Heretic Dawn (72 page)

“I’m not so sure,” I laughed. “Quéribus thinks that Paris is an illness that is contracted by breathing in its air, and he thinks I’m already infected.”

I waited for nightfall, and for Little Sissy to slip into my bed like a little snake, to offer her the ring I’d bought for her in Paris. She was overjoyed, breathing “Ooh” and “Aah” several times and hugging me furiously; and, between kisses, she kept holding her hand up to the candle to admire the glitter of the gold. And after we had each enjoyed our caresses to the fullest, she assured me that she’d present me with the most beautiful baby in Périgord and that, for sure, I’d be happy.

Having said this, she fell asleep like a snuffed candle, and you can imagine how she strutted around the next day, showing off her ring until the walls of Mespech seemed to echo with her excitement. La Maligou, in her vainglorious maternity, relayed the news, which grew more extravagant with every retelling until it reached the nearby villages. Sauveterre was clearly unhappy, and I had to explain to my father, who felt more rueful than joyful, how I’d been caught in the girl’s web and forced to make an imprudent promise.

“You did well to keep it,” he acknowledged, “since a promise was made, but in the future, take one prudent step at a time when you’re advancing along the paths where captivating beauties may lead you. It’s a very gentle slope, which leads from a ribbon to a bauble, from the bauble to silver and from silver to gold.”

“Father,” I said, “your counsel obviously comes from a lot of experience and, now that I’m thinking about it, I seem to remember a silver thimble that you offered Franchou, when, before the plague broke out, she was sent to Sarlat.”

“Touché!” laughed my father, and, throwing his arms around me, he embraced me warmly. “Well, Pierre, no one’s going to catch you off guard!”

Meanwhile, my little sister, Catherine, who, in the three months we’d been away, had bloomed into a beautiful flower, majestic in her new height, did not take it well that, while in Paris, I’d bought her nothing but a top, and then given that away to Alizon’s little Henriot.

“My brother,” she said, pulling me aside when she saw Little Sissy parading around with her new gold ring as if her entire hand had suddenly been transformed into gold, “did you not consider what an outrage it would be to give this little Gypsy wench a chance to put on airs with me?”

“But Catherine, my beauty,” I said, taking her hands in mine—but she immediately withdrew them without letting me continue.

“Your beautiful Catherine,” she said with a haughty air that reminded me of my mother, “is not so beautiful that her beauty couldn’t be embellished by a gift from you! Monsieur, you place your affections where you should not and you forget people you should remember.”

And, turning on her heels, with a flourish of her hoop skirt, she stomped off, leaving me very unhappy about the hurt I’d caused her, especially since I was very fond of her, though for the moment I was quite put off by her superior manner.

I knew not what to do about this unexpected setback. My father, having learnt what had transpired from Franchou, who’d been eavesdropping, pulled me aside after dinner.

“My son, at the rate things are going, you’re not going to set things straight for less than a necklace.”

“A necklace!” I gasped.

“Made of gold. Catherine is your sister: you can’t allow her to be outdone by your mistress.”

“But, Father, a necklace!”

“You stuck your finger into the gears,” laughed my father, “and you risk having your arm go after it. That’s how it is dealing with women. Or else practise being miserly like Samson, and never give anything to anybody, in which case no one can take offence since they expect nothing from you.”

I ran to buy a necklace from an honest Jew in Sarlat whom my father knew, and thus made peace with my little sister Catherine,
who wasn’t little any more, since she’d got me to capitulate just by using her wiles.

Meanwhile, with Catherine pacified, the war flared up elsewhere, and I fell from the frying pan into the fire.

“Monsieur,” said Little Sissy, whose normally rosy cheeks were ashen and whose dark eyes had turned obsidian when she saw the necklace shining on Catherine’s white skin, “since you’re so well off that you can buy me a gold ring the way I might buy a waffle from a shop in Sarlat, you shouldn’t have given in and put me so far beneath your sister as you’ve done.”

But at this, I was so angry that I began shouting at her like a dog in a pack, and in my wrath I might have slapped the impudent wench if she hadn’t been carrying my child; and I could only turn round, walk away and avoid her for three days, so furious was I that she should compare my gold ring to a waffle.

During those three days that I deprived Little Sissy, as it says in the Holy Bible, of the “light of my countenance”, I have to admit that my face wasn’t very luminous, worked as I was by thoughts that were far more bitter than sweet. I’d heard Coligny say, and two days later Monsieur de La Place affirm, and then the Brethren repeat again here, that nothing happens on earth, not even the death of a sparrow, that God hasn’t decreed. But when I tried to connect this principle with my personal predicament, I couldn’t help perceiving that it posed a real problem for my theology: how, indeed, could I imagine that God, in His infinite goodness, could put me to a test which wasn’t even useful in the moment I was undergoing it? Should I believe that it was God’s express will that my father’s letter should be received by Montaigne two days after I’d left, so that, continuing to believe that I was in danger for my life, I should go to Paris to ask the king for a pardon that I didn’t need at all, only to encounter, while in the capital, among those of my party, the incredible perils that I’ve recounted?

These very perils, these assassinations, these drownings, these horrors, which were so awful and immense that my pen nearly falls from my hand as I try to describe them—must I believe that the Lord inflicted them on the Huguenots to test them, increasing, however, the wealth and power of the papists in the process, and thus fortifying the papists’ belief that their corrupted cult is the good one and that their errors are truths?

But on the other hand, what if the St Bartholomew massacre were the work of the Devil and not God, complete with felonies so repugnant and cruelties so abject that they bore the mark and seal of the Prince of Darkness? How could we admit that the all-powerful Lord should not have brought His wrath down on the henchmen of this prince, instead of allowing the death of the just and the triumph of Satan, as if Satan were more powerful than He in this world that He made with His hands?

I ask a thousand pardons if these reflections seem sacrilegious. I state them in all innocence and simplicity, not wishing to seek answers from the clerics among us who can explain these mysteries. But observing that all too often the explanations they provide only make things more obscure, and since I wouldn’t want these obscurities to influence the clarity I seek, nor allow them to constrict my judgement, I have decided to offer my own feelings, however infirm they seem, but truthfully, just as I conceived them in the nights and days that followed my return to the sweetness of my paternal retreat; for, after having survived the perils of the St Bartholomew massacre, I couldn’t help meditating on this terrible event, which God, or perhaps I should say Fortune, wished me to experience.

At the beginning as at the conclusion of these reflections, I decided that it was dangerous to believe that the misfortune that befell us was desired by the Lord, seeing in this belief the beginnings of a limp resignation; in my judgement, in contrast, we must parry the blows
of our adversary instead of treating the wounds he inflicts as if they were a test sent by Heaven. If it is a test, then I dare believe that we need to stand up to it before it destroys us.

After having so often cogitated on these ambiguous points, both back then, in the bloom of my youth, and now, when I’m an old greybeard writing these lines, I still can’t decide whether it was God, or fate, that led me there—where, unwittingly, I had no business being, seeking every which way for a pardon I did not need. But I am persuaded of one thing and will hold on to this belief as firmly as a barnacle sticks to a rock, despite the waves and the tides. Having seen in this hateful city of Paris to its full extent the detestable effects of religious zeal, I made a promise never to permit my Church’s zeal to cause me to raise my sword, believing that disputes over this or that form of worship should be decided only by clerics, and without knives ever being drawn, “since knives never decide anything”, as the Duc d’Anjou, besieging one year later the Huguenot city of La Rochelle, dared write to “his beloved brother and sovereign”, the same man whom I accuse before men, before history and before God, of bearing responsibility for the massacre of St Bartholomew.

Quéribus accomplished miracles with the Catholic nobility of the Sarlat region, having enough of his native Carcassonne in him to cover his courtly, dandyish side, and playing up the friendship he enjoyed with the Duc d’Anjou, which was, in fact, of some consequence, since Charles IX had no male heir and was quite sickly. The upshot was that people listened to him, and he used the authority he had to paint a portrait of my own connections to the future king that was so favourable you would have thought that, on the morning of the 24th, His Highness had dispatched a company to protect me in my lodgings against the fury of the mob.

I handed the copy of my pardon to Monsieur de La Porte, however useless it had become, to give additional credibility to the stories that
Quéribus was circulating. In short, the baron was so successful, and the balance of opinion leant so strongly in my favour, that even had Madame de Fontenac not withdrawn her complaint you wouldn’t have found a single judge in the Sarlat region who would have condemned me, the most unforgiving among them contenting himself with repeating privately to the seneschal of Sarlat the witticism of Catherine de’ Medici: “I see that your Huguenots are all cats, since they always seem to land on their feet.”

The king’s brother, in the Louvre, having given his doublet to Quéribus, since Quéribus had been forced to give me his, it happened that, after Quéribus left Sarlat, rumours had spread that it was I who had been the recipient of Anjou’s doublet. And you wouldn’t believe the prestige that accrued to me due to that satin article. The good side of my character was suddenly praised to the skies, as were all the laudable actions I’d taken, such as the part I’d played at my father’s side in the defeat of the butcher-baron of la Lendrevie, and the rescue of the bishop of Nîmes, not to mention the rescue of Monsieur de Montcalm, whose story was less well known here. All of this led to a situation in which I, Huguenot that I was, could have married, on the basis of my new reputation, any of a number of gentlewomen of the region, whose mothers had begun to argue that the marriage of Margot de Navarre, however detestable it seemed at the time, had set a precedent.

But I had no thought of marrying anyone but Angelina, to whom I’d written from Saint-Cloud—without, on the advice of Quéribus, mentioning any details of my adventures, since it went without saying that in that quarter as well it was better if they believed I was protected by the king. I didn’t believe this letter had much chance of arriving, since I was sure that the paternal tyranny wouldn’t allow it to reach its destination; but, luckily, it was placed directly in her hands, which immediately wrote to me in reply and gave the response to the messenger. I’ve copied it here in all its feminine valour and sweetness: