by Robert Merle
“And why shouldn’t we?” asked the most rabid of the judges.
To this reply, which was not without some impertinence, the vicomte reacted with visible annoyance. He didn’t answer at first, but when he did, his tone, his face and his behaviour had completely changed. He rose from his seat and, frowning viciously (from feigned or real anger), he said in a most irate voice: “And why not, indeed? And why not also instigate today, as was done yesterday, a riot behind my back? And why not send a bunch of peasants to kill Cossolat, who, Huguenot though he may be, serves me faithfully? Or against my little cousin? Or against his companions? Or against Chancellor Saporta, who’s also a Huguenot? Messieurs, it’s not enough to judge. You have to know what you want. It’s all well and good to throw three heads—including my little cousin’s—in the face of the Huguenots of this city. But do you really want them to take up arms and knock down the doors of your Présidial and throw you in the city jail? Do you really want them to seize Montpellier? They have all the arms and talent to do so. And what would I do then but seek refuge with those of you who’d been spared, in the Saint-Pierre fortress to try to hold out against a siege, whose outcome would at best be uncertain?”
The judges, of course, paled at this and, seized by terror, sat there looking at each other, their throats constricted, unable to speak.
“Monsieur de Joyeuse,” one of them said finally in a trembling voice, “are you telling us that you don’t have the means necessary to defend the loyal subjects of your king?”
“I command a handful of soldiers, some of whom—among the best—are reformists and make no attempt to hide their loyalties.”
“But, Monsieur,” said one of the more fanatical papists, “we can expect reinforcements. The king and queen mother have just drafted 6,000 Swiss guards.”
“Indeed,” said the vicomte, his words dripping with irony, “and we won’t see a single one of them here. Nor will I see a single écu, for the king needs all his soldiers and all his money if things go badly between the Huguenots and him.”
Hearing this, the most fanatical among them began to fear that the hunters would suddenly become the hunted—an infinitely less appealing prospect than the one they’d been nurturing—and, abashed, fell silent. Seeing this, the vicomte walked over to the judges, who had stood up when he had, and looked them each in the eye with great seriousness. Then, with a composed and grave expression, he said: “Messieurs, I have said enough. I invite you now to deliberate, and to do so freely. I bid you good day!”
“Monsieur,” said the oldest of the judges, “have I understood you correctly when I declare that, in this trial, we should use great circumspection in a matter which touches the king’s interests in Provence?”
“You have understood me perfectly, Monsieur,” replied the vicomte with a nod.
“But, Monsieur,” continued the judge, “I must now ask you to deign to clarify very precisely what you mean. What does the king’s interest require in this case?”
“That public safety and civil order not be troubled in a moment when they hang by a thread.”
“And?…”
“Monsieur, since you invite me to do so, I will speak as a soldier. With total candour and honesty. You have Cabassus in your hands. He’s an atheist. Burn him. That should suffice.” This said, and with a very slight bow, Joyeuse turned on his heels and departed.
“Oh, Fogacer!” I said when he’d finished his account of this encounter. “Tell me! You’re leaving out the most important part! What happened in their deliberations?”
“These free deliberations,” Fogacer explained, arching his eyebrows, “lasted for half an hour. After which they reread the minutes which related the interrogation of Cabassus under torture and they decided to burn the sections of his confession in which he named the three of you.”
“Then I’m safe!” I cried.
“If they don’t assassinate you,” cautioned Fogacer, “since you’re a Huguenot here with enough visibility and courage to cause them to fear some public reprisal if the Huguenots ever take the city. And what better way to punish the vicomte for being a Catholic who’s too soft on his enemies than to kill his little cousin?…”
*
Like the summer before it, the summer of 1567 was suffocatingly hot. As before, they sprinkled the streets with water, and stretched reed mats that hung from the first-floor windows of the houses facing each other to give shade to the cobblestones, which otherwise would have been so hot you could have fried an egg on them.
In order to protect myself from my enemies, I obtained special dispensation from Chancellor Saporta to carry a dagger, sword and pistol in the rue du Bout-du-monde and even within the confines of the college. In addition, I never left my lodgings or the college without being accompanied by Miroul and Samson. On Wednesdays, Madame de Joyeuse sent her carriage around to the rue de la Barrelerie, with two huge armed bodyguards positioned on the running boards behind, and an archer with an arquebus next to the coachman in front. She had me return home at night by the same means.
In order not to expose me, Thomassine prohibited me from coming to see her, since the Saint-Firmin quarter was brimming with miserable cadgers who could have been hired to kill me for a couple of sols. Instead, she rented a chair and had herself brought by her guard, Espoumel, and some honest worthy, both armed to the teeth, to my lodgings, where she dared visit me in my room, dressed very elegantly, her features well-hidden behind a black silk veil. She had the temerity to tell the cyclopean Balsa that she was my cousin, and Balsa, very troubled both by her visits and by the falsehood, repeated the latter to Maître Sanche, who, shaking his head, contented himself with quoting a passage from the Koran: “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad will go to the mountain.”
I learnt later from Luc that Dame Rachel, bile dripping from her lips, her eyes flashing venom, unleashed a furious diatribe against her husband, accusing him of tolerating under her very roof the shameless and oft-repeated fornications between a common whore and a grave-robber.
“Fornication, Madame?” replied Maître Sanche, frowning. “Do you listen at Siorac’s door, then?”
“Of course not, Concepcion does.”
“Concepcion will pack her bags within the hour then,” replied the apothecary. “And it was inspired of you to desist, Madame, or else you would have been cooked.” Whereupon he turned his back, leaving her boiling and reboiling in the poisons her bitter soul secreted.
Towards the end of August, Cossolat requested my presence at the Three Kings, where I found him in the little cabinet looking very worried as he devoured his roast meat and wine.
“Ah, Pierre,” he announced. “Things look very bad. I have it from the vicomte just this morning.”
“Very bad? For me? For the reformists?”
“For the kingdom.” He emptied his goblet, looked at me very gravely, and continued: “No doubt you remember the alarm we felt when Felipe II drew up a powerful army along our frontier to punish the poor beggars in Flanders—who share our religion. Condé and Coligny asked Catherine de’ Medici and the king to gather an army of 6,000 Swiss guards, which was done. But when Felipe’s army reached Luxembourg, Catherine de’ Medici, no longer fearing for her kingdom, switched camps, as usual, and had 6,000 sacks of wheat delivered to the Spanish king. Pierre, you heard about this infamy, did you not? The king of France supplied food to the troops that were going to massacre our reformed brothers in Flanders! What’s worse is that once Felipe had withdrawn, the French king did not dismiss the Swiss guards! Condé requested daily that they be sent home, but to no avail. Do you know what the constable ultimately said to him? ‘What’s the good of paying these Swiss guards if we don’t use them for something?’ And use them against whom?” Cossolat continued, banging his fist on the table. “Since the Spanish king was in Flanders!”
There was a knock at the door, and our hostess poked her head in, and asked me if I’d also like some roast meat and wine. “I’d love some,”
I said, “but this time I won’t pay as dearly as last time!”
She and Cossolat both laughed at this, but his laugh was very distracted since he was so up in arms about the situation in the kingdom.
“Do I understand you correctly, Cossolat?” I asked when the hostess had withdrawn. “The Spanish king was fighting the reformists in Flanders, so then when the Swiss guards were no longer a shield against them in Flanders, they became a pistol pointed directly at our reformists in France?”
“You understand me perfectly.”
“And so what did Condé do to disarm this pistol?”
“He demanded to be promoted to lieutenant general. If he had obtained this promotion, it wouldn’t have been easy to turn the Swiss against the Huguenots, since, in that case, it’s Condé who would have commanded them.”
“But,” I said, quite troubled, “wouldn’t it have been over-reaching for a Huguenot, even one who’s a royal prince, to solicit a promotion that would have made him second in the kingdom after the king?”
“Assuredly so! How to decide what to do in such a predicament? There’s a logic in things. Mistrust is met with mistrust.”
“So what did the king do when faced with such great pretension from Condé?”
“He did nothing. The queen mother did everything. She set her other beloved son, her adored sweetheart, the Duc d’Anjou, against Condé. And this baby, still wet behind the ears and who parades around like a woman, spraying perfumes and eating his meats with a little fork—”
“Hah! As for that,” I laughed, “Monsieur de Joyeuse does the same thing!”
“But that’s different. The vicomte is a man. In short, the Duc d’Anjou, in full session of the council, lashed out at Condé, reproaching him for being so insolent as to request a post that belonged to him, as brother of the king. A title he trumpeted with great bravado!”
“What’s so astonishing about that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you do the same in his place?”
“But the Duc d’Anjou is such a child!” cried Cossolat. “Excuse me, but he’s your age! He’s never commanded anything! But the worst was, Pierre, his unspeakable bravado, defiance and threatening manner. He walked right up to Condé, scolded him and defied him like a valet, his hand on the pommel of his sword, at times raising, at times wearing his cap, and saying, among other nasty things, that he’d reduce him to a role as small as the one he wished to have is great.”
“Indeed! That’s a terrible way to treat a royal prince, and the head of a party as strong as ours! What did Condé do?”
“He listened to this incredible remonstrance, then, bowing, and without saying a word, he left the court immediately, fearing he’d be assassinated.”
“Oh, Cossolat! Then it’s war! What an incredible shame! A war neither party wants: yet they’ll plunge right into it, heads lowered, in the great mistrust they have of each other.”
There was another knock at the door, and our hostess entered, bringing my food and drink, and threw us both smiles and saucy looks, which, however, fell quite flat, since both Cossolat and I were sitting there, crestfallen, our hearts passing sore over this great quarrel between subjects of the same king.
“Pierre,” said Cossolat when she’d gone, “what will you do if the Huguenots of Montpellier try to take over the city?”
“Ah, Cossolat,” I replied, “so that’s the reason for our chat! You’re trying to sound me out. You’ve been ordered to sound me out. But you already know the answer. My father never consented to draw his sword against his king during the earlier troubles which so beset France, and on this occasion, I will not draw mine either, except if…”
“Except if?”
“Except if the rabid papists attempt to massacre us as they did at Vassy, five years ago.”
“You need have no fear,” said Cossolat. “We’re stronger than they are here.”
“We, Captain Cossolat?” I said with a half smile and yet with utter seriousness. “We? In which camp are you? Aren’t you one of Monsieur de Joyeuse’s officers? So what will you do if he orders you to lead an armed attack against the reformists?”
“Ah, Pierre,” he sighed, “that’s exactly the point! The answer is, I don’t know. I’m loyal and want to serve my king. And yet!…”
I left Cossolat not without some compassion for the great uncertainty I observed in him; he was torn between his faith and his king, not knowing which to choose. And I well remembered my father, when the first civil wars broke out, refusing to join the Huguenot army of Monsieur de Duras (the same one who lay siege to Sarlat) and how tortured he was by his conscience, and how Sauveterre tried to comfort him by saying that, in any situation in which one’s loyalties are impossibly divided, “we always end up feeling we were wrong.”
On 21st September, as I opened my window to greet the day, I was surprised to see such a dark and menacing sky—since it had been so warm until then; I leant out to see whether the pavement was glistening or not from rain, and caught sight of some men clad in long purple robes building a wood pyre in the middle of the square. I immediately felt my throat tighten and I realized that they were about to burn Cabassus at the stake. This worry was confirmed by Fogacer as he entered my room without knocking, his face deadly pale and sad (for he himself had two reasons, as we know, to fear a similar fate), and silently took up his watch at my side as the executioner and his aides continued their funereal preparations. A few minutes later, Cossolat’s archers appeared and took their places around the pile of logs, and in the adjoining streets, in order to control the crowds, now amassing from all sides, as the burning of an atheist was a spectacle not to be missed. Fogacer, noticing that the soldiers were very numerous and dressed for war, concluded that Cossolat feared—not without good reason—a repetition of the riots that had followed the abbot’s defrocking.
“Pierre,” he advised, “you should close your curtains most of the way, put on a mask and cover your blonde hair, which is so rare in Provence. You do not want to be recognized. I’m going straightaway to advise our illustrious master to close his shop and lock all the doors and windows, for we know that if there’s a riot, some of these marauders may begin looting the surrounding shops.”
Since my window offered an excellent view of the square, but I myself was thereby visible from below, I followed Fogacer’s advice and put on a mask and covered my head. When Samson came into my room, as Fogacer was leaving, he was very surprised by my appearance as well as by the agitation in the square below. His eyes widened in bewilderment and he asked who was to be burnt.
“An atheist,” I replied, not wishing to go into any details of the business, having avoided up to that point confessing to my brother what I’d done.
“An atheist?” replied Samson without batting an eyelid. “Well then, they’re doing the right thing!”
“My dear brother,” I replied in a trembling voice, “this ‘they’re doing the right thing’ makes me very angry. You have such a tender heart and, ordinarily so much pity for others, how can you envision with such a cold lack of humanity the indescribable suffering that this miserable wretch is going to suffer?”
“But he’s an atheist!” said Samson. “When the illustrious Michael Servetus denied the Holy Trinity, a denial which was a crime, but certainly a less heinous crime than atheism, our Calvin had him burnt at the stake in Geneva.”
“And assuredly that is not one of our Calvin’s best achievements.”
“What?” cried Samson. “You dare censure Calvin!”
“Calvin is neither a God nor a prophet. Why should he be above censure?”
“But to deny the Holy Trinity is a crime!”
“It’s an error, not a crime! Samson, how can we possibly argue for the freedom of conscience for ourselves, which the papists have denied us, if we refuse it to those who have ideas that differ from ours?”
“But an atheist, my brother, an atheist!” cried Samson. “How can we suffer such vermin to exist on the surface of the earth?”
&nbs
p; “Well, Samson!” I said, having lost patience with him. “Let’s break off this discussion right there. Please return to your room and leave me alone. I don’t have the heart to discuss this any further.”
Whereupon, visibly wounded by my rebuff, his face crimson and tears already forming on the edges of his eyelids, Samson left me, not without an immediate sense of remorse on my part for my rudeness.
Someone knocked on my door, and Fogacer reappeared, having put on a mask as well, fearing that if he were recognized someone might assume I was with him. At the very instant that he was explaining this, rain began to fall, first in large drops, but then in sheets, accompanied by hail and such a bitter wind that it felt more like winter than the end of summer.
“Oh no!” said Fogacer. “The wood will be wet and will burn slowly. It will take a long time. Cabassus will suffer immensely—unless Vignogoule, at the moment he lights the fire, strangles Cabassus, which I believe he will do,” he added after a moment.
“What makes you think so?”
“The post, standing at the centre of the pyre, is pierced with a small hole through which someone has threaded a rope in the form of a noose.”
“And who decides that the condemned man should be strangled before the flames reach him?”
“The Présidial judges. But this act of mercy is a secret. And Vignogoule applies it well or badly, according to whether he’s well or badly paid by the friends of the condemned. But who, today, would dare befriend an atheist?”
“Me!” I cried. “I’m going right out there to give five écus to Vignogoule so he’ll strangle Cabassus properly!” And saying this, I ran to the door like a madman, but before I got there, it opened to reveal Maître Sanche.
“My good nephew,” he said with a very severe look, “I couldn’t help hearing what you said as I was coming in. This cannot be. The door is closed and every window barred and every exit blocked. Moreover the Présidial has just arrived along with the canons and Cossolat. It would be madness to attempt to bribe the executioner right in front of them.”
