by Robert Merle
I pray and beg you, mi fili, turning to you as my only and immutable friend, to take good care of this little unfortunate. I couldn’t stand to see him cast into the street, hungry and homeless, still loving him as I do, despite his betrayal. As soon as you return to Paris, I will pay you whatever expenses you have incurred to keep him with you. Vale, mi fili. My eyes are full of tears as I write this. Please do not say anything to your adorable wife about this, who is to me like a mother, a daughter, a sister and so much more. Mi fili, one more embrace! Since I cannot pray, I can only ask that you think of me from time to time.
Your affectionate,
Fogacer
Well, I offered him a thousand times more in friendship than he asked, but I found several things in his letter that were confusing, and so I resolved to ask Silvio to enlighten me, and went to find him in his room. Hearing no response when I knocked, I presumed to open the door, and, to my great surprise, found Zara and Silvio there, both fully dressed—the former was sitting like a queen on an armchair, looking very proud and stiff; at her knees, with his hands joined, his face wet from tears, was the latter. The sight of me seemed to strike such terror into him that he would have run away had I not seized his arm and forced him to sit down on a stool.
“Silvio,” I exclaimed, “what’s going on? What’s Zara doing in here? What were you doing on your knees? What’s the meaning of these tears?”
But Silvio only lowered his head at these words, paralysed by shame, and continued crying copious tears. I turned to Zara with an inquisitive look, at which the beauty, with a very haughty and disdainful air and a look of triumph, said calmly:
“I asked Silvio, with no promise of faith or fidelity, to make me pregnant, and now that it’s done, this silly child refuses to accept his dismissal, which I’d carefully warned him would be forthcoming, and wants to stick to my skin like a louse in a monk’s hair!”
“What?” I gasped, hardly daring to believe my ears. “Zara, you’re pregnant? With Silvio’s child? You who’ve always said you hated men?”
“Oh, but I do hate them,” snorted Zara contemptuously, “but since I wanted to get pregnant to take my revenge on Gertrude, I chose this lad, who’s scarcely a man, being so young and soft.”
“Soft!” cried Silvio, tears gushing from his eyes with this new affront. “Soft!” he repeated, shaking his brown curls indignantly. “You have every reason to believe the contrary!”
“You know what I mean,” sniffed Zara with crushing haughtiness. “And do you flatter yourself, you good-for-nothing, that I’d promise to marry you? You or anyone else?”
“But, Zara,” I asked, stupefied, “if you don’t want a husband, how are you going to manage raising the child your carrying?”
“Well, Monsieur,” she said proudly, “trust me! I’ll manage! If I have to, I’ll work with my hands!” she added, looking at her beautiful long hands, as if the idea of asking them to do any work would have astonished even her.
“Ah, Zara, Zara!” I cried, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry with her bizarre unreasonableness. “Is this what you had to do to express your anger with Gertrude? Is it not madness to get a bloated stomach just to spite her? Do you really think she’ll give in to your wishes when you have brought a child into the world?”
“I don’t know,” she conceded, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. “I cannot believe that she doesn’t love me any more after so many years that I’ve loved her, and that she’ll completely forget me and won’t want to help me or have me near her! My life has no meaning or substance without her!”
The real Zara, so close to tears, speaking her heart without any pretence or hauteur, convinced me that this baby was a kind of appeal and that she wanted, hoping against hope, to share it with Gertrude and for them to raise it together. I was so moved by this thought that I took her in my arms and gave her two kisses; then I sent her back to her room, asking her not to share any of this with my Angelina, who would be most discomfited, and promised that I’d speak to Gertrude. Hearing this, Zara leapt to her feet and said, in a cutting tone, that she forbade me to do so. But I know that, secretly, she hoped I would not obey this order.
Silvio, who hadn’t said a word this entire time, made a movement to get up from his stool when Zara headed for the door, but, sensing his movement, she whirled around and gave him such a withering look that the poor fellow sat straight back down, wounded by such manifest scorn.
I felt enormous compassion for him at that moment, since it appeared that he was the great loser in this business, having renounced one love without winning the other. And since I had to tell him about Fogacer’s departure, I took care to soften this terrible news by informing him of his master’s generosity on his behalf, which, if it didn’t replace his tutorial presence, at least assured him of bread and shelter in this dangerous world. He paled at first, and then began shedding hot tears, and was unable to say a word, so acute was his pain. So I just stood there, quietly contemplating him, waiting for him to regain his composure. He was a likeable fellow, who would never lack for women in his life, since it was now clear that he was inclined in that direction; he had something of the Moor in his colouring, being fairly brown-skinned and black-eyed, with curly, crow-black hair and handsome features, with a virile look in the design of his cheek and neck that would not fail to interest the opposite sex. He had, in addition, a lively mind and a ready tongue, and spoke eloquently and, from what I’d observed, candidly.
“Ah, Monsieur!” he moaned, rising from his stool, his tears subsiding. “What a strange loss I’ve had! And how empty my life seems! Such a good master! The wisest of men! And the most benign and humane! He didn’t just pull me from the mire—he educated me. He was both mother and father to me and I’m immensely grateful, and there’s no mother’s son in the kingdom for whom I’ll ever have more respect and immutable friendship.”
“And yet you hurt him pretty badly in my library, and it seemed to me that, during these last few weeks, you’d become estranged from him.”
He didn’t quite know how to reply to this, and blushed, lowering his eyes, overcome with shame. I waited quietly, however, and at last he said, his voice very constricted by the knot in his throat:
“Monsieur, you’re touching there on a point that might have given offence to anyone but yourself, for I know from my master Fogacer, who has so often praised you, that you are nourished by the true milk of the Gospel, and accept his person and his nature just as they are, without blame or condemnation of any sort. But for me, you must know that I am not made of the same stuff that you accept in him. I am not naturally inclined to homosexuality—since it must be called by its name—and only consented out of gratitude towards him. So, in the end, I had to become a man in all respects, and discontinue our relationship. Which is why, Zara having made the overtures that she did, I hastened to agree, and went at it quite passionately, very curious about the body of a woman, something that was unknown to me, and became quite enamoured of it as soon as I was able to possess it. Alas, Monsieur, I found Zara only to lose her as well…”
“And yet, Silvio,” I soothed, “give the woman her due: she never promised you anything. She didn’t fool you or cheat you.”
“’Tis true enough. But how rough and rude she was when she’d got what she wanted from me! Ah, Monsieur, what a pity that this marvellous body does not enclose a heart as tender and benign as my master’s!”
“Silvio,” I smiled, “the members of this gentle sex are not all without hearts, as you’ll discover someday, being as young as you are and having the vast world at your feet, populated with such an infinite variety of people. Meanwhile, Silvio, we’re going to keep you with us, and Miroul will find work for you that will distract you from these terrible losses that you’ve endured.”
He stammered his thanks in his confusion, and I left him, fearing that the arid dismissal by Zara, who was still living with us, coupled with the absence of Fogacer, would make life thorny for him for a while.
But what could I do? And who is at fault in this strange world, when we don’t love those who love us, and love where we are not loved?
Luckily—or unluckily—this situation lasted only one day, for that very evening my Quéribus arrived, followed by his usual lordly escort, that included not only a dozen robust valets, but also a masseur, a barber, a fortune-teller and a fool.
As soon as he had paid courteous homage to Angelina, he asked to speak to me in my library, and, once closeted there, said to me with immense seriousness:
“Monsieur my brother, I’ve come here on behalf of the king, who requires your presence in his Louvre.”
“Ah, my brother! My brother!” I cried, overwhelmed with joy, since I’d been champing at the bit these many months I’d been confined to my house and fields. “At last I’m going to serve him! And do you know the reason?”
“Yes, indeed. He explained it, though I confess it’s Greek to me! It seems that the king would like you to re-establish contact with a certain ‘Mosca’, unless it’s ‘Leo’. I’m repeating this as I believe I heard it, since I know no one bearing these strange names at court. Which, by the way, my brother, you will find quite abandoned by all those lords who’ve gone off to join Guise.”
“Are things going so badly?” I said, my throat tightening.
“Ah, Monsieur my brother!” replied Quéribus with a bitterness that was quite unusual for him. “They’re going worse than badly! When you walk through the streets of Paris, all you hear are rogues saying, ‘Let’s take this blackguard from his Louvre and lock him in a monastery!’ And no one dares argue or challenge the knaves for fear of being torn to pieces by the populace, so great is the execration directed at Henri for not having crushed the Huguenots and reiters. Is it not incredible that the king should be treated as a traitor to the Church for having been human?”
“So that’s how things are?”
“That bad and worse!” replied Quéribus. “My confessor has come down with a fever and has withdrawn his support. So I went to make confession to one of the wretched priests in Paris. And do you know what the first thing this fellow said to me was? ‘My son, are you for the League?’ ‘No, my father.’ ‘In that case, my son, I cannot hear your confession, since in good conscience, I could not absolve you.’”
“But that’s crazy!”
“Indeed,” replied Quéribus with a degree of bitterness I’d never heard in him. “Words are too feeble to condemn this confusion of the political sphere with the spiritual. Oh, Pierre! Religion has become nothing but hatred! We think we’re hearing our priests crying ‘Give us this day our daily blood!’ Outside the extermination of the heretics there is no faith! No hope! No salvation! That’s what it has come to, my brother!…”
* “One must judge a tree by its fruits, not by its leaves.”
12
RECOLLECTING THE INJURIES and attacks against my lodgings launched by the Guisards while I was in Sedan visiting the poor young Duc de Bouillon, I decided to leave for Paris without taking Angelina, whom I left with the children on my little estate of the Rugged Oak, sobbing and discomfited; I myself was very melancholic with the thought that I’d be so long deprived of her presence, which was milk and bread to me. On the other hand, I brought with me, besides Miroul and his Florine, sad Silvio, whom I didn’t want languishing under the same roof as Zara, so that his heart wouldn’t be torn by seeing her every day without being able to so much as touch her with the tip of his finger.
Meanwhile, before my departure, I hurried over to embrace my Samson, as ever so happily absorbed by his glass jars that he knew very little about the crisis in the kingdom, and, taking Gertrude aside, tried, without presuming to give her advice, to sound her out about her feelings. Learning that, after the initial novelty, her feelings for Éloïse had considerably cooled, and that Gertrude was now whinnying for her former oats, I dared tell her that Zara had begun to weigh on Angelina with her inconsolable sorrows, especially given my wife’s sadness about my coming departure. I told her that she would considerably brighten the spirit of my household if she would consent to pay a visit, throw a bridle on her fugitive horse and bring her back to her stable.
At first she trembled, as though infused with a new hope, but then frowned and said a very stern “No!” But then she excused herself and softened her resistance, and confessed, with tears in her eyes, that certainly she had loved Zara, and Zara’s constancy, for all those years, but that Zara suffocated her with the weight of her love. She confessed, however, that she was astonished that she could neither live continuously with her nor permanently without her, and that it would require some reflection—so she promised to think it over.
I left her to her ruminations, quite surprised that she considered Zara’s adventure with Silvio so inconsequential, and left quite sure that the scales would tip in favour of Zara’s return to the apothecary by Christmas, lightening the burden on Angelina inflicted by Zara’s moods. Believing that, henceforth, order and serenity would be restored in my household, I found myself free enough of these worries to turn my attention to the affairs of my king. But no sooner had I set foot in Paris than I discovered that matters were even more desperate than Quéribus had reported.
I arrived there at night, and sent Miroul out the next morning to wander about near the Grand Châtelet to try to reconnoitre with Mosca on the sly, and ask him to pay me a visit at night. I myself set out that morning to feel the pulse of this angry and rebellious city, with a visit to Pierre de L’Étoile, who seemed better able to hear what was going on in parliament, at the university and at the court than any mother’s son in France.
Although he was as affectionate with me as always, I found him buried in the darkest depression and trembling more than a hare in its burrow, dreading in the coming year of 1588 the end of his house, of his kingdom and of the entire world.
“My dear chevalier,” he said, embracing me warmly, “everything is being torn to pieces: this globe, this kingdom and myself!”
“You, my good friend!” I laughed. “Well, for a dying man you seem hale and hearty! Your colour is good, your beard is thick and your lips are as red as roses!”
“My health is good enough,” he agreed, sighing. “But not my soul, for it is so troubled by my sins that I’m afraid to die and afraid to continue living.” (This was a phrase I’d heard him repeat at least once a year for the last sixteen years.)
“Your sins?” I laughed. “You mustn’t go exaggerating either the weight or the number, since you are universally considered a great man, except of course by those rascals in the League—which is a compliment to you!”
“Well, my friend,” he said, sitting down in an armchair and indicating another for me, both of which faced a fireplace so enormous that you could have roasted a calf, and where huge logs were burning, their heat providing wonderful comfort from the raw and bitter winds in the street. I loved this room, which was bright and well lit by a series of large windows with beautiful transparent glass—not those little squares of colour that have for so long darkened our lodgings. “My friend,” he continued, “I do not deserve the renown that has been given me, at least when it comes to the virtue that is expected of an old man who is married, like me, who has passed the age of forty, and yet who disports himself shamelessly with a young woman who makes fun of him, bleeds his purse dry and then runs off with the first rascal who comes along.”
“My dear L’Étoile,” I advised, “don’t rein yourself in so much and you won’t feel the bit! And take the spurs off your conscience! Then it won’t prick you so painfully!”
“I wish to God I could! But you, my dear Siorac, don’t you fear the hereafter?”
“Not to the point of spoiling the here and now!”
“Or the end of the world?”
“Is it so near?” I asked, laughing.
“Near!” cried Pierre de L’Étoile, rising to his feet and turning away from the fire to warm his back. “Near! We can practically touch it with our fingers, becau
se it’s coming in this disastrous year of 1588. We’re there, chevalier!”
“But who is telling us that this abomination of despair should be our lot? Most assuredly a dreamer!”
“No, not at all! A wise man! A very wise man whom you must know: Regiomontanus. The one who established the map of the stars that permitted Christopher Columbus to find his way to the unknown lands of the Americas.”
“From the fact that the stars guide our way at night, we cannot deduce that they influence the destiny of the earth.”
“That’s not what Regiomontanus claims. He has calculated that an eclipse of the sun will take place in February 1588 and that, at that moment, the stars will be in the most fearful conjunction: Saturn, Jupiter and Mars will be within the house of the moon.”
“I don’t doubt the conjunction, since he calculated it. But what have I to fear from it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it not be that Regiomontanus is both a mathematician and a poet? It would appear that the conjunction that he foresees is a calculation, and the dark prophecy is a dream. And it’s a dream that just happens to fit well with the sinister state of things in this kingdom and with your very sombre mood.”
“I don’t know,” repeated L’Étoile, who seemed shaken, but not entirely persuaded by my reasoning, since it’s always easier to think something than to stop thinking it, once you believe it.
“Would you like me to tell you the prediction that Regiomontanus made, elegantly couched in verse?”
