clenched teeth (though I alone could hear her), “Moans, for example, I would guess!” However, all the ladies withdrew, looking very put out, with knowing glances to each other, sly smiles, murmurs and gracious flourishes of their wide gowns.

  “Pierre, give me your arm, I beg you, and put me in my bed; I don’t know what’s come over me but suddenly I’m suffocating. Unhook me, please. What a dear little chambermaid you are, my sweet, every gesture so gentle and every look so caressing” (and indeed, this was a labour I enjoyed more than I can say). “But, Pierre, I don’t know whether I can abandon myself to your care undefended, terrible tyrant and brutal killer that you are!”

  I didn’t answer this, knowing where her thoughts were tending and not wishing either to encourage her or rein her in.

  “Oh,” she sighed, “unhook this for me as well! Oh my God, I’m almost naked. Pierre, I fear for my modesty. Please close the bed curtains…”

  But even with the bed curtains pulled I could still see her well enough, bathing in her blondness in this light-blue light. I paid her a pretty compliment, which made her golden-brown eyes light up. “Oh, Pierre!” she said in a languorous voice. “Your words are honey, your tongue is divine…”

  “Well, Madame,” I whispered in her ear, “who knows better than you?”

  “What effrontery!” she gasped, half laughing, half angry. “You’re such a devil to tempt me so. What a pity I’m so faithful to my husband, and such a good Catholic, praying to God every day, confessing every week. If I were Thomassine! Tell me, does she have many lovers?”

  “Many.”

  “Oh!” sighed Madame de Joyeuse. “So many for some, so few for others. Monster, what are you doing?”

  “I’m unhooking you some more. Look, you’re all red and must be suffocating! You’ll feel better this way.”

  “Monster, you’re taking advantage of me! I’m so weak and you’re so vigorous and such a tyrant! Oh, my monster,” she cooed offering her lips to me. “Aren’t you going to storm my last defences? Aren’t you tempted to use force with me?”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I’m so tempted. And if I offend you, I’ll withdraw.” I pretended to pull away, but you can guess how little her scruples held her back and with what strength her weak arms held me to her!

  “Oh, Pierre, it’s all my fault, I was too tantalizing! I forgive y
ou—you’re so young and full of desire. How could you not use force with that body of yours! Are you going to beat me? Are you going to take me by force like any harlot in the street? Oh, you monster! Oh, Pierre, my sweet…”

  As I left the Joyeuse mansion and was returning with a warmed heart and light step towards Maître Sanche’s lodgings, I saw my tailor, Martinez, in the rue de la Barrelerie, sitting on his doorstep, enjoying the morning air. Seeing me, he rose to greet me, and, seizing my elbow, invited me into his shop to enjoy a goblet of Frontignan. I agreed, since I didn’t want to offend him, and was hoping to see his four daughters again. I wasn’t disappointed. They were sitting in the shop, sewing, and, seeing me, all four looked up with their gazelle-like eyes, cheeks of apricot and lips as red as any noblewoman’s. But then they went back to work with sly, sidelong glances at each other which I found enchanting. Seeing my distraction, Martinez offered to go and fetch the wine, so I remained alone with his daughters. After a moment, giving a great sigh, I said, “If you were all Muslims, I would happily convert and marry all four of you together!”

  Of course they all laughed at this, though in a modest way, covering their pretty mouths with their hands, fluttering quietly at this idea of marriage, which always seems to create such a stir in young women. But what does marriage really offer them? An ungrateful and tyrannical husband, the heavy responsibility of the household, a child every year and, sooner or later, death in childbirth.

  “So, Monsieur,” said Iñez, the eldest, “all four? So you wouldn’t have a preference?”

  “Of course I would, but I’d only be able to discover it after some time together.”

  At this, they blushed and giggled a bit, but I suspected the real giggles were reserved for night-time when they were in their beds. But then, hearing their father approaching, they fell silent and went back to their sewing.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” said Martinez from the doorway, “may I ask you to join me in my office? We’ll be better able to talk there. Monsieur,” he said, closing the door and offering me a goblet of Frontignan, “if you would like to have a doublet and leggings of your choice of colours, I’d be happy to make them for you free of charge.”

  Seeing my great surprise and astonished at his own largesse, he added, “I meant to say, for half of the price we first negotiated, which doesn’t really cover the cost of the materials and my work, as you can imagine.”

  I was sure that, at the price he named, there would be some profit; however, I decided not to protest, but thanked him profusely and asked him to what I owed such kindness.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” he said gravely, “everyone in Montpellier knows that when the ugly business of the effigy happened you were in jail for the disturbance with the oranges, and went directly from there to spend the afternoon with Madame de Joyeuse. But there’s not a Sephardic in this city who doesn’t know to whom we owe the destruction of the odious image that defamed Maître Sanche in his private life and in the practice of his religion, and thereby defamed us all.” Then, putting down his glass, his expression changed from gravity to tenderness and he said, “May I give you a hug, noble gentleman that you are?”

  “But of course!” I cried. “And as a sign of our friendship!” Whereupon he rubbed his scratchy beard on my cheek, hugged me so hard I thought I’d expire, and gave me such hearty slaps on the back I feared for my shoulder blades.

  The minute Maître Sanche saw me when I got back to the pharmacy he, too, embraced me with great warmth, but his throat was so tight all he could do was to utter in a broken voice, “My nephew, oh, my nephew!” And then, very troubled and still in tears, he walked away.

  I went up to my room and there was a knock at the door. It was Fogacer. Without hugging or touching me in any way, his face very constrained, he offered me his hand, and sat down on a stool a few feet away and said, “Dame Rachel has asked our illustrious master to send you away.”

  I sat there, stunned beyond words. When I had recovered sufficiently to speak, I said, “And how did she justify this request?”

  “Because of the rhyme about the old goat and the boy. Caesar’s wife, she said, should never suffer such calumny.”

  “By St Anthony’s belly! What about Maître Sanche?”

  “Sanche lashed out at her with fire and brimstone, and the young she-goat took refuge in her rooms. I doubt her bed will be open to our master for a very long time. That’s why he looked so worried.”

  “But how do you come to know about the rhyme?”

  Fogacer looked at me for a moment, raising his black eyebrows.

  “I was there. Perhaps, Pierre, you failed to notice that among those infamous effigies that so excited the public’s outrage, there was another that caricatured a Présidial judge, whose robe, like Sanche’s, bore a little rhyme that attacked his morals for a practice that, no doubt, you can guess.”

  “And he’s a friend of yours?”

  “He belongs to a group that I’d dare to call my brotherhood,” replied Fogacer with a directness that struck me all the more since he was very pale and ill at ease. “Yet another of those odious effigies,” he added, “attacked Abbot Cabassus, accusing him of atheism. So along with the Sephardics and atheists, we were in good company.” He said this “we” with such a strange inflection of his voice, his face still constrained but with an air of pride as if he defied the entire world.

  “Fogacer, were you there when I attacked the effigy of Maître Sanche?”

  “Yes, and I recognized you in spite of your mask and, taking advantage of the turmoil, I ripped the incriminating verses from the judge.”

  “You recognized me despite my mask?” I cried, surprised and angered, looking him in the eye.

  “Understand me, Pierre,” replied Fogacer with a long face, “when I was behaving so madly on the rue de l’Espazerie, I didn’t recognize you, but then, when you knocked off my mask, you saw my face and, for my part, I saw the expression in your eyes, and knew immediately it was you, and I was very grieved and ashamed to have accosted you. And for that,” he said, raising his diabolical eyebrow, and in a tone that was not nearly as remorseful as he wanted, said, “I beg you to accept my humblest apology.”

  “Oh, Fogacer!” I said, leaping to my feet. I went to him and leant over, put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks, a gesture that, to my great surprise, made him blush like a virgin. “Fogacer,” I continued, turning away so as not to make him more uncomfortable, and walking back and forth across the room, “you’re my friend, we need have no apologies between us. If anyone should apologize it should be me for striking you. Your follies, as you term them make no difference to me. Medicus sum.* The only difference between us is a difference of complexion or orientation. I’m interested in skirts. You’re not. That’s all.”

  “Except that,” rejoined Fogacer grimacing a bit, “all the skirts in the world won’t put you in danger of being burnt at the stake in public for sodomy.”

  “And so,” I said, pausing and turning to look him in the eye, “you live in constant peril!”

  “And all the more so since I’m an atheist,” said Fogacer. “But that crime is easier to hide. A little mummery suffices.”

  Although I didn’t much like the word “mummery” applied to the papist rites (since, I believe, Fogacer could also have applied it to our Huguenot rites), I trembled for Fogacer’s safety. Though, on second thought, we only have one body to offer our executioner, so that Fogacer couldn’t be burnt twice, once for atheism and again for sodomy—but once was already too much. The idea was frightful, knowing the man and valuing so highly his friendship.

  “Fogacer,” I said, to chase away the vision of the executioner, “Cossolat thinks that there are powerful underground forces behind these effigies.”

  “We think so too,” said Fogacer. “As you know, the revolt of the reformed Church in the Low Countries against the Spanish yoke convinced Felipe II to send an army stationed along the French border to knock some sense into th
ese ‘beggars’ from Flanders, as he calls them. But these ‘underground’ forces, as you put it, ardently desire that, once Felipe has exterminated those ‘beggars’, these Spanish allies of our king will come and exterminate all the reformers in France as well. Do you think this is unrelated to the effigies? Not on your life, it isn’t. For these same people who consider that no means is too vile or small-minded given the ends they pursue, hope that by taking on all the Sephardics, atheists and sodomites in this city, they’re preparing the terrain for the scaffolds on which they’ll hang all the Huguenots.”

  “So I did a good thing by destroying that hateful effigy.”

  “But you’ll do a better thing from here on out by sparing your life, for, however well protected you are by Cossolat, by Joyeuse and by the Sephardics, the people we’re talking about are very powerful and very patient.”

  I would have done well to heed this advice, which was as wise as his escapades and follies were the opposite, but, alas, that was not in my character. But I was also carried away in the enterprise I’m about to relate (and that my father in an angry letter in Latin called “atrocissimo”) by my great love of medicine—but certainly, also, by the heat of the moment, circumstances and opportunity. If in these memoirs I have, more than once, asked for the reader’s indulgence and counted on his goodwill, I need it now more than ever.

  Eastertide brought to an end our school year at the Royal College of Medicine, and though Saporta and Bazin stayed on through July and August to give private tutoring for those who could afford it, we were sorry to say goodbye to Dr Feynes and especially to Dr d’Assas, who withdrew to their country estates, the former to pursue his book, in elegant Latin, on smallpox, and the latter to live in indolence and various pleasures, dividing his attentions between his vineyard and his lovely chambermaid, Zara. With the end of our lectures, the work on dissections was finished for the year, contrary to the promises of Dean Bazin, who for reasons of sordid economizing of the college’s finances, purchased only three cadavers. The third of these, to our considerable dismay and ultimately angry protests, was a monkey! To be reduced from six, in Rondelet’s day, to three (including the monkey) was a scandal, and we complained to Saporta, who malevolently directed us to Bazin, who slammed his door in our faces, being of a nasty and venomous disposition.