by Robert Merle
At some distance from the Château de Montaigne, I had our troop stop at a little inn that looked friendly enough, and sent Miroul on ahead to ask the lord of the manor if he would consent to welcome us, our difficulties having come on so suddenly that there’d been no way to give him earlier notice of our arrival. We dismounted and tied our horses in the shade, since the July sun was so strong even in the late afternoon. We sat down under an arbour covered with vines, and our hostess, who had little to recommend her physically, brought us a wine that was so strangely delicious that it would have been impolite to water it down, but we did anyway since we didn’t wish to be light-headed when we met Monsieur de Montaigne. Our stomachs crying to be filled, we ordered some ham, butter, wheat biscuits and a beautiful melon. The entire meal, including seven measures of wine, cost but five sols. I thought that we should offer our hostess seven, but Samson, who controlled the purse, objected, and I didn’t insist, Giacomi pointing out that it would be best not to do anything that would make us stand out in the memory of this good wench, who scratched around us like a mother hen in a barnyard, listening to everything we said, there being very little traffic on this road and doubtless little news to digest.
Miroul returned after an hour to inform us that Monsieur de Montaigne’s secretary was waiting for us at a nearby crossroads. Remounting our horses we headed in that direction, and there, under the shadow of a grove of chestnut trees I saw a tall knave clothed in black mounted on a rather shabbily appointed workhorse, and who (I mean the knave) looked rather severe but greeted us civilly enough. He told me that he judged, by my demeanour and behaviour, that I was the leader of our little troop, and, if so, then I must be the younger son of the Baron de Mespech. He asked, therefore, if I could prove that this was so. I answered him that I was carrying a letter from my father to his master. He wanted to see it. I handed it to him. And, taking it, he broke the seal quickly and casually, and, even though it was not addressed to him, read its contents. After which, he dropped his suspicious airs and asked very politely if we would remove our helmets and cuirasses and put on our doublets. Monsieur de Montaigne, he explained, did not like people to appear before him in his peaceful retreat, armed for war as we were.
It must have been about six o’clock when we finally reached the chateau. The secretary led us, once we’d taken off our boots, to the tower where Monsieur de Montaigne had the library that he would later describe in his Essais, where he regretted that he hadn’t designed a gallery where he could stroll, rather than a tower in which he was forced to walk in circles, as he was doing when we arrived. He greeted us with extreme civility, and having bid us be seated, read the letter that the secretary handed him already unsealed, shaking his head as he did and then rereading it once he’d finished, which gave me the opportunity to look at him, which I did with much curiosity, since he had—well before his pen had added to it—so great a reputation in the kingdom.
He was then thirty-nine years old, and already a year ago he had, as he put it, withdrawn into the bosom of the “learned virgins”, by which he meant the Muses, wishing to consecrate “the sweet ancestral refuge of the Montaignes to his liberty, his tranquillity and his retirement”. He struck me, from the way he welcomed us, as having very little of the courtier about him; or rather, he played at being a sort of counterfeit courtier, since he copied neither the manners nor the allure of the court, but wore a large ruff, and about his neck the medal of the order of Saint-Michel that the king had given him a year previously. For my part, I saw in him rather a clerk or a magistrate, for he displayed little physical grace, being short and rather stocky, with a pate so bald there was not a single hair on it. He was obviously more apt with the pen than with the sword, though he wore an épée at his side and, according to what I’d heard, loved to discuss warfare and battles—a tendency that our neighbour Brantôme scoffed at, so great and intractable is the prejudice of la noblesse d’épée against la noblesse de robe.*
I had a chance to study him further during our conversation. He had a high, rounded forehead and high cheekbones, a full but not fat face with a long, aquiline nose, large, black, Judaic eyes and a look that was sometimes gay and jocular, at others prudent and mistrustful, as though he were worried. His fleshy lips pointed downwards at the corners of his mouth, and his moustache accentuated and continued this slope, giving him a sad air—at least until his smile came into play, which then lit up his face in the most delicious way. In short his physiognomy seemed to be a balance between two equal forces: joviality and melancholy.
He was dressed with quiet elegance in a black velvet doublet with hose of the same colour and white slashes. He wore a sword at his belt, as I’ve said, even though he was at home. And as for his beard (which was greying) he trimmed it closely rather than letting it grow full as Rondelet and Saporta did. I couldn’t tell if this style was a result of his belief that this was more appropriate for a nobleman, or because he tolerated a beard more than he liked growing one simply because he didn’t like to shave. Though not as well tanned as my father, the Périgordian sun had not failed to give his face good colour and he seemed altogether healthy and vigorous.
“Monsieur,” he said as he folded the letter and stuck it in his doublet, “I know your father through what my late friend Monsieur de La Boétie told me, that he is a man who works hard for the common good. I want you to tell me all about your affair at length and at your leisure. For the time being, I invite you to follow me into my chateau where I usually spend a few hours before dinner.”
“Ah, Monsieur de Montaigne,” I exclaimed as I rose, “you have here a very beautiful library, which is much larger than the one at Mespech, which itself is already fairly substantial.”
“My father began it before me, and since I became a man I have spared no effort or expense to round out this inheritance.” As he pronounced the words “round out” he made a large gesture with his slender white hand and smiled as he displayed the shelves, which exactly followed the curve of the walls, since the room was perfectly round—except the part that held the winding staircase, which was enclosed in a small square tower adjoining the larger one. You might have said that this library, in its rotundity, was like the cocoon in which the worm encloses itself to weave its beautiful and protective envelope.
As we descended the stairs, my host paused to show us his bedroom, and next to it a small cabinet which communicated with the chapel beneath it by means of an opening in the wall, so that one could hear the words and music of the Mass without getting out of bed.
“Aha!” I smiled. “We have the same arrangement at Mespech! My father and Sauveterre had it constructed early on in their work on the chateau, so that, at a time when the Huguenots were still under heavy persecution by the papists, and didn’t dare openly declare their faith, the Brethren could appear to be hearing Mass without actually doing so.”
“Oh, but I really hear it!” said Montaigne. “I hear it! And in complete devotion and diligence! My mother,” he continued with some emotion, “was a Sephardi and was forced to abandon the religion of her ancestors, since in Spain they resorted to torture and the stake to convert the ‘heathen’. And so she embraced with great enthusiasm the reformed religion. My brother did the same but with a zeal that Monsieur de La Boétie condemned, I recall very well, on his deathbed. But for my part, Monsieur,” he added, “putting peace and moderation above all things, I am of the same religion as the king.”
He said this with such a wry smile and inner pleasure that he led me to believe that if the royal faith were to change, his own would not have too much trouble following it.
“All of which is to say,” he added after a silence, “that I am Catholic and celebrate Mass.”
“Monsieur de Montaigne,” objected Samson, in his candour becoming much more audacious than either Giacomi or I would have dared to be, “you confess the Mass, but can you really say you go to Mass if you do not get out of bed?”
“Ah, yes, but I hear it!” said Montaigne with t
he faintest of smiles. “And isn’t hearing Mass the first duty of a Catholic?”
Having said this, he continued on his way down the stairs, and crossing a vast and well-paved courtyard, he led us into the great hall of his chateau, which I found to be well appointed with furniture, rugs and paintings. Scarcely had we seated ourselves, however, than a chambermaid came to ask in Provençal if he would be willing to see Mademoiselle his daughter and her governess. He agreed, and when the maid had left, he said:
“I beg you to give me licence to interrupt our conversation by this visit, which is a daily ritual in our family. I lost three of four children in infancy, not without regret, but without great anger, so Léonor is the only child left to me, and I love her in proportion to those that I lost. You will see her and I beg you to pardon her excessive childishness. For although she’s already at an age where the law will allow the most high-strung girls to marry, she is slow to develop, thin and soft, and has scarcely begun to emerge from childhood.”
At this moment, Léonor entered, followed by an old woman appearing pinched, argumentative and nasty, who looked at us as if her pupil risked evil and perdition by even casting her eyes on us. Léonor went to offer her father her pale cheeks to kiss and then turned to us and, eyes lowered, made an awkward bow—since her body was so angular, her flesh so barely covering her bones and her breasts as flat as my hand. And yet her face, though thin, was quite beautiful and her eyes very luminous.
The governess, whose lips were barely visible they were pulled so far back in her mouth, which was missing part of her dentition, began a narrative of Léonor’s activities of the day which struck me as more silly and childish than anything her pupil might have said in her most naive moments, all of which Montaigne listened to, or appeared to listen to, nodding his head, his eyes fixed tenderly on his daughter.
“Very good,” he said at the end. “Please read me something, Léonor.”
So the governess handed her a very large book, which Léonor laboriously placed on her lap, before beginning to read in a soft voice, stumbling and hesitating frequently since the book was in French—which, I’ll wager, was both the interest and the difficulty of the exercise. If my memory serves me correctly, the text was entirely about plants, trees and bushes, and, as she read it, Léonor encountered the word “beech” which is, of course, the name of a tree, but which she mispronounced “bitch”, whereupon the governess snapped rudely, “Madame, don’t say this word! It is unacceptable in the mouth of a girl.”
“So what should I do?” said Léonor naively. “The word appears twice in the sentence!”
“Read the sentence, but skip over the word.”
“Really? Twice?” replied Léonor, who perhaps had more wit to her than it first appeared.
“Twice.”
So, right away, Léonor reread the sentence as follows:
“Above the bushes that I’ve just described, could be seen the branches of a superb ahem and at the top of this ahem a nest of doves.” After which, without Monsieur de Montaigne saying a word, or throwing her a wink, the reading having come to an end, Léonor received another kiss on each cheek from her father and followed the old hag out of the room, as sweetly mannered as she was inadequately filled out.
“There you have it!” cried Montaigne, when they had left. “This is how they are raising our daughters! The word ‘beech’ becomes a crime because it sounds like the word ‘bitch’. So instead of saying it innocently, now it’s been eliminated and we have no idea what it’s all about.”
“But Monsieur de Montaigne,” I objected, “you could have intervened.”
“Oh, no!” he cried, throwing both hands in the air. “I don’t dare question the rules or get mixed up in her governance. The control of femininity is a mysterious business: it must be left to women. But, if I’m not mistaken, contact with twenty lackeys couldn’t have more firmly impressed on Léonor’s imagination the usage of these ‘dirty’ syllables as effectively as this good old woman has by her censorship.”
I laughed at this, and Giacomi as well, but not Samson, who, if he’d had a daughter to raise, would have been every bit as implacable as this old ogre.
“Aha! Another visit!” said Montaigne as a grey-and-white-striped cat leapt onto his knees. It had very silky fur and was as long as a weasel, with a little triangular face and green eyes, and there was something so wild and feminine about her that it was a marvel to see her on Montaigne’s lap, purring under his caress, at times pretending to claw, at other times feigning to bite him with such feline frolicking.
While he was scratching his cat between her ears, Montaigne looked at me with a smile spreading slowly across his face and his eyes shining brightly, an expression that I could only describe by saying that it had the effect of making you complicit and in agreement with what he was about to say before he opened his mouth. And so, though he was not handsome, you found yourself predisposed to agree with him before he spoke, and even when he said something that was entirely opposed to the common view of things, he managed to engage you with finesse rather than shock you with its novelty. Moreover, no subject was too insignificant or too small for him, which made his manner seem easy and open, and made you feel reassured and comfortable.
Pretending to attack his cat with his hand, and she pretending a counter-attack with her claws, Montaigne said with his slow smile: “I’m playing with my cat, but who knows whether she isn’t playing with me? Who knows whether I’m not exactly for her what she is for me? Or if she believes she’s amusing me more than I am her? We carry on with these reciprocal mimicries. I have my times when I like to play and she has hers.”
Passing on to the subject of hunting, he said that his neighbours were all caught up in it, but that for him, he would hunt deer or boar on horseback, as his father had done before him, but that he considered it a violent pleasure, and didn’t like hearing the squeal of a rabbit between the hounds’ teeth. Nor, he said, could he see a chicken’s throat cut without disgust.
“But we have to eat!” said Samson.
“Assuredly so!” replied Montaigne in his jocular tone and looking at my brother with his usual beneficence.
Meanwhile, his cat—whose name was Carima—unhappy that he’d interrupted their game, leapt to the floor from his knee, her tail proudly held high, and went off to mope in a far corner of the room, where there was a small rug that she immediately began to scratch, as if in revenge for having been so neglected.
And even though Montaigne, from what I could observe, didn’t like her to damage his things, he nevertheless let her do it, having no appetite, it seemed to me, to chastise people or animals—no more Carima than the governess of his daughter.
“So let’s talk about your affair,” he said, shifting his gaze from his cat to me.
I told him everything, without embellishing or omitting anything: my duel with Fontenac, the inquest by Monsieur de La Porte, the partiality of the judges of the Présidial, our flight and our intention of asking the king to pardon us.
“Well!” he exclaimed after listening very diligently. “There’s partisan impartiality for you! And what damage it does to the equilibrium of things in the kingdom! These judges accuse you, despite the flagrant evidence that’s been presented, because of the report of a single witness as if they were ignorant of the old adage: Testis unus, testis nullus.† And as if they weren’t aware that this pitiful witness changed his story not once but twice!”
Having said this, he did not add, as I would have expected, that he would draft a petition for me to the king, which my father had begged him to do in his letter. And though I was astonished at his silence on this subject, I did not despair, reasoning that, before giving it to me, he wanted to think about it some more—for the matter was not without some delicacy, in that it led him to defend the Huguenots against the most fanatical members of his own party.
A chambermaid came in to announce that dinner was awaiting her master’s pleasure, and we went to table. Montaigne presen
ted his wife’s regrets for not attending as she was confined to her room with a headache, something that she seemed to get once a month and for but one day.
This meal presented certain surprising singularities that, even today, I can remember vividly. The bread was unsalted and the meat, by contrast, heavily salted. The wine arrived at the table cut by an equal amount of water and wasn’t served in goblets, as at Mespech, but in glasses, since Montaigne wanted his eyes to enjoy it before his palate did. There were no spoons or forks, so we used our fingers, which seemed to be a disadvantage to the lord of the manor since he went at his food with such haste that he twice bit his fingers. Both meat and fish were served as we would serve pheasant, by letting it hang for a day or two, which produced a smell that turned my stomach, accustomed as I was at Mespech to eating fresh meat and fish. We ate without napkins, but at each different course a chambermaid brought us each a white napkin on which we wiped our hands—and Montaigne dirtied his rather dramatically since he ate greedily, excusing himself for his manners.
Towards the middle of the dinner, a little valet who was bringing a large platter tripped on an uneven tile and fell, the plate shattering into tiny pieces, spreading the meat he was carrying all over the floor. This made a great commotion, which silenced our conversation, and the little valet picked himself up all ashamed and terribly pale, scarcely daring to look at his master. But Montaigne said, with an even voice and without batting an eye, “Jacquou, please ask Margot to clean up this mess and bring us the next course.”
After Jacquou left, infinitely relieved, I told Monsieur de Montaigne how much I admired his philosophical approach here, for even at Mespech, where we never whipped anyone, we didn’t fail to scold those who stumbled in their work.
“Well,” said Monsieur de Montaigne, “the people who serve us do it for a less advantageous salary than we give to our horses and dogs. We have to allow for some mistakes in our valets. If we have more than we need, we should be open to using some of it generously: the gleaner’s portion.”
