by Robert Merle
I followed them, and, emerging onto the rue des Marmousets, I saw that the window curtains of the coach had been lowered, despite the crushing heat of the midday sun. I had no doubt that this was done at Monsieur de Montcalm’s orders, to keep Angelina from catching sight of me and to prevent me from speaking to her. Indignant at this odious violence practised upon my beloved, and taking courage from the realization that Monsieur de Montcalm, who was not an inherently bad man, would never have inflicted this harm on his daughter (whom he doted on) if she’d consented to his wishes, I rushed up to the coach, hoping to find a way to let her know of my presence. Seeing this, Monsieur de Montcalm murmured a few words to the coachman, who leapt quickly onto his seat and seemed ready to whip his horses into motion as soon as his master and Monsieur de La Condomine had taken their places opposite the women. But this could not be accomplished, of course, without raising the window curtains and revealing my presence.
My decision was made in the blink of an eye. Unafraid of displeasing a man who’d so cast me aside, I rushed to the other side of the coach, raised the curtain that was shrouding the window and, greeting mother and daughter, looked Angelina in the eye and cried hastily, “Angelina, I will always love you!”
I couldn’t say more since the coach was shaking, Monsieur de Montcalm was shouting like a madman “Whip them on! Whip them on!” and the coachman began lashing his four steeds mercilessly into a gallop. In all the din of the whip lashes, the ironclad wheels grinding on the pavement and the horses’ hooves clattering noisily away, I couldn’t have been heard anyway, nor could I have heard any response from my beloved (though I saw her opening her mouth), so I ran alongside the door as the coach pulled away. Holding the raised curtain with my left hand, I unsheathed my sword with my right and managed to strike with the flat of the blade a horse that one of Montcalm’s valets wanted to trample me under. As I did so, I received a longing look from Angelina’s beautiful eyes (since words were of no help to us now), which glowed with a marvellous light, despite the darkness of the coach where her father, mother and suitor were moving about confusedly like creatures of the underworld. And in this glance I believed I could read the confirmation of the vows she’d made me, and a promise to hold out for ever in the teeth of this paternal tyranny.
With a bitterly wounded heart, all desire to live extinguished and a knot in my throat so tight I thought I would faint, I watched the coach bearing my Angelina away turn the corner and disappear. Sadly, I sheathed my sword, remounted my horse and set off towards our lodgings, still breathless and bathed in sweat from my pursuit, my legs shaking still and my voice so choked in my throat that I couldn’t possibly have spoken a word had my life depended on it—but what words would I have found? My very thoughts abandoned me in my despair; the world become as black as ink, my whole life suddenly deprived of the bright star that had lit my path these past five years.
“Ah!” I thought. “Angelina can but weaken when she marries this fat idiot and I’ll never see her again.”
The apprehension I felt at this unspeakable misfortune was so painful that it now appeared inevitable. Giving no thought to the faces I passed in the street as I rode slowly along on Pompée, I gave way to the tears that now flowed freely down my cheeks and fell in large drops on my hands, which held her reins with such abandon that she would not have known which direction to take had not Fogacer’s horse preceded us. Whichever way I turned my inner thoughts, blurred as they were by these storms of tears, all I could imagine in a world without Angelina was an immense, harsh, stony, sterile and meaningless desert. Certainly I did not doubt that she still loved me! And I could only imagine the valour that had spurred her on these past five years against her father’s will. But his resolve had finally hardened into a pitiless inhumanity and had fallen into the violence that I’d just witnessed. And if Monsieur de Montcalm dared to do that, wouldn’t he do worse to make her bend to his will? And how far could the poor girl push her rebellion before he decided to imprison her, as he had so often threatened to do, in a papist convent, killing off any hope of either marriage or motherhood, which were so deeply imprinted in her character that even the promise of my love could not overcome them? I couldn’t help imagining my adorable girl buried in some cloister where everything was as cold and hard as the stones from which it was built. There, the rules were barbaric, the cell incommodious, the food repulsive, the nuns tyrannical, and I could imagine her, still so beautiful despite her funereal veils, slowly abandoning her will to live. I supposed I must face the awful truth that, no matter how much trust I had in her vows and in that last look that confirmed them, the time would come when the daily torments she faced would end up wearing down her constancy, and that anything, even the fatuous La Condomine, would seem preferable to such a fate.
How can absence be endured when it is without remedy? What? Would I never see her again? How could I pronounce the word “never” without perishing, even though loss is part of our everyday lives, like a little death, a shred torn from our hearts, a pleasure ravished from our sight, delights that have fallen through our fingers? Oh, heaven! How can it be that in the fortress of our joys a wall can collapse without the entire edifice completely crashing to earth?
As soon as we’d returned to our lodgings, I threw Pompée’s reins to Miroul, nodded a sad adieu to Fogacer, who looked on mutely, ran to my tiny room and locked myself in so as not to be seen in the state I was in. My tears had dried up. All I could feel now was a kind of grief-stricken daze, a terror of what was to come, a degree of despair that would have led me to kill myself had I not been revived by my bitter anger towards Monsieur de Montcalm for having thus treated this girl whose tenderness, mildness and goodness had never seen their like on this earth.
In his letters to my father, Monsieur de Montcalm had given as a reason for his refusal the impecunious situation that befell me as a younger son. However, when my father and Uncle Sauveterre assured him that they would grant me a proper living when I married, Monsieur de Montcalm changed his tune, or rather revealed the real reasons, which he’d hidden till then and were, as you will agree, of an overwhelming magnitude. He revealed that when he told his confessor about the alliance he was contemplating, the priest threw his arms heavenward and imposed an absolute barrier to such a union: a Huguenot could not marry a Catholic! If Monsieur de Montcalm had the weakness to accept such an infamous marriage, such an unnatural union, one so obviously inspired by Beelzebub, his salvation would be immediately forfeited.
I now saw to what depths zeal could bring the heart of an honest man when it was inspired by the absolutes of religion. It had been sufficient for this stupid priest to brandish his lightning, and Monsieur de Montcalm, by submitting to it, had banished from his breast all the gratitude he owed me for having saved his life in the Barbentane woods, as well as all courtesy, honour and friendship, and even the simple, rough connection that exists between men when they have shared the same perils—and did he not remember that it was in the act of blocking the shot that would have killed him that I had been so severely wounded at Barbentane? But a priest had got hold of him and nothing merely human counted any more.
Like Monsieur de Montcalm, I worshipped Christ, but not in the same way: therefore I was a wicked man! An outlaw! A gallows bird! And if his daughter persisted in loving me, then death in the cloister would be her lot! Full of a deep selfishness that was so limitless its roots could not be seen, Monsieur de Montcalm sacrificed everything for his own salvation, trampling underfoot our young lives for his little part of Paradise, as if death were the goal and not simply the end of his life!
As for me, ’tis certain that for my Angelina I could have accepted the idols, the saints, the adoration of Mary (even if it were only lip service) and even the practice of heard confession (to which, you will remember, I had been constrained at peril of my life by the monks of the Baron de Caudebec), but could I have ever resigned myself to so deeply wound my father and Sauveterre by making such a public renunciation?
Ah, Fogacer had it right when he said I was more a member of a party than one of a Church: the zeal of the Churches did not inflame me in the least, for everywhere I looked I saw only too well how inhuman were its results. How could I ever rip from my heart, without devastating it completely and making me hateful to my own self, my fidelity to the father I loved so much, to Uncle Sauveterre, to Samson and to Mespech, whose very stones would have cried out against this betrayal?
Suffering has a way of enduring. And how slowly time passes when we are aggrieved. The worst is the kind that leaves your eyes dry, your heart wounded and your understanding so unhinged that you’re only half alive, or more than half dead: the future rises up like a wall you have neither the power nor the will to scale, and you have no strength to desire anything but the one who is gone.
Seeing her already entombed in a cloister amid a cadre of nuns embittered by the vinegar of chastity and seeking revenge on her for being so young and beautiful—as though it were a sin to have enjoyed the glories of the flesh, theirs having stayed so sterile—I wondered whether I ought not to wish for her a less terrible evil and, rather than the convent, a husband, even if he were a simpleton, and children, who might at least console her even if they were his offspring as well. Oh, heaven! This thought lasted only a moment: I couldn’t continue to think this way, aspiring to heights that were at odds with my every fibre! It would have been hypocritical of me to hold such a sublime position for more than a quarter of a minute—to wish her other children than mine. Such thoughts only made my wound more painful.
I don’t know how many hours I spent beating my head against a wall of despair, at times stretched out on my stomach on my bed, my head in my arms, at other times pacing back and forth in my tiny chamber, oblivious to the setting sun, so great was the darkness in my heart, casting glances out of my window at the Cimetière des Innocents, as if I aspired, in the bloom of my youth, to the stench of this annihilation.
There was a knock at the door. I staggered over to open it. It was my beautiful brother, Samson, who hugged me to him, having learnt from Fogacer, while looking for me to go to dinner with him, that I’d found my Angelina only to lose her. Gertrude du Luc, following him into the room, asked why I was crying, so I sat down, and in a dull, lifeless voice recounted what had happened in a most jumbled and incoherent way. Seeing me so deep in melancholy, Samson could not keep from shedding his own tears and Gertrude added hers as well. She slipped down before me on her knees and, taking my hands in hers, tried to console me, as she would have done a child, with a tenderness so sweet and feminine that I was surprised to see such compassion after her many excesses had led me to doubt she was capable of such feeling. I was thus distracted from my grief by a sense of the injustice that I’d done her, and in the blink of an eye I regained the esteem for her that I’d lost when she betrayed Samson with Cossolat. She immediately guessed this change of heart from my expression, and I could sense her happiness that this dark cloud had finally been swept away. I understood that I must henceforth embrace her as a true friend, free of any of the resentment caused by her troubles (which she couldn’t help) or by the very seductive way she treated every man she met—even her brother (as she was wont to call me). And I now believed that she was indeed my sister, absent of any hypocrisy or ulterior motives, seeing how sincerely and affectionately she expressed her pity at my present sadness.
There was another knock on the door and, with Miroul at his heels, Fogacer came in. Seeing Samson by my side and Gertrude at my feet, he smiled his slow, sinuous smile and, sitting down on my left, said, “Mi fili, anyone who seeks to avoid suffering should never get involved with another, and should shun, like the serpent in the apple tree, this passionate appetite for another person that is called love. This is what the wise men teach us from the pulpit. But, alas, anyone who loves not women loves men, and anyone who loves neither one loves himself and spends his evenings totting up his sins and indulgences, subtracting the second from the first and trying to calculate if he’ll make it into Paradise. Mi fili, don’t trust this sort of fellow. If he’s so self-absorbed and so pettily sweet to himself, he can’t help being hard on other people. Crede mihi experto Roberto:* ’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“Ah, Fogacer,” I moaned, “no doubt you’re right, but this is little comfort to me!”
“Well,” replied Fogacer raising his eyebrow, “that’s because I used the word ‘lost’, which is abhorrent to lovers. But have you really lost her? Miroul thinks otherwise.”
“What?” I gasped, sitting up. “What do you know that I don’t… and how did you discover it?”
“Shall I tell you, Monsieur?” he temporized.
“’Sblood!” I cried. “The impertinence! He sees me in the throes of misery and dares to tease me!”
“There, there, Monsieur,” smiled Miroul, his brown eye twinkling, “I’m not so impertinent as to fail to serve my master. Will you have the patience to hear me out?”
“Good God!” I shouted, now really angry. “Have patience? When have I ever lacked patience with you?”
“Why, every day, my master, unlike your ‘impertinent’ valet!”
“Well, then, Miroul,” I conceded, “I withdraw the word ‘impertinent’ if it upsets you.”
“Monsieur,” countered Miroul, half in jest and half serious, “I thank you. So here is my story without any further delay. Are you listening?”
“I’m all ears, dammit! Do I have to keep repeating it?”
“Monsieur, when I saw that great knave of a major-domo come back to see you with such a long face after having spoken with his master, I doubted seriously that there was any chance he’d let you see our young mistress; so, leaving our horses with Fogacer, I walked very boldly and nonchalantly up to the front door and leant against the door frame where I could watch the servants going back and forth bringing cases to the coach, and I began trimming my nails with a pair of little scissors as if I were a hundred leagues from there. Of course they looked at me very haughtily and I returned their looks with utter disdain. Finally, the major-domo, coming over to me, snarled, ‘What are you doing here, knave?’
“‘Monsieur,’ I replied, admiring my nails, ‘the first time anyone calls me a knave, nothing happens, since I am, by nature, very benign. But the second time, my sword leaps from its sheath, and this sword,’ I said, suddenly raising my voice, ‘should not be a stranger to you people from Barbentane, since it, along with those of my master and the monks from the abbey, saved your master and his household from being massacred. But given the way they’re treating Monsieur de Siorac in there, I believe that this good deed seems to have slipped from everyone’s memory here!’
“‘Monsieur,’ whined the major-domo in a very aggrieved voice, looking somewhat ashamed, ‘I’m only obeying orders.’
“‘From which I must conclude,’ I rejoined, ‘that given how coldly he was received, my master will not ever be able to see the ladies whom he saved from rape and death.’
“‘Monsieur, I fear ’tis true,’ replied the major-domo in an embarrassed voice; and, making a little bow, he left me standing there.
“I’d won the day, since this rascal was not without some shred of conscience and dared not confront me. And so when the Montcalm ladies came out to take their places in the coach—”
“What! You saw them?” I cried.
“And spoke to them,” Miroul laughed, “while Monsieur de Montcalm was inside amusing you.”
“And it’s only now you’re telling me this!”
“Monsieur, you’ve told me a hundred times never to bother you when you’re deep in thought.”
“Ah, Miroul, what patience…”
“Anyway, I saw them and immediately, stepping up in front of them, I made a series of deep bows as I backed up all the way to the coach, so that finally Madame Angelina cried, ‘But it’s Miroul! Where is your master, Miroul?’
“‘Inside, Madame,’ I answered, bowing again, ‘
with Monsieur de Montcalm, but given his cold greeting, I doubt he will allow my master to greet you.’
“‘Mother!’ cried our young lady, her beautiful black eyes flashing such fire and brimstone in their anger that it was marvellous to behold. ‘So that’s what all the whispering was about when you were preparing our departure and the great hurry with which we left the house. This is beyond shame! We are fleeing the presence of the very man who saved us!’
“‘Picot!’ hissed Madame de Montcalm to her valet. ‘Open the door! In you get, my daughter!’
“‘Madame my mother,’ answered Angelina, making a small bow, but her voice and look full of fury, ‘I am your servant. Miroul,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘be so kind as to tell your master that I want no part in the ingratitude that he’s been shown, and as for me, my feelings have not changed.’
“‘Daughter!’ cried Madame de Montcalm with a severity that seemed forced and feigned. ‘What are you doing? You are betrothed to Monsieur de La Condomine!’
“‘I owe nothing to that gentleman,’ countered Madame Angelina, her foot on the coach’s step. And pulling herself up to her full height with all the pride she possessed, she proclaimed, ‘He will have nothing from me, neither my hand, nor a word, nor even the grace of a single look from Paris to Barbentane.’
“So saying, and boiling with her unleashed anger, she threw herself into the coach, but, her hem having caught in the door latch, she pulled it towards her with such fury that she put a three-inch rip in her petticoat.
“‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried Madame de Montcalm. ‘You’ve ruined your dress!’
“‘I wish I’d destroyed it completely,’ cried Angelina, fixing her mother with a look of rage, her eyes blazing. ‘And along with it this entire coach that I might be spared making the trip with you-know-who!’
“‘Ah, Madame!’ gasped Madame de Montcalm. ‘Now you’ve gone too far! Your father will send you off to the convent!’
