by Robert Merle
Although I was very ashamed and chagrined to be thus dressed down before our servants, I fully understood that he’d only done so out of fear of losing me in this skirmish, sharing the soldier’s superstition that misfortune never comes alone. And, indeed, he was very nearly right, for in the dust-up at la Fumélie, Fröhlich was hit by a bullet that tore open his helmet and came within half an inch of piercing his skull, but merely ripped off half of his left ear. Luckily, I was able to sew it back together when we returned to Mespech an hour later. All he got from this nearly fatal wound was some immediate pain and a handsome scar that later he was able to show off to the ladies.
Alas, Sauveterre’s wound was far from benign. At every breath he took, some blood bubbled up out of the hole in his chest. And even when I’d succeeded in suturing the wound, which was extremely painful for him, he didn’t regain any strength and his fever remained constant and acute, his pulse irregular, his heartbeat weaker and weaker, and his breathing more and more difficult. For three days, neither my father nor I left his bedside, urging him to remain as still as possible, to refrain from speaking, to take shallow breaths and to drink milk and hot broth—which he agreed to do only to please us, for he had no hope or faith of recovering.
Since we told him that he must remain silent, he looked at my father and me, when we took turns at his bedside with such a sweet air of deep affection that neither of us could manage to hold back our tears. It seemed that the implacable rigour that he’d shown throughout his life had completely dissolved at the approach of death, laying bare his sensitive and infinitely benign soul, which had been so hidden by pride and by his Huguenot austerity.
On the morning of the fourth day, his fever fell, and, given that he’d been able to sleep thanks to the opium we’d prescribed the night before, my father said to him: “My brother, you’re getting better.”
“No, no, I’m dying,” Sauveterre assured him—with such absolute conviction that I saw that my father dared not contradict him, especially when, as the day wore on, his breathing became more and more laboured, painful and halting, and from time to time he stopped breathing altogether, so that we thought we’d lost him. There was no longer any point in asking him not to speak: he did not have enough breath to do so, and just lay there, his mouth open like that of a fish out of water.
And yet, towards evening, he regained some strength and asked my father to call Catherine and François to his bedside. But all he said to them was: “Always remember that you were raised in the reformed religion.” Then he made a gesture for them to leave, clearly having much less love for them than he did for Samson and me, Catherine being a girl and François being… well, François.
He began gasping for breath at about six o’clock, but towards seven the gasps subsided; he turned to my father, looked at him for a long time, gave a faint smile and finally said, in a voice so weak it was barely audible, “Jean, you have been, these last thirty-seven years, my only earthly joy.”
My father gave him his hand and I saw Sauveterre squeeze it with all his might, which gave me a moment of mad hope for his recovery despite all of the indubitable signs that should have dashed it. And then I understood better what I was seeing: he was holding fast to the hand of this man who, all his life, had sustained their immutable friendship, in order to gain the courage to wage his last earthly battle, which all of us must someday lose, and follow the dark, treacherous passageway to death. But then, at about nine o’clock, he managed to speak again, in a barely perceptible voice:
“My presence here…”
And then took a deep breath. My father leant close and nodded, to show him that he was listening.
“My presence here,” continued my uncle in fits and starts, “was only a long and arduous separation from eternal happiness.”
My father and I looked at each other in silence, both of us realizing that Sauveterre hereby summed up the rigour of a life that had only been a long approach to what was to follow. I saw that my father wanted to speak, but couldn’t, his voice strangled by the knot in his throat; large tears were running down his cheeks.
But, by then, any words would have been useless. Sauveterre, his tanned face now pale and wrinkled, had already lost the words and thoughts of his native tongue; his look was now troubled and fixed, his breathing so laboured that my heart ached sorely in my despair of easing his pain.
“Pierre,” my father said, as the clock struck ten, “go—take some dinner and drink a pitcher of wine.”
I was rising to obey him, my shoulders heavy with grief, when all of a sudden Sauveterre gave a violent start. A sea of blood gushed from his mouth; his hands clenched, and then he fell back into such immobility that we knew even before listening to his heart that this stillness was to be as eternal as the felicities that he’d promised himself.
* “We are all governed by our own particular pleasures.”
† “In the city and in the world.”
3
JEAN DE SAUVETERRE’S death at the age of sixty-two left an open and painful wound for Jean de Siorac, who was five years younger than his brother and now sole proprietor of Mespech, as the brothers had arranged back in 1545 when they merged their worldly goods in the presence of the notary of Sarlat.
There was, however, one gift that they weren’t able to provide each other, and that was to leave this earth together after thirty-seven years of a relationship forged under the duress of war and battle; they had fought together in the Norman legion, and had never been separated since, despite the incredible perils of the persecutions against the Huguenots, standing side by side like two rocks fused together and never broken or divided by the series of floods that battered them.
Alas, death had achieved what the malice of men had failed to do to the Brethren, as they were known throughout the region, now cut in two, bleeding from a wound that no surgeon in this world could dress or heal. And from my father down to the least of our servants, who loved Sauveterre with deep respect, and were never put off by his implacable virtue, the walls of Mespech now resounded with tears and lamentations—or, worse still, fell into a mournful silence as though now suddenly deserted.
As for my father, it seemed to me that at Sauveterre’s death he was widowed for the second time, so unhinged was he by the loss of his partner, much like an ox who’d lost its teammate, with whom he’d daily shared the management of their estate, read the same books, followed the same religion, decided everything with one mind—not without arguing ceaselessly, as we’ve seen, for these two, united in the same faith and the same unshakeable friendship, were so opposite in temperament that it was a miracle they’d come to love each other so much.
My father’s moustache turned completely white in the single night after Sauveterre’s death. He seemed wholly lost in anxiety and mourning, his eyes fixed on the ground, lips sealed, conversation rare, gestures slowed and hesitant, as if he were constantly searching—by his side, at table, on horseback, in the library, in the stable or in the fields—for this grumbling and fractious brother. No doubt Jean de Siorac had come to love his brother’s very remonstrations because they were his—and, I often thought, because they reminded him of the most severe Huguenot maxims and, in some sense, excused him from having to obey them, Sauveterre’s inflexible virtue compensating, as it were, for my father’s profligacy.
My father’s despair and distress were so great that I decided, yet again, that I must put off my departure from Mespech, knowing that Jean de Siorac would derive no comfort from my older brother, François, whose manner remained icily cold even in the face of my father’s affliction and sadness.
As for my little sister, Catherine, although she adored my father, she was completely focused, ever since receiving Quéribus’s letter, on Charles IX’s imminent demise, which would bring Anjou back from Poland, and, along with him, his brilliant retinue. Lost in the clouds of her great love, she danced over the flowery paths of her future, imagining that she was already living in Paris, a baronne and a guest
at the Louvre, scarcely aware of her surroundings at Mespech, whose melancholy she hardly noticed in her new-found happiness.
And so I stayed on at Mespech, at first just for a few days, and then, when my father seemed unable to emerge from his grief, a few weeks more, and, as his pain seemed to grow rather than lessen (which caused me some disquiet about his health), an entire second winter. How interminable those long, cold months seemed, in a Mespech now devoid of the company of Samson, Quéribus, Gertrude and Zara. All that beauty and gaiety was now flown from our walls; Catherine was wrapped inaccessibly in her dreams, and my Little Sissy was first ravaged by a cough that tormented her chest and caused her to lose a lot of weight, and then made bitter after a miscarriage in March robbed her of my child.
At first I tried to help my father with his stewardship of Mespech, but, realizing eventually that my efforts brought more pain than relief to Jean de Siorac, I tried another approach altogether and attempted to revive his former great love for medicine. On the pretext of needing to brush up on my own knowledge, which was getting rusty from lack of practice, I involved him in my reading and in various dissections—of the animals we slaughtered for our food as well as of some of the poor devils that died along our roads during that hard winter. And after three months of this continuous and daily study, I saw my father begin to regain his former liveliness. His posture improved, along with a renewed vigour, as he gradually emerged from the excessively morose devotion into which Sauveterre’s death had plunged him—this excess driven, I suspected, by the sins that his natural tendencies had led him to, and would, no doubt, again, since to renounce his natural appetites would mean renouncing his appetite for life itself.
Talking about this casually in front of the fire in the library, after a ride over our domain, I dared tell him without hesitation that his decision to close the door between his room and the one next door, as he’d done ever since the death of his brother, seemed to me completely nonsensical, depriving Mespech of the sons and daughters he might still have—a fecundity that was often recommended in the Bible, as he knew all too well, having read, meditated on and quoted to Sauveterre the passage in Genesis 29 in which we see Jacob repeatedly impregnate Rachel, Leah and her servants.
My father made no response to this reference, but instead rose and walked back and forth in the library with a more vigorous step than I’d seen for a long time, his hands on his hips, a sight that gave me such joy and the hope that he would now recover the posture that I’d always admired.
“It’s true,” he confessed, “that I quoted this text to my brother Jean, as well as others I found in the Good Book. But don’t you think it was sacrilegious to cover my sins with such high authority? And when I was fooling around with the poor wench who gave me Samson, was it not just plain adultery, your mother being still alive and my wife before God?”
“Perhaps,” I conceded, “but the tree must be judged from its fruits: that sin was assuredly forgiven in heaven since it gave you Samson, this beautiful angel whom everyone in the world admires, and whom even my uncle, who made so many reproachful sermons when he was conceived, holds in higher esteem than any of your legitimate children.”
“You said ‘holds’,” my father exclaimed in surprise. “You speak of Sauveterre as if he were still alive! And so he is, in my heart,” he continued, as if in a dream. “In my thoughts I’m still arguing with him constantly and about everything. But it’s quite true, as you say, Pierre, that your uncle was not angry—quite the contrary!—at seeing the increasing number of children by which Mespech grew and fortified itself. He abhorred my sins, but glorified their results.”
I gave no answer to this, but watched him drift silently into his thoughts and didn’t want to disturb them further. I know all too well, being my father’s son, how powerful the world of our imagination can be: our thoughts are like fillies that need space to gallop, head held high and mane flowing in the wind, and shouldn’t be bridled in their youth. The bit can be applied later, if bit be needed.
As soon as Little Sissy had been confined to bed, I stopped going to her at night—not because I feared contagion from her illness, but because the poor wench was so feverish and restless that I got no rest sleeping by her side. Moreover, I got my father to agree to have a fire burning in her room at night since I believed the heat would allow her to sweat out the rest of her sickness. I wasn’t certain the remedy would cure her, but the result was that I was chased from her room, except for brief visits, by the excessive heat there, and had to sleep in a little chamber adjoining Franchou’s.
Every night I’d hear the wench turning over and over in her bed like a crêpe on a pan, at times sobbing, at other times sighing like a bellows in a forge, finding herself so alone ever since the Baron de Mespech had refused to spend his nights with her, more dissuaded by the remonstrance of a dead man than he had been by the same man while he was alive. And yet, Franchou being so appealing, so fresh and benign, I had no doubt that my father, given the disposition I’d just observed in him, would satisfy her again soon—which augured much better for his health and happiness, the doctor in me outweighing the moralist, and may my readers forgive me if they’re of a different opinion.
My Angelina had written me two letters, which I reread so often in the silence and reclusion of my little room that my eyes were like to devour the very paper they were written on if they could. Not that they brought me the news I’d so hoped for. Monsieur de Montcalm’s confessor, who was near his last breath, used this breath to continue to deter his penitent from the certain damnation that awaited him if he were to give his daughter to a heretic. The Latin note that I’d obtained from Pincers attesting that I’d been baptized in the Roman Church—which was true—and that I heard Mass—which was only true on three or four occasions—was unable to shake the zeal of this moribund priest, who, before he would agree to our marriage, demanded that I kneel on the floor of the Barbentane chapel, holding a candle, and make a full confession of the sins and heresies of the Huguenot faith. Angelina knew full well that, because of my attachment to my father’s religion, I could never be pushed to such extremities. Her only recourse was to pray to God to call to His side this priest, who had certainly earned his rest, given how well he’d served Him—which she reported to me with such naive innocence that it left me half-moved and half-joyful.
At the end of June, now fully two years since the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, the news reached us of Charles IX’s death in the Louvre on 30th May. I learnt later from Pierre de L’Étoile that the king was tormented by remorse for having spilt so much blood in the massacre of our people in Paris on the night of 23rd August 1572—a remorse that showed he had more heart than Catherine de’ Medici, who’d planned and carried out the entire massacre without batting an eyelid, and then imposed tortuous lies on her son without ever a breath of repentance.
“My brother,” whispered Catherine as she tiptoed into my little bedroom, candle in hand, as I was about to retire for the night, “I’ve heard the king is dead. Is this true?”
“It is. My father heard it directly from the seneschal of Sarlat.”
“May God rest his soul!” said Catherine, making the sign of the cross. But this done, she couldn’t keep her face from radiating with joy. “And so,” she continued, “the Duc d’Anjou will return to France from Warsaw?”
“’Tis certain,” I smiled, “that he’d much prefer to reign in France than in Poland if he can.”
“If he can?” she breathed, her blue eyes widening with fear at the word “if”.
“Well, it’s not yet certain, my Catherine, that his good Polish subjects, who worked so hard to find themselves a king, will let him leave now that they have him.”
“What?” gasped Catherine, pulling herself up in anger. “His subjects would dare make him their prisoner?… Oh, you wicked brother!” she cried. “You were kidding!”
“Not at all!” I replied. “All you have to do is ask your father: he’ll confirm it. But, my sis
ter,” I continued, “don’t get so upset! The Duc d’Anjou is a great captain, and he’ll surely figure out some trick to get away, along with his retinue.”
This “retinue” nicely cancelled out the “if”, and so pleased my sister that she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You know, Pierre, you bear an uncanny resemblance to Baron de Quéribus!”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. But I’m not half as good-looking,” I added with a laugh. “He and I have already agreed that I’m the sketch and he’s the finished drawing.”
“Yes, I see that,” she agreed, and I laughed again, though she didn’t really notice since she was so wrapped up in her own thoughts. “And you’re not so well appointed,” she continued with great seriousness, “since you have but one doublet that’s in the Parisian style, and you got that one from him.”
“Well, that’s because I’m not as rich as he is,” I said, laughing again, absolutely delighted with the turn this conversation was taking.
“’Tis true,” she frowned.
“Nor am I a baron.”
“Assuredly not,” she agreed. “You’re not and never will be. And yet,” she added after a moment of reflection, “I’ll still always love you, Pierre, no matter how poor you may be—and a doctor as well.”
“Madame,” I replied, bowing, “I am infinitely grateful for your generous regard.”
At which she suddenly emerged from her dreamy state and stamped her foot:
“Oh, Pierre! You’re making fun of me again!”
“Not in the least!” I answered. “And I swear I will love you every bit as much when you have become a baronne.”
“Will I really be a baronne?” she cooed, her eyes alight. “It’s not so much the title that dazzles me,” she explained with a return to her usual haughtiness, “Mespech being what it is and my mother descended from such noble blood. But the baron is so amiable! My brother, may I give you a goodnight kiss?”
