by Robert Merle
I thought I must be dreaming when I suddenly heard the sound of her heels on the stone pathway, and when, by the light of the risen moon, I saw her profile enter sideways through the narrow door of the turret, and felt her take my outstretched hands, but without approaching further, appearing somewhat ashamed to be meeting with me in secret at this hour and in such an enclosed place. Seeing this, and observing that she was out of breath from the emotion of the moment, I renounced—at least for the moment—the pleasure of exchanging a kiss with her and kept my distance (as the gorgon would have us do), and recounted what had happened with Larissa, a story that I believe she listened to attentively, but, due to the darkness, I couldn’t really see her face or her expression, except for the wonderful luminosity of her large black eyes. When I’d finished, she remained silent for a while, sighed deeply and, in a voice that didn’t betray a trace of anger or bitterness, said,
“Ah, the poor girl! She would like to be me: that’s the entire story! She’s wanted this since we were in swaddling clothes, suffering so much from her unfortunate mole, which caused her to feel so terribly worthless, sure that she was inferior to me and so undeserving that she would have destroyed everything if we’d let her. So that’s why the Devil, seeing that she was divided against herself, could get inside her!”
This view of the Devil left me aghast, though of course I understood that Angelina was just repeating what she’d heard, not wishing to contradict a theory that was so generally accepted by those around her that it had become “the truth”. On the other hand, I didn’t want to endorse it, so I decided that humour would be the best way out:
“The Devil’s a busy fellow! Was it the Devil who pushed her to let that little page into her bed?”
“Assuredly so!” Angelina replied with tranquil certainty. “Who else? My mother, as my cousin must have told you, was very fond of this fellow, who was pretty enough to eat, lively and amiable, played the viol beautifully and wrote verse as well. I loved him as a girl loves at that age, madly, but never permitted him any intimacies, and ultimately it was I who infected Larissa with this ill-fated passion.”
“But how did it happen, if Larissa wanted so much to resemble you, that she was unable to maintain her modesty and self-esteem in this affair?”
“Because,” she answered in the most matter-of-fact way, “the Devil had already got possession of her.”
“Well,” I thought, feeling unable to shake this unbreakable certainty, “I’ll never get to the bottom of this ‘truth’—all I seem to be able to do is scratch the surface!”
“But,” I added, “if I’m to judge by what happened tonight in this turret, can we believe that the Devil has completely left her?”
“But that’s precisely the point!” corrected Angelina in a voice tinged with worry and sadness. “Father Samarcas, who’s venerated here as if he were a great saint, believes that the Devil, having left Larissa, is still residing on the outskirts of her soul, and at the first occasion will insinuate himself back into her if he doesn’t watch over her. Which is why, in his great saintliness and marvellous devotion to this soul whom he has saved, he doesn’t want her out of his sight, day or night.”
“What, at night as well?”
“Oh, especially at night. He sleeps in a little cabinet adjoining her room, both bolted from within and protected by heavy oak shutters over the windows. Father Samarcas considers Larissa to be under siege by an evil spirit during the night, and that he is the garrison who defends her.”
This gave me much food for thought, and might have given me much to question if I hadn’t been convinced that Angelina was too rigidly set in these beliefs to be able to listen to my doubts. It’s a strange error that many fall prey to, to imagine that the wench that we’re madly in love with would be the least disposed, in marrying us, to marry our opinions and philosophies as well. Far from it—and even further in this case, since Angelina was a papist and I am of the reformed religion, which, as everyone knows, is little inclined to accept the immense power that the direction of their souls gives priests over Catholic families.
Ever since my arrival here, it had become obvious to my stupefied eyes (and to those of my father, who was quite scandalized by it) that Father Anselm and the Jesuit Samarcas, amiably sharing their immense power (despite the little love they bore for each other), governed every aspect of life at Barbentane: the one because he was the comte’s confessor, the other because Larissa was his pupil. To view the situation with open eyes, it was not Monsieur de Montcalm but Father Anselm who gave me Angelina in marriage, along with the condition that he had imposed and that, good Huguenot though I was, I could not fail to obey. Likewise, it wasn’t the comte but the Jesuit Samarcas who had decided that Larissa would never marry, since the demon that was lurking on the “outskirts of her soul” might then reinvade the city.
Angelina stood silently in the shadows of the turret while I was thus lost in thought, but at length I took her very gently in my arms and gave her a few kisses, but very respectfully, and without hugging her to me, especially since I was still feeling sad about Larissa’s punishment, sensing that she’d destroyed the charm of the moment—and Samarcas even more so. The events of the evening had sadly taught me the great extent to which I was a stranger both to this family that I was going to enter and, worse still, to the sweet woman whom I loved.
I shared these feelings with Giacomi that next morning in the fencing room, while we were catching our breath on a small bench set in the recess of a window, our legs extended in front of us, his well beyond mine.
“In order for Angelina to see Samarcas as you do,” lisped Giacomi, “you just need to be patient. That’s what’s usually required in human affections. Should I be sorry for you?” he smiled. “You who love and are loved?”
“Ah, Giacomi,” I joked, “are you in love with someone who doesn’t love you?”
But to this he made no answer; instead, eyes lowered, his face suddenly very serious, he began tracing indecipherable signs on the floor with the point of his sword. At length he said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t resent Larissa. The poor girl calls for infinite compassion. And isn’t it a pity that, the Devil having renounced her soul, it has been taken over by this other, whom everyone here treats like one of the great saints!”
“Monsieur,” came a voice from the other end of the hall, “would you do me the favour of crossing swords with me in a friendly bout?”
Absorbed as I had been by what Giacomi was saying, and by my vain attempt to decipher the arabesques he’d been tracing on the floor, I hadn’t heard the door open, but, raising my head, I saw Samarcas standing at the threshold, sword in hand, a smile on his lips belying the fire in his eyes.
* “Like a cadaver.”
† “And the game’s up.”
4
THE DOUBLE MARRIAGE of the Baron de Quéribus to my sister Catherine and myself to Angelina de Montcalm was celebrated on 16th November 1574 in the chapel of the Château de Barbentane, after I’d solemnly sworn on my salvation “to hear Mass wherever and whenever I find myself in a Catholic household and to allow my lady and wife to raise the fruits of our union in the faith of her ancestors”. My father had also been required to adhere to this condition when he had married Isabelle de Caumont, the difference being that at that time he hadn’t yet pledged his faith to the Huguenot religion, so that I was raised in the Catholic faith until the age of ten. And thus, as I swore on my faith to abide by the condition imposed by Father Anselm, I again found myself, now twenty-five years old, neither fish nor fowl—or, as the Baron de Mespech put it so delicately, with my arse between two stools. This situation troubled me less than it had my father, since I have no love for religious zeal of any kind, having seen with my own eyes both the massacre of the Catholics in the “Michelade” in Nîmes and the slaughter of our people in Paris on 23rd and 24th August 1572. Which is not to say that I’d become, like Fogacer, a complete sceptic, but I believed that the sincerity of one’s worship wa
s of much greater importance than the form, since the Roman Church is so troubled with errors, inventions and superstitions.
My father, who had such a strong sense of his manorial duties back in Mespech, wished to depart Barbentane virtually the day after the wedding, but Monsieur de Montcalm would hear nothing of it, arguing that Mespech had begun its winter season by now, and that all the work of the harvest, grape-pressing and gathering of nuts and firewood would be finished, and hence the presence of the master in his household was no longer so necessary. And although my father disagreed with the comte, feeling that the master’s presence was useful even in winter, when there was still much to be done, he also realized that both Catherine and I would doubtless be settling in Paris, and that there might be many months, perhaps even years, between our visits, given how perilous travel was during that unsettled era in the kingdom. And so he agreed to my sister’s repeated requests—and to mine as well—that he give in to his affection for us and delay his return to Périgord, at least for as long as Monsieur de Montcalm would need to settle his affairs before leaving for the capital.
I was delighted with this decision, since the unbelievable joy I felt at being united with Angelina at long last would have been tempered by the sting of my father’s sudden departure, and by the sadness that engulfed me whenever I thought of how Jean de Siorac was going to find himself very alone in Mespech, deprived of Sauveterre—and now also of Samson, Catherine and me—in his old age, despite his sprightliness, suffering bitterly from the emptiness created by our absence. It made me even sadder to imagine myself alone in Mespech without the children I hadn’t yet had. Is it not a pity, when you think about it, that, as the ribbon of our life unremittingly unravels, and the advancing years inevitably sap our strength, we should also have to be diminished by the flight from the nest of the progeny of our flesh and blood?
I was somewhat relieved when, the day after our double marriage, Samarcas, who wasn’t coping well with the evident interest Giacomi was showing Larissa, suddenly decided to depart for Reims, carrying off his pupil in his terrible talons—thereby causing much grief to the Italian, but, by the same token, ending the malaise that my own ambiguous relationship to Larissa was causing me. And how could it not have been thus, since neither my heart nor my body could remain indifferent to one who so thoroughly resembled my beloved in looks, though not in the matter of corruption, which was so troubling to me? For at the very same time that I was endeavouring to knock down, one by one, Angelina’s bastions of modesty, Larissa’s fortress was so invitingly weak and undone that it would have required no effort to overcome it. All of her senses were awakened, begging for attention, where my dear wife’s were still dormant. And so, when I met her in a corridor, her large eyes fixed on mine, and her hand brushing against mine, I recognized her by the way my senses began to tremble at her silent appeal.
Samarcas led me to believe that he was travelling to Reims to visit the famous Jesuit seminary there, but from a few hints dropped by Larissa I gathered that they were only stopping in Reims before going on to London.
“So what the devil,” Giacomi asked when we were alone in the fencing room, “is this demon going to do in a country which has so few Catholics? Chi lo sa?”*
“You seem to know the answer!” I laughed. “Your tone tells me in no uncertain terms that you think he’s up to some dastardly business, evil as he is!”
“Indeed, that’s exactly what I think! He’s a man for whom the darkest ends justify the most savage deeds. Did you notice that if I hadn’t been totally on my guard, he would have skewered me like a roasting pigeon during our last scrimmage?”
“Good God! Did he touch you?”
“Not on your life! I parried his thrust! But with a shameless parry—not with my blade but with my arms! Blessed Virgin, I’m still embarrassed! And I was so furious at that moment that I engaged his blade with mine and made it fly from his hands. Ah Pierre, if his eye had been a pistol, he would have dispatched me! But that was only for an instant, for he quickly regained his calm, picked up his sword, resheathed it and said in that sonorous bass voice he’s so proud of, ‘Maestro, is that the famous “Jarnac’s thrust”?’”
“‘Heavens no, padre—if I’d used that, you’d have been crippled for life!’
“‘But with this one, you had me at your mercy! And with those two tricks,’ he joked, but with a black flame lighting his eye under those dark eyebrows, ‘you could go a long way! Maestro,’ he continued with a suave but menacing smile, ‘if I were the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, I’d torture your tricks right out of you!’
“‘But padre, I’m a good Catholic!’
“‘Who could claim to be so,’ he said, eyes blazing, ‘who frequents Huguenots?’
“‘Anyone who hears Mass.’
“‘With half an ear! But maestro,’ he continued tapping his hand on his scabbard, ‘thank you so much for showing me that you can’t be persuaded by arms!’
“‘Persuaded?’ I said, surprised. ‘What’s this evangelical language?’
“‘I wouldn’t put it any other way,’ he hissed. ‘You’ve understood me well enough.’
“And at that he made a deep bow and left—and, Pierre, believe me, this man is more beholden to the Devil than to God, I’d swear it on my life! And it makes me choke with rage that he should hold sway over Larissa!”
“Ah,” I thought, observing his furious wrath, “my Giacomi, love surely changes a man!”
“And do you know what I’ve learnt form Angelina?” I said. “This man requested and obtained from Monsieur de Montcalm 1,000 écus for the ‘education and welfare’ of his pupil.”
“Surely you don’t think I’m surprised!” snarled Giacomi. “The snake couldn’t help but be an extortioner! Samarcas è un uomo che scorticare un pedocchio per avere la pelle.”†
I laughed at this, of course, not wishing to believe Samarcas to be as evil and zealous on questions of religion as Giacomi portrayed him, but—alas!—I could certainly think of Huguenots in Nîmes and Montpellier, and even Huguenot ministers like Monsieur de Gasc, who were easily his equal in this respect. On the other hand, in my attempt to maintain an even-handed position, I well understood that the Montcalms, though they pushed their veneration of Samarcas beyond reasonable limits, were not wrong to feel some gratitude towards him. Whatever methods he’d used to cure Larissa, and whatever the nature of the strange control he exercised over her (though in this regard I had a theory which I’m not yet ready to share), I had to admit that he had succeeded where others had failed and had managed to wrest Larissa from the clutches of the prison-like convent where she was wasting away, and the poor girl clearly owed to him, and him alone, the reflowering of her life.
Angelina shed some tears at her sister’s departure, which I drank from her fresh cheeks, doing everything I could to calm her. And, while I’m on the subject, I will repeat that I disagree with what Michel de Montaigne told me when I visited him in his tower: that I should be very careful not to caress my future wife, for fear that such extravagances of amorous licence should unhinge her reason. On the contrary! I believe a man should teach his life’s companion the delicious enhancements that make love-making so intense and so pleasurable! Is it reasonable to set to work on her quickly and precipitously like a dog, leaving her no possibility of feeling anything? Isn’t it better to awaken her senses little by little? And should we forgo the immense pleasure of exploring the provinces of her body with touch and tongue, and the enjoyment of seeing in her visage and hearing in her voice the signs of the pleasure we’ve afforded her?
If man must enter life alone and exit it alone, I pray that at least he be not alone in the moment of his conjunction with his life’s partner, so that from this conjunction a new life will come, convinced as I am that there’s no solitude worse than that of pleasure received without pleasure given. The soldier who rapes girls and women in the sacking of a city doesn’t hold in his arms a being, but rather a thing, so that possession and destr
uction, for this desperate villain, amount to the same thing. That’s not pleasure. It is—I’ll say it again—a sad and bestial solitude. But the body isn’t as important as are caring, tenderness, generosity and human consideration, when the first duty of a husband is to bring his wife, by delaying if necessary his own, the pleasure that it would be basely selfish to deny her. And when you consider that the Creator bestowed this pleasure on her in compensation for the pain of pregnancy and childbirth, then we should be doubly grateful for our own pleasure, since He’s spared us the suffering she must endure.
We’d been at Barbentane for two months already, Monsieur de Montcalm being in no hurry to prepare his own departure, when my father sent Fröhlich (now serving as his valet) to ask me to join him in his rooms. As I arrived, I was happy to see a lively little chambermaid name Jeannotte just leaving, whom my father had been eyeing lately, but was surprised to see him looking more surly than I would have expected given the amiable company we’d been keeping.
“Father,” I asked as pleasantly as I could, “what’s wrong? Why so grumpy? Did Jeannotte displease you?”
“Not at all!” he replied. “Thank goodness the wench is amiable enough. But alas I have other worries. Here, read this letter from François that I just received.” He handed me the missive and threw himself scornfully onto his armchair, crossing his legs impatiently and watching me closely as I read the note from my brother:
Dear Father,
