by Robert Merle
“What’s going on?” asked Navarre, with his usual easy-going manner and a wide smile on his face—the admirable pliability with which he governed his humour never ceasing to amaze me.
“Sire,” said Monsieur de Guerchy in the most inflamed tone, “Cossain wants to prevent the page, here, from bringing two arquebuses belonging to Monsieur de Téligny into the house.”
This seemed to bring Navarre up short, but he immediately took control of himself and, addressing the camp-master with amiable and enviable good humour, and raising his eyebrows in feigned astonishment and naivety, said:
“What’s the matter, Cossain? Is there some problem with that? Is Monsieur de Téligny supposed to be the only one in there who doesn’t have a weapon?”
“Sire,” Cossain replied, clearly crestfallen, “I’m acting under the king’s orders that no firearms be allowed in the house, but,” he added, playing the good servant, “if Your Majesty wishes the page to bring in some arquebuses, I’m happy with that.”
“That’s very good of you!” Navarre smiled, and, giving the page a little tap on the neck, he added, “Go on in, my boy!”
After which, he took Guerchy, still visibly fuming, by the arm and dragged him into the house, with Miroul and me at his heels, but the Swiss guards remained outside. They looked imperturbable enough, but I imagined that they were pretty ill at ease to be confronted with forty well-armed soldiers who were staring at their red and yellow uniforms with undisguised contempt.
“Guerchy,” asked Navarre as soon as we were out of earshot, “what’s going on? What’s Cossain doing here?”
“He’s here to protect the admiral from the uprising. It was Coligny who, during the afternoon, sent word to the Louvre asking the king for protection, believing that the sight of a few guards in the street would dissuade the populace from attacking his lodgings.”
“Ah,” said Navarre sotto voce, and in an ambiguous tone, somewhere between ironic and respectful, “so it was the admiral himself who requested this protection?”
And then, throwing his head back, his long nose seeming to breathe in the scents in the air, but not liking what he smelt, he added in a deep voice, through his clenched teeth, “But who’s going to protect the admiral from Cossain?”
“That’s exactly the problem,” said Guerchy, still red-faced from his quarrel with the camp-master.
Navarre sighed, and, giving Monsieur de Guerchy a little tap on his shoulder, turned on his heels and quickly mounted the stairs to the admiral’s chambers, but came down again immediately saying that Monsieur de Coligny was sleeping, but that he appeared to be recovering well, and that, at least from that perspective, he could be content. However, he remained standing there, eyes half-closed, appearing to stare at something on the floor, and seemed to be mulling something over in his mind, his expression no longer light-hearted and gay, but rather very grave. Quitting his silence and his immobility, he ordered six of his Swiss guards to remain for the night in the admiral’s lodgings, commanding them to lock and bolt the door, close the shutters and keep a vigilant watch. After which, recovering his more light-hearted manner, he said goodnight to Guerchy, to me and to La Bonne (the admiral’s major-domo), and left with his escort diminished by half, leaving behind, besides four others of lesser girth, both Fröhlich and Cadieu, whose combined bulk seemed suddenly to fill the house to capacity. But what could these giants do with their swords and halberds against forty arquebuses?
The major-domo, La Bonne, was, true to his name, a gentle, good fellow, as round as a top, with a suave, benevolent expression and a voice as soft as a stream in April. He set up our Swiss in the lower hall with a bottle of wine, and some bread and cheese, and then retired with me to the admiral’s chambers. Miroul, his varicoloured eyes so worried they both looked black, stayed as close to me as my shadow, his hand constantly checking the hilts of his sword, his dagger and the two knives he concealed in his breeches for throwing. With us upstairs were the valet Yolet, the German interpreter Nicolas Muss, the minister Merlin, the orderly Cornaton and Madame de Téligny, but the admiral, upon awakening, asked that she be escorted to her lodgings in the grand’rue Saint-Honoré. A dozen men who were still there volunteered to take her, and were flanked by two lackeys bearing torches, but she insisted on turning back twice to say goodbye to her father, her beautiful blue eyes drowned in tears and her face wracked with grief. The admiral tried to comfort her by repeating that he felt much better, but she couldn’t bear to pull herself away, prey, as she must have been, to a deep presentiment that she would never see him again.
La Bonne extinguished all the candles except one, and each of us arranged himself as best he could on the various stools, leaving the one armchair for Merlin, the minister, who was old and tired. None of us expected to get any sleep, despite the profound silence that reigned both throughout the house, which is not so surprising, and throughout this immense city, which surrounded us on all sides, holding us ensnared in its trap with no possibility of escape.
It wasn’t the fear of dying that touched me in this funereal vigil—and funereal it was, well before the first Protestant had been massacred—but rather the despair we felt at being so thoroughly hated by such a large number of our fellow men, nay compatriots, subjects of the same sovereign, who endured the same human condition as us, were made glad by the same joys, suffered the same illnesses, were terrified by the same indignities of ageing on our perishable bodies—in short, they were our brothers and sisters, as we were theirs, without any doubt, and not some “rotten branch of the tree of France” that had to be cut off by force, as Jezebel was, at this very instant, explaining to her son in the Louvre in order to assuage his doubt about the death warrant he’d signed. Yes, and I’ll say it again: in every way we are their brothers and sisters, and not the beings the priests in their pulpits have dismissed from the human community, calling us “dogs”, “vipers”, and “vermin” that God has told them to eradicate.
And as my thoughts ran in the silence of the night, my eyes barely open, fixed on the candle whose yellow flame seemed to want to go out, without ever going out—very much like the persecuted faith of the Huguenots—I began to think about Alizon, and these thoughts were very painful to me, not that I felt anything more than friendship for her, but because that good girl’s very hateful words—an echo of an entire people’s—were lodged in my very soul, so much so that in this silence, in this solitude, in this interminable waiting, my suffering was so intense and so great that, covering my eyes with my left hand so as not to be seen, I began to cry.
I know all too well, alas, that religious zeal has also had inhuman and pitiless consequences in our party, that the blood of the Michelade of Nîmes cries out against us and that it was Calvin himself who ordered the great physician Michael Servetus to be burnt in Geneva. Oh, God of love! When will we see the end of this chain and concatenation of hatreds that break out in both religions and are used to justify the murders that are consciously committed in the name of Truth—which itself varies and changes so much that the heretic who burns at the stake thinks only of denouncing the heresy of his tormentor?
Twice during the night, I got up from my stool and lifted the curtain enclosing the admiral’s bed and listened to his breathing. It was so even and peaceful that he could have been sleeping in his sweet country retreat in Châtillon-sur-Loing, and not on a barrel of gunpowder. Indeed, poor Merlin, the minister, who was, in fact, younger than Coligny, seemed to have a much harder time of it, his uneven and difficult breathing causing him a lot of agitation as he slept. Miroul, as far as I could determine from the light of the one candle, was not asleep, but was watching over me, though he lowered his eyes when I looked his way so as not to disturb me with the care he was taking of me—which had quite the opposite effect since it comforted me more than I can say to feel loved precisely at the moment I felt myself to be the target of widespread detestation.
I heard the cry of the nightwatchman at ten as he made his rounds. I hea
rd it again at eleven and also at midnight. But I must have dozed off after that, for a loud knocking at the door woke me with a start, and, jumping to my feet, Miroul already dressed at my side, his hand on the pommel of his sword, I saw the major-domo, La Bonne, groping about on the table for his keys, since his sight was less than perfect.
“What’s that, La Bonne?” cried Merlin, sitting up on his chair, looking terrified.
“It’s Cossain, who demands that we open the door,” answered La Bonne calmly.
“Don’t open the door, La Bonne!” said Merlin, rising from his chair, his eyes wide with terror.
“What is it?” came the voice of the admiral from behind his bed curtains, which Yolet immediately opened so that his master could hear the others.
At this moment, from downstairs came the sound of the door knocker banging loudly and the voice of Cossain shouting:
“Open up, it’s Cossain!”
“Don’t open the door, La Bonne!” yelled Merlin, putting his trembling hands over his ears.
“La Bonne,” said the admiral, in a calm and composed voice, “open the door. It’s Cossain. Maybe the king has been attacked in his Louvre. Open up, La Bonne, and bring me the news.”
La Bonne took the candelabrum to light his way, and went downstairs.
I was right behind him with Miroul, Yolet, Cornaton and Muss, all five of us unsheathing our swords on the way, and we were met downstairs by Fröhlich, Cadieu and the other Swiss guards, who had their short swords at the ready. La Bonne pulled the two large bolts, and took some time finding the right key on his chain, since he was so nearsighted, and had to manage the candelabrum in his left hand. At length, however, he found the key he needed, put it in the lock, turned it and, pulling the door open, found himself face to face with Cossain, who, without saying a word, immediately stabbed him.
“Ach! Traitor!” cried Fröhlich, delivering a powerful thrust of his sword into the chest of the assassin without penetrating his breastplate, but knocking him backwards. Seeing this, Cadieu pushed the door closed against the rush of the king’s soldiers, and, buttressing the door with his large shoulders, held it closed long enough for Fröhlich and another Swiss to push a heavy iron chest against it. This done, Cadieu fell heavily to the ground beside La Bonne, having been shot between the shoulder blades by an arquebus that had been fired at point-blank range through the peephole while he was blocking the door.
“Ach! Poor Cadieu!” cried Fröhlich, while Cossain’s guards began hacking at the door with their axes, splintering the oak planks. Cornaton and Muss fired two shots at them, but didn’t have time to reload before the guards were inside. There followed a ferocious sword fight on the stairs in which no one could be sure who was who in the semi-darkness, lit only by our assailants’ torch, La Bonne’s candelabrum having gone out when he fell. In the midst of this confusion, as I aimed my blows at our assailants’ faces rather than their breastplates—a manoeuvre aided by their position below us on the stairs—I saw poor Yolet run through in the stomach. He pitched forward, groaning, but was immediately avenged by Muss, who drove his short sword into the face of Yolet’s assassin.
As we flailed blindly at each other, I heard a shout from above to quit our positions and come up to reinforce the door on the landing. The Swiss guards, except for Fröhlich, did not understand, but he followed as we scampered up the remaining stairs like cats and closed the door behind us, bolstering it with a couple of heavy chests.
Breathing hard, we looked at each other in silence, death now being close upon us, and, hearing a noise behind me, I turned and saw the admiral, standing, a candelabrum in his hand, wearing his dressing gown, which (as incredible as it may be that I noticed this in the furious confusion) was of red velvet with an ermine collar. He’d risen, I thought, in order to die standing up, and was leaning against the wall, doubtless in pain from his wound, but looking serene despite the furious blows of the guards’ axes on the door.
“My sons,” he said at last, “you’ve fought enough. You must try to escape if it’s still possible.”
“No, I won’t leave, Monsieur!” said Cornaton. “Begging your pardon!”
“Nor I,” said Muss.
“Nor I,” I said.
“Herrgott!” said Fröhlich in his gibberish. “Schelme on anyone who flees! And I’ve broken my sword and any Swiss who’s lost his weapon must die!”
The door, broken by so many axe blows, collapsed, and a king’s guard stuck his head through and tried to step over the two oak chests, but Fröhlich rushed to the mantelpiece, screaming like a devil in a font, grabbed a heavy andiron and threw it at the man’s head, knocking off his helmet. The guard fell in a heap.
“Flee, my sons, I order you to flee!” shouted the admiral, pointing to the door that led to the turret.
Cornaton was the first to obey, then Muss, then Miroul and I, and finally Fröhlich, who was still complaining about losing his sword, but whom I told to be quiet since the door to the turret was the only thing separating us from the guards who were streaming into the room through the splintered door. As I hesitated as to whether I should go up to the next storey or head downstairs, I stopped in front of a little window that opened onto the admiral’s bedroom and I saw Monsieur de Coligny standing, leaning against the wall, the candelabrum in his hand, which did not tremble in the slightest, facing his assassins, his face calm and composed. Cossain was among the five or six guards present, but, although he had his sword in his hand and had directed the assault ordered by the king, he didn’t seem to want to be the admiral’s assassin, for he allowed a soldier to go ahead of him (the man who always had such swagger). Pike in hand, the soldier shouted:
“Are you the admiral?”
“I am,” said Coligny, raising the candelabrum and holding it in front of his face.
“Ah, traitor!” said the man as he drove his pike into his stomach.
The candelabrum dropped from the right hand of the admiral, who, however, did not fall; and, looking his murderer in the eye, he said with infinite scorn:
“What a shame it wasn’t a man, but only a churl.”
At this, wrenching his pike from the admiral’s entrails, the churl delivered a ferocious blow to his head that knocked him to the ground. I didn’t want to see any more and ran headlong down the stairs, with Fröhlich behind me. Miroul had preceded me and it was lucky he did, for, having unlocked the little door that opened onto the rue de Béthisy, he closed it almost all the way so that he and I could see, a mere yard or so away, a large troop of soldiers, and behind them the Bâtard d’Angoulême and the Duc de Guise, who, looking up at the window on the first floor, called:
“Is it done, Besme?”
“It’s done,” said the voice of the churl whom I’d just seen at work in the room above.
“Monsieur d’Angoulême here,” replied Guise, “won’t believe it until he’s seen the corpse at his feet.”
So the corpse was immediately thrown from the window by the soldier he’d been talking to, who was, as we later learnt, a German from Bohemia (which is why they called him Besme) and a servant in Guise’s household. As Coligny’s head was already bloody from the blow of the pike administered by this fellow, the Bâtard d’Angoulême couldn’t immediately recognize him, and so he leant over and wiped some of the blood from his face with his handkerchief, saying, finally:
“It’s really him.”
He then stood up and, in keeping with his natural baseness, delivered a kick to the dead body. Seeing this, the Duc de Guise put his hand on the bâtard’s arm, as if to signify that the insult could no longer reach a man who could not feel it; then he looked around him with pride, as if this were the most glorious day of his life, and said to the king’s guards and the other gentlemen who were standing several yards away, all armed to the teeth, bearing torches, their eyes lit up in anticipation of the coming carnage:
“My friends, let’s go out and finish the work we’ve so handsomely begun here!”
Hearing
this, Miroul quietly closed the little door and, having bolted it, said in my ear:
“Monsieur, the only way out of here leads right into the mouth of the wolf. Let’s go up and try the rooftops.”
Which we did, and you can bet we were on tiptoe going by the window to the admiral’s bedroom, but we needn’t have worried. When I peeked inside, I could see the guards so furiously occupied in pillaging the chests that a pack of horses could have stampeded down the staircase without distracting them from their pilfering.
At the top of the stairs, a small window opened out onto the roof, through which Miroul slipped like a ferret, I with some effort and Fröhlich only by dint of a struggle as protracted as if he’d been a camel trying to pass through the eye of the proverbial needle. At length, after much breathing, panting and gasping, he made it through, and, the three of us holding on to the top of the turret from which we’d emerged, we could see below us in the rue de Béthisy the torches and the sinister shadows they threw of the assembled swarm of cuirasses and halberds.
On our right the moon had come out from behind a cloud, and we could see the towers of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, and behind them the sombre mass of the Louvre, whence had come our death warrant. As the night began to wane, we realized that the dawn would greatly increase our peril, and that we would doubtless be spied up here and hunted down. But as we were debating how we might get out of this predicament, an explosion of sound hit us as if it were solid and shook the air all around us: the great bell of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois began to toll, and this terrible din was taken up by all the churches in this immense metropolis, and the doors of all the houses in the rue de Béthisy flew open and those of all the neighbouring streets as well, vomiting by the hundreds hoards of Parisians, armed to the teeth, brandishing pikes and swords, torches held high so as to identify the doors that the dizeniers had marked that morning with a white cross. And above them the church bells continued to ring in every quarter of the capital as if to call the faithful to celebrate this strange nocturnal Mass, whose martyrs, too, worshipped Christ.
