by Robert Merle
“There’s a nest of vipers, for you!” snarled the hag with the yellow jowls, making the sign of the Devil over the house. “This dog of a heretic thinks he’s safe just because they gave him four guards and a captain! But just wait! We’ll see what a joke that is!”
“Indeed!” croaked the toothless one. “It’s not over till it’s over! You can count on the people to finish the festivities.”
“But are they going to kill them as well?” asked Crestine, of the three the most ignorant and perhaps the most to be pitied.
“Silly bird!” cried the jowly one furiously. “The more important the Huguenots are, the more diabolical! And you can count on the fact that, presidents or otherwise, they’re not going to leave a single one of ’em alive in the parish of Saint-Séverin!”
“You’re so right!” said the toothless one. “Before this day is over they’ll all be sent off to Chaillot.”
They all laughed at this, Chaillot being a village that lay downstream of Paris, where, because of the thick grass in the river, all the bodies of those who had been stabbed, denuded and thrown in the water had created a human dam, flooding the banks around them.
While our hags were chattering away, a young milkmaid, carrying her shop on her shoulder, appeared in the rue de la Parcheminerie, crying her wares; it was the same cry I’d heard in the grand’rue Saint-Denis the first morning I’d spent in the capital, so happy to be walking around the city, with Miroul by my side, since it was all yet unknown.
“Every morn, when light comes streaming,
I cry out ‘Milk!’ for all the nurses
Whose babes are now awake and screaming,
Saying: ‘Quick! Give ’em a pot, you nurses!’”
It wasn’t the same blonde milkmaid, this one being dark-haired and not very pretty, I thought, but it was the same cry, which, I know not why, filled me with emotion, as if it had brought me a promise of life, after all the bloodthirsty words I’d been listening to. The women’s ugly chatter ceased, moreover, as the doors in all the houses opened one by one and the housewives appeared on their thresholds, holding pitchers, pots or goblets according to the quantity they wished to purchase from the milkmaid. There was a serene and ordinary peacefulness about this distribution, our Furies themselves quieting their cackling to take part in it (as is said of wild beasts themselves: that they’ll make peace in order to drink, savage as they are). So peaceful was it, indeed, that I was not surprised to see a little door in the stoned house open and the head of a girl appear, her blonde curls escaping from her night bonnet. She had a pretty, though sad face, and with her eyes, since she didn’t dare trust her voice, she beckoned the milkmaid, who came over and filled her two pitchers with milk, without any of the neighbouring women making the slightest objection, so calmed were they by the magic of this daily routine.
I don’t know why I suddenly had such a thirst for this warm white milk flowing into the pitchers, and so much compassion for this poor blonde wench, who was besieged with her masters in this wreck of a house, that I forgot all my prudence, crossed the street and asked the milkmaid for a goblet of milk.
“Not possible,” she replied harshly, “I don’t have a goblet. No goblet, no milk: that’s clear enough!”
“Oh, but I have one, Monsieur,” said the girl, giving me a friendly look with her sky-blue eyes. And, withdrawing, she went immediately to her kitchen, and I was daring enough to follow her, whispering to her not to believe my brassard, that I was in flight and that she could easily guess why.
“Well, Monsieur,” she replied softly, “I was sure you were pretending. I was watching you from behind the curtains and when you refused to chase down the poor nun, I could tell that neither you nor your companions had any taste for the blood of the poor wench. But since there are four of you,” she continued, “wouldn’t it be better for you to take a pitcher? That way you can all drink your fill in turns.”
She took down a pitcher, and the two of us returned to the door, where the milkmaid, looking very unhappy, begrudgingly poured me some milk, accepted my payment without a smile and turned away coldly. I called to my companions, who came running from the other side of the street, and, as stupefied as they were by my incredible lack of caution—a bit of craziness which turned out to be quite wise, as we shall see—they drank like parched earth in August, so desperate were they, having refused the malmsey from the wine merchant.
We were just going to return the pitcher to the sad-looking young woman, when a band of five or six rogues rounded the corner, and, seeing the door of the house open and hoping to take advantage of it, rushed at us with so little warning that we hadn’t time to unsheathe our swords and had to resort to our fists. Miroul turned out to be very adept at this, and, more agile than an acrobat, decked two of them straightaway. I managed to break the pitcher over the head of a third; Fröhlich delivered a powerful blow of his mace into the midriff of another; and Giacomi, anxious not to reveal his secret sword thrust to such ruffians, simply stuck out his foot and tripped the last of them, saying, “What’s this? What’s this?”
But now a new group of assailants arrived, much greater in number and armed with pikes, and, seeing the odds shift so quickly, I yelled, “Brothers! We’ll never hold on! Get back into the house!”
And so we did, slamming the door in a trice and bolting and barring it. We were safe, yes, but now trapped. Imprisoned in this house of shame and one with its fate.
“Well, Monsieur,” said the blonde chambermaid (who, I soon learnt, was named Florine, after a local saint in her native Auvergne), “that was valiantly done! But what about the guards and their captain upstairs? Are they going to attack you now?”
“How many are there here?” I asked.
“Five in all.”
“Well, that’s not very many,” observed Giacomi, unsheathing his sword.
I did the same, but, on reflection, after listening to what was happening up there, I said:
“I think we’d better try to make our peace with them. I can hear the captain haranguing the crowd outside, warning them that he’ll send for reinforcements from the Grand Châtelet if they try to batter down the door. So, in a sense, he’s our ally, however precarious. Florine, go and tell him we’re waiting for him down here in peace and friendship.”
But the captain, who was assuredly not a very brave fellow, refused to come down, since he’d watched the dance we’d performed on the rogues outside and feared being taken in the same way. Consequently, he demanded that I come upstairs alone and unarmed, but I decided against this, certain as I was that he’d simply take me hostage. In the end, it was decided, after Florine exhausted herself going up and down the stairs several times, that we four would go up without disarming, and would wait outside their door, so that we were within earshot but not visible to them. When we’d arrived at their door, I called:
“Captain! I urge you not to misunderstand who we are! We’re four good Catholics, masters and servants. But as we were having breakfast at a shop nearby, our valet noticed that your chambermaid had opened the door downstairs to buy some milk. And since my valet had met the girl at a dance recently, he decided to ask her for a pitcher so we could buy some milk as well. You saw what happened, and how those rogues attacked us to try to get in the door and how we had to retreat into the house. You can understand how unhappy we feel about this, since we don’t want to be taken for heretic dogs who live here.”
“The problem is,” the captain replied in a voice that sounded like it had been marinated in wine, “that it would seem that you are! Else why would you have fought to prevent them from coming in?”
“Because,” I explained, “we knew you were in here to protect the house, on orders from the provost, and we thought we were doing the king’s bidding to come to your defence.”
“Indeed, my friend!” said the captain. “You certainly have a ready tongue and don’t fear anyone in a debate!”
“That’s because I’m a clergyman,” I replied, “and tho
ugh I’m not yet tonsured, I can recite you the four Gospels of Jesus Christ the Lord in Greek!”
The Greek was conclusive, though I suspected the captain was less persuaded by my words than swept away by my eloquence, since his mind seemed so clouded with wine.
“And so, my friend,” he said in a trembling voice, “what do you want?”
“We want to be free to pillage the house.”
“By the love of God, good clergyman,” laughed the captain, “what do you hope to find after we’ve been through it?”
“We’ll see.”
There then took place within the room a confused council in the hushed and slurred voices of men who’ve been doing more drinking than sleeping, our heroes appearing reluctant to fight us since they had the advantage of neither numbers nor weapons—they being without firearms or armour, from what Florine told me, but dressed only in their livery and armed with short swords. It was a miracle that these uniforms of the Grand Châtelet had so terrified the population—with the threat of jail and the gibbet that they implied—that no one had made any attempt to break into a house that was so inadequately defended by five drunk soldiers!
“My friend,” said the captain finally, “for the liberty you’re requesting, I’ll have to charge you one écu per archer and two for me. And,” he added, “you are forbidden, on pain of death, to enter this chamber.”
“Well,” I replied, “that’s a lot! I’ll have lost a lot of money if I don’t find anything worthwhile in my pillaging.”
“It’s that or nothing!” declared the captain, though I doubt he knew what “or nothing” meant since he neither wanted nor was able to throw us out.
But we’d gone back and forth enough and there was no point in bargaining any further, especially since it was obvious that our agreement confined these drunkards to their room, and that they were as much our prisoners as we were theirs. Truly, what a strange farce! And how incredible to encounter such a bizarre situation in the middle of such a storm!
Florine brought my money to these scoundrels, but they must have attempted some unwanted advances on her while she was fulfilling her mission, for we heard a loud slap on a cheek, and then she burst back through the door, blushing and angry. Her blouse had been badly torn, revealing her full, white breasts, which were a vision of loveliness, as I realized from watching Miroul’s eyes, which were shining like lighthouses on a stormy shore. My valet immediately came to her aid, but very respectfully, since the girl was a Huguenot and therefore most likely unbendable.
I made a sign to Florine to close the door on those rogues, which she did, and then, taking her by the arm, I asked what had become of the owners of the house and why they had not appeared in all this noise and confusion.
“Well, Monsieur,” she explained, “they’ve barricaded themselves in the library on the second floor, so horrified are they by the excesses that have been committed by these guards ever since they entered the house—opening chests, pillaging, beating the servants, who’ve all run away except me. And it’s a miracle I’ve still got my virginity, the way they came after me, but, thank God, they’ve been so drunk that they couldn’t manage to do me any real harm.”
I told Florine who I was, and asked her to give this information to her masters and request that they receive me. But before she did that, I asked her to unstitch the brassard that was dishonouring my shoulder, and allow me to clean up a bit—at least my face and hands, as well as my trousers, which were so covered with mud and grime from our night’s journey though hell. She wanted to clean up my doublet, but couldn’t entirely remove the blood of the child who’d been stabbed in my arms, although she did manage to lighten the stain a bit.
Miroul insisted on accompanying me up to the second floor, fearing some foul play from our friends the guards, bloated with drink as they were, and, with Florine introducing me, I entered a room that was admittedly smaller than Michel de Montaigne’s library (the most beautiful I had ever seen), but very pleasant, with its oak woodwork, and well lit by a series of windows that ran the length of the house, which had been stoned and broken, but the glass and stones had been cleared away, so one could scarcely tell there’d been any damage.
Monsieur de La Place was seated, a book in his hand, in a great armchair, set some distance away from the windows, doubtless to protect him from any further stones, and, despite the noise and shouts in the street, he appeared as tranquil as if he were seated in the great blue room of the Louvre.
He rose as I came in, and approached me courteously, as I entered and bowed, and took my hand with a grave and somewhat sad, yet serene smile. He was a fairly tall man, whose thin face reminded me a bit of Uncle Sauveterre, except that he hadn’t been so hostile to human weakness that he hadn’t married, but, as I would see, displayed great tenderness to his wife.
“Well, Monsieur de Siorac,” he said, after I’d given him, at his request, a brief account of the horrors of our night, from the moment Cossain had knocked on Coligny’s door to the present, “perhaps you could inform me what’s happening with this popular uprising, whether it’s run its course or whether it’s still aflame?”
“Alas, Monsieur,” I lamented “it’s not just a popular uprising but the mass murder of all our people, without pity or mercy, commanded by the king.”
“What?” gasped Monsieur de La Place, paling at my words. “Would the king really order the murder of all the Huguenots, including La Noue, Taverny and me, who have served him so loyally?”
“Alas, Monsieur de La Place,” I sighed, seeing under what illusions he still laboured, “the king does not look upon Taverny with such favour…”
“What, killed?”
“By the people, swords in hand, who stormed his lodgings, accompanied by the king’s guards.”
“God in heaven! The king’s officer!” And, grief-stricken, not just as a man and a future victim, but as a magistrate, he said: “What are you telling me? It’s the end of the rule of law when the sovereign sets one half of his subjects up against the other half! How can such a fratricidal murder be lawful in a kingdom?”
To this cry of despair, I could make no answer, as much because I had no response as because I believed that this wasn’t the moment to debate the question.
“Monsieur,” I said, “if you have any friend in l’Université who might hide you for a while, tell me and I’ll try to get a message to him.”
“Well, Monsieur de Siorac,” said Monsieur de La Place, “I myself tried that at midnight last night while all my jailers were insensible with wine, and was heading out of my secret door—”
“What?” I cried, amazed that he wouldn’t have used it to escape. “You have a secret door here?”
“It’s right here!” said Monsieur de La Place, and, pushing an oak panel with his finger, he revealed a staircase leading down into the darkness. “This passageway, which I had built simply for convenience, leads down to the stables, and there a door hidden behind the hay storage leads out onto the rue Boutebrie. However, when I crept out alone the other night, without my valet, I knocked on the doors of several of my friends, but they were slammed in my face once I was recognized, since the royal decree banned giving aid to Huguenots on pain of death.”
“Do I understand, Monsieur, that you came back here of your own free will to be caught in this trap?”
“But Monsieur de Siorac,” he replied with great feeling, “surely you can understand that I would never abandon my family and household! The mob would have taken its revenge on them!”
“So it’s true,” I thought, “he who takes a wife and children gives hostages to fortune. But who could forgo these tender cares even when he knows they limit and hobble him!”
As I was thinking about the sad plight of my host and how my own condition seemed so full of possibilities by comparison, the library door opened and La Place’s cherished family came in, looking, as one would expect, quite desolate. My host introduced me to his wife, a woman of about forty, who had blonde but greying
hair protruding from beneath a black bonnet, and was dressed in a modest black gown with a bunch of keys hanging from her waist. She was followed by her daughter, whose beauty was so striking that I had to lower my eyes to avoid looking at her too avidly in this house of mourning; her son-in-law, Monsieur Desmarets, a counsellor of inquiries, who had an open and honest face, but couldn’t help looking terrified given the situation; and her two young sons, who were of an age at which one never imagines one can die, and so were clearly more afflicted by their parents’ plight than their own.
They all gathered sadly around the head of the household, some taking his arms, others kissing his hands and others still kneeling next to him.
“Ah, my love,” said Monsieur de La Place to his wife, raising her from her knees, “I beg you not to despair. Never forget that nothing happens in this world, not even the death of a sparrow, but that God wills it. And so, may God’s will be done and His name forever blessed!”
Seeing me discreetly heading for the door to allow them to enjoy their final prayers together, Monsieur de La Place said:
“No, my friend, we share too many concerns here to allow you to leave the room. Indeed, you are one of us, since, without you, our door would have been stormed and our house completely destroyed. No, no, rather than leaving, I beg you to summon your friends, and the faithful Florine, that we may all pray together.”
So I invited the others into the room and they all lined up in front of the bookshelves, Florine next to Miroul, who, I sensed, was trying to offer her some comfort in her despair. Monsieur de La Place seated himself in the large armchair and read in a grave and vibrant voice the first chapter of the book of Job. Now, I ask the reader’s forgiveness, in case this story appear frivolous or profane; and it may sometimes scandalize innocent hearts (given how excessive the actions of this period may seem). But I want to quote from the Scriptures, because none of us, in this terrible predicament in which we found ourselves, trapped in this house by a screaming mob and betrayed by our king’s hatred of us, could hear this text without shedding copious tears.
