Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

Whether it was the “rule of rules” I doubted, and still do. Some people say that disguising what one believes in the face of persecution is wisdom. Others call it cowardice. Who can decide in such grave circumstances? There’s no doubt that rushing to offer yourself to the gibbet and disembowelment is madness. But if we never confess what we believe in this world, what kind of world would we have?

  And so we went along, saddle to saddle, talking, Samson and Giacomi following us and trailing behind them, Miroul skilfully leading our packhorse. We could not proceed faster than a walk since the approach to Paris was now so encumbered by wagons that we occasionally had to stop altogether and wait for the tangle of horses to get sorted out. Ah, how interminable these last few leagues seemed in my fever to lay my eyes on this city I’d heard so much about and that Cossolat had execrated as entirely as Monsieur de Montaigne had lauded it to the skies.

  We crossed the Seine at a little village called Saint-Cloud, and since the bridge was so narrow, and though it further slowed our progress, I had time to admire the sailboats taking advantage of a favourable wind to move upstream against the current. There were many of them, and large enough to carry various goods, some straw, others hay, since, as Pierre de L’Étoile told me, there were 100,000 horses in Paris. Which, when you calculate it, makes one horse for every three inhabitants! Is that not amazing! I imagined that the carting of hay and straw must have been much less dear by river than by road. And yet, I also imagined from what I saw, that sailing required patience and allowance for delays when the wind refused to cooperate, especially given the many curves in the river. As for me, I found the sight of all of these sails quite beautiful, some coloured red, others blue, slipping languidly along the surface; and, in the opposite direction, a series of barges followed the rapid current with nothing but their oars to guide them.

  Once past the pleasant little village of Saint-Cloud, on either side of the road the fields and pastures opened up again, and nested here and there in this verdure were little villages, whose labourers crowded on both sides of the road, selling their produce, which only added to the confusion of the traffic of carts and wagons. But what I found quite beautiful in the midst of all this confusion were the many windmills set up on the hills in the distance to the right and left of the road, their turning blades catching the last rays of the setting sun. I thought to myself that these mills had better not stop turning day or night if they wanted to grind enough flour to feed the vast population of this city.

  Towards nightfall, we reached the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which didn’t appeal to me in the least, being poor and run-down, its streets unpaved and the shadowy figures that haunted them dirty, clothed in rags and mean-looking, walking slowly in front of our horses and darting nasty looks at us as if they wanted to rob or kill us if they could.

  We passed by the rich abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, whose walls rose to impressive heights, as if the monks within had wanted to protect their treasures from the covetousness of the villains who swarmed at their feet. The entire abbey struck me as a city within a city, since it was surrounded on every side by so many beautiful buildings. Pierre de L’Étoile explained to me that on the other side of the abbey lay the clerks’ meadow, which had been the cause of endless disputes between the monks and the students at the university who had disputed the ownership of these fields from time immemorial. If it hadn’t been after six, he would have made a detour to show them to us, since it was in this meadow that the reformers in Paris had first gathered to sing their Psalms, a sign of the frightful persecutions they were later to endure.

  Pierre de L’Étoile became so angrily indignant when he talked about these inquisitions that I began to think, despite what he had said earlier, that he harboured secret sympathies for the reformers. I found this very moving and it increased my affection for him more than anything he’d said or done up to that point.

  As we talked, and Monsieur de L’Étoile pointed out various outlying sections of the city he loved so much—even as he repeatedly pointed out its “warts and blemishes” (though I understood later that such a querulous love is shared by most Parisians)—we finally reached the city walls, which, to my great surprise, I found mediocre, paltry, dilapidated and badly maintained.

  “Tell me, Monsieur,” I gasped, “are these the walls of the greatest city in the kingdom? What a pity to see them in such disrepair! Carcassonne, by contrast, has superlative defences and Montpellier is also well protected by its common wall.”

  “God bless us! Monsieur de Siorac,” hissed Pierre de L’Étoile, suddenly angry again, “you don’t know how right you are! For this section of the wall, which runs from the Buccy gate to the Saint-Germain gate, isn’t even the worst of it, as bad as it looks! If you only knew what a pitiful state the wall in the Saint-Martin section is, you’d blush, as I do, for the sorry state of the kingdom. Rabelais said of that part of the wall, that if a cow farted nearby, she would demolish an entire section of it! But do you think any effort was made since the divine Rabelais’s death to restore this paltry mess? Not a bit of it! We spend much more on the foppish finery of our princes than on the security of their capital!”

  We passed the drawbridge at the Buccy gate in a great press of carts and wagons and were obliged to present our safe-conduct passes, which, luckily, Cossolat had delivered to us in Montpellier before our departure from that city, for we had none from Sarlat since Monsieur de La Porte, who was the only one authorized to dispense them, was supposed to be hunting us to throw us in jail.

  But the sergeant hardly even looked at them, doubtless because he was so exhausted from the press of humanity that had passed by him, hurrying like madmen to get into the city before they closed these gates for the night.

  Oh, reader, what a disappointment! For even though the street we took once we passed through the Buccy gate was straight enough, the houses on either side were so high, so badly aligned, the paving stones so littered with garbage, filth and sewage water, and the air so putrid and dense, that I thought I’d entered a cesspool instead of a great capital.

  But I kept my feelings to myself so as to avoid causing pain to my choleric companion, and, on the contrary, as we were passing the church of Saint-André-des-Arts I expressed my admiration for this structure, to which he replied sullenly, as if he were ashamed of the mud our horses were slogging through:

  “Certainly it’s a beautiful monument, but, like us, it’s lodged in all of this filth and garbage. But this is better,” he added, as we entered a wide street, lined on both sides by very alluring shops, which were surmounted by very beautiful new houses, all of equal height and all aligned and built of brick and stone. “You will notice, Monsieur de Siorac, how the pavement here has been washed clean: the merchants have kept it so, since they don’t wish their customers to be put off by the bitter stench of the city’s mud.”

  “So what’s the name of this street?” I asked, amazed.

  “It’s not a street!” replied L’Étoile, “it’s the Pont Saint-Michel!”

  “A bridge?” I gasped, thinking he was joking. “But I can’t see the Seine!”

  “You can’t see it since the houses on both sides are hiding it!”

  “Well! I don’t know what to admire the most,” I mused after a moment, “the beautifully joined paving stones, the cleanliness of the gutters or the pink bricks of these houses!”

  “In which I’d hate to live!” said L’Étoile, pouting.

  “Why ever not, Monsieur?” I asked. “They’re so beautiful!”

  “Because it’s dangerous living over a river that’s as turbulent as this one! For the moment, the Seine is in a sweet mood, but in her fury she floods and spares nothing! There’s not a bridge in Paris that she hasn’t swept away at one time or another, drowning everyone on it. The Pont Notre-Dame was the most recent to go, and before that, the Meuniers! And this very bridge on which you’re standing dates roughly from the time I was born, since the previous one collapsed under the water’s furious assault some
thirty years ago.”

  Since I didn’t feel that the danger was imminent, and there was so much to see in these shops, whose windows were brightly illuminated already, well before nightfall, with candles, I would have been happy to dawdle here—especially since I observed that there were many fine young ladies crowding the pavement who were beautifully dressed and who wore elegant black masks, a sure sign of their noble rank.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” cautioned L’Étoile in his most morose and moral tone, “if, as I fear, you have an appetite for the ladies, Huguenot though you may be, you’ll have your hands full in this city, which is more corrupt than ancient Babylon, and enjoys such a monstrous reputation that it’s enough for a wench from the Île-de-France to spend a few days here for the people of her village to believe that she’s lost her virginity. But, I beg you, let us tarry no longer! The rue de la Ferronnerie lies at some distance and, come nightfall, the streets are no longer safe, for there are some streets and alleys in Paris where you’ll get your throat cut as soon as the sun sets!”

  “You mean the city has no lights?”

  “It should. And, by law, they are supposed to be provided by its citizenry. But in Paris, laws often remain dead letters, since Parisians are, by nature, so oppositional. It’s the same with the gutters: each house is required to wash the street before it with buckets of water, especially when they discharge their excrement.”

  “Oh, no! What’s this? My head is all wet! It’s raining!”

  “It’s nothing,” said L’Étoile, “some housewife has just watered her potted plants. In truth, you’ll see these flowerpots full of marjoram and rosemary everywhere in Paris, despite the fact that they’re a great annoyance to passers-by and expressly forbidden by royal decree. So you have the choice, Monsieur de Siorac, when you’re out walking: you can either walk in the middle of the street bathing your feet with sewage, or walk close to the houses and have your head sprinkled. And it’s really not so bad when it’s only water. But, I beg you, we must not tarry here! It’s getting dark, we should hurry.”

  We set off at a trot, mostly to please him, since he needn’t worry about the thieves of Paris, surrounded as he was by the four of us, all armed to the teeth and packing pistols in our belts. It’s a fact, however, that as we were heading along the rue de la Barillerie, which goes by the palace, a monument I would have liked to stop and enjoy, even at dusk, the press of carts had thinned, and from every side I could see people hurrying as if they could think only of getting home and barricading themselves inside.

  “What about the watch, Monsieur de L’Étoile?” I panted, surprised to see the Parisians prey to such anguish and terror at the approach of night. “Aren’t there any nightwatchmen to protect the workers and inhabitants of the capital?”

  “There are two groups,” replied L’Étoile, grimacing with a bitter smile. “We’re so well defended in this city! Two! One is a made up of bourgeois and artisans who patrol their neighbourhoods and are called ‘the sitting guards’—and God knows, they sit! For these hardies spend their time under an archway, throwing dice by lantern light and emptying their flagons—and you can bet they’re not going to get off their rears if they hear anyone calling for help. The other group, ‘the royal watch’, is made up of forty officers on foot and another twenty on horseback. This group can’t be accused of sitting—they gallop, since throughout the night they ride around fully armed, always moving and forever useless since, as they are riding on paving stones, they make such a racket that any thieves who may be afoot hide until they’ve passed and then go back to their work like flies on sugared candy.”

  “Monsieur de L’Étoile,” I said, “as soon as we’ve greeted Maître Recroche, and if he’s indeed willing to lodge us, I plan to escort you immediately to your own house.”

  “Oh, Monsieur, a thousand thanks,” sighed L’Étoile. “What a relief! My lodgings are in the rue Trouvevache but, as close as it is, it would be perilous for me to attempt to go there alone.”

  This said, we fell silent for a while. Once over the Pont au Change, we rode along the grand’rue Saint-Denis, which had enough mud and filth to fertilize a farm, so different from the rue de la Ferronnerie, where we turned left, another merchants’ street whose paving stones were washed clean—although it was, according to L’Étoile, the worst aligned street in the capital, the houses on one side appearing to bump into each other in their attempt to stick out into the street, and with, on the opposite side, a series of shops built as lean-tos into the wall of the Cimetière des Innocents like warts on a hog’s back, so that it was a miracle that you could make your way through all of these extravagant projections and protuberances. And I imagined it was even worse when the merchants set out their stalls in the street in front of their shops.

  “You might think,” said my guide, in the mournful tone that was habitual with him when he spoke of this city, which he cherished despite all its faults, “that you see here an abuse which cries out to be rehabilitated, but you should realize, my friend from Périgord, that in Paris, the more an abuse cries out for reform, the greater its chances of being perpetuated.”

  I laughed at this witticism, but soon fell silent again, since, out of the corner of my eye, I could see from his expression that he didn’t think it was a bit funny and that I should take him seriously.

  “What?” I gasped. “If the king says ‘I wish it!’ they wouldn’t fix it?”

  “Listen to this,” replied L’Étoile bitterly. “Henri II, as he was riding in his royal coach from the Louvre to his house in Tournelles, passed, as always, by the rue de la Ferronnerie. Because of all these projections, warts and excrescences, he was caught up in a tangle of carts so impossible to clear that he was delayed there for an hour, swearing and ranting. When he finally arrived at Tournelles, still fuming, he made an ordinance that required that every structure in the rue de la Ferronnerie that exceeded the proper limit to be demolished within the month. So what do we see, Monsieur de Siorac? Eighteen years later, things are in exactly the same state they were that day.”

  “But, Monsieur de L’Étoile,” I said, open-mouthed, “is this not amazing? Every Huguenot in the kingdom trembles at the very name of Henri II, yet Paris pays him no heed!”

  “Well, that’s just what I was telling you!” cried L’Étoile. “Paris is a rebel and a renegade and tolerates no restraint or law! She takes herself for the king himself and seeks only her own good pleasure, preferring disorder, tumults and fornication! To make her bend the knee before him, the king would have to twist 300,000 necks one by one!”

  “May it not please God to do so!” I laughed. “I’d never want an unpopulated Paris!”

  But I wouldn’t have laughed if I’d been able to see the future:

  Prudens futuri temporis exitum

  Caliginosa nocte permit Deus.||

  and all of these Parisian encumbrances which made our good L’Étoile gnash his teeth seemed mere fodder for a good laugh to my happy nature. Oh, my good reader! I’m writing this from the vantage of old age, and as I trace these lines thirty-eight—yes, thirty-eight!—years after my arrival in Paris I get a knot in my throat and tears spring to my eyes, since, two months ago, in this same rue de la Ferronnerie, which lack of respect for the royal ordinances left so tortuous and impassable, the royal coach was stopped not by the protuberance of the shops but by an encumbrance of wagons, and an assassin, armed by the zeal of the priests, pierced the noble heart of Henri IV. Ah, what a terrible blow! Oh, misfortune! In my immense grief I cannot imagine how France will ever recover from it!

  Pierre de L’Étoile, once he’d dismounted, had to bang loudly on the door and shout Maître Recroche’s name repeatedly before an eye appeared though the iron lattice of the peephole and the door was half-opened to admit L’Étoile and myself, but not a soul more, and, as soon as we had squeezed through, our host and Baragran, his assistant, both heavily armed, slammed the door closed in our companions’ noses and immediately refastened all the chains and b
olts.

  “Maître Recroche,” began L’Étoile, “I would be extremely grateful if you could provide lodging for these three gentlemen friends of mine and their valet and horses. Monsieur de Siorac is a medical doctor and the younger son of a baron from Périgord.”

  To this, Maître Recroche shook his head, but answered not a word or a grunt. He appeared to me as much dwarf as full-grown man, with lustreless, dirty, greying hair and cheeks that were pale and pockmarked; he was adorned in a ragged greenish doublet, wore no ruff collar, but a dirty flat one, and had very long, spidery arms (short as he was) and a vulture’s hooked nose.

  Telling his assistant to hold the candle high, he silently looked me over, his little bright-blue eyes shining as if he were weighing us (my purse and me) to the nearest ounce.

  “Maître Recroche, did you hear me?” asked L’Étoile.

  “Quite well, Monsieur. But baba!” (And what he meant by this “baba”, which he stuck in here and there, I could not fathom, and wonder if he himself knew, having the extravagance to invent words at will, and to use ten where one would have sufficed, perhaps consoling himself for his miserliness by this copious verbal expenditure.) “Baba, Monsieur, I don’t offer chambers, it’s beneath me.”

  “Of course! Of course!” said L’Étoile with more grace than I would have expected from his atrabilious nature. “But, on the other hand, you have chambers!”

  “Baba, chambers! Chamber-ettes! Mini-chambers! Nothing that could accommodate this gallant gentleman!”

  And here he tried to make a sort of bow to me, by lowering his head and making a sweeping gesture with his long arm, and that this salutation was done more out of pure form than civility I was convinced by L’Étoile, who knew the man, and I frowned angrily, but didn’t give ground, and returned his bow with a like degree of stiffness.

  “This gallant gentleman,” returned L’Étoile, “has no place to sleep.”

  “Baba, that’s different,” conceded Maître Recroche, scratching his nose with a very dirty fingernail. “If the gentleman has no place to sleep and is, in addition, a friend of yours, we must accommodate him, must we not, even if it’s with a micro-chamber. But can I do this? There’s the rub!”