Heretic Dawn (23 page)

After this narrative, which lasted at least a quarter of an hour, he was willing to share with me the fact that Monsieur de Nançay lived in the house next to his. “Ah!” thought I. “If only I’d had the good fortune to knock on that door before this one!”

“But,” he added, “you cannot visit Monsieur de Nançay now! It’s much too early!”

“I thought so,” I replied. “So, instead, I shall head for the cathedral of Notre-Dame and spend an hour or so there.”

“Ah! Monsieur!” he gushed, believing of course that I was going to hear Mass. “I’m so relieved to meet a pious and devout young man like you, given the invasion in Paris—and in the very court of the king—of the satanic heresy of Calvin!”

Hearing this, I bowed silently and took my leave of the two of them—now three in number, since their daughter had returned with her mother, and was now throwing amorous looks in my direction, despite my unfashionable doublet—and mounted my horse. Miroul threw me such a mirthful look, with his brown eye shining, that it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud in the faces of these good, though astonishingly annoying people.

As for Notre-Dame, I was amazed and astonished when I saw it, but I won’t try to describe it here: you’d need an entire book. And
although I was, in my Huguenot faith, repelled by so many idolatrous images, whether in stained glass or carved statues, I found them so beautiful that I would never have wanted them to be destroyed, as so many churches were by the most fanatical members of my party, but instead would have them preserved for the admiration of our children, though not as objects to be worshipped—which should be reserved for God alone. Moreover, if we were to consider them not as sacred objects, but as representations of man, it seemed to me we’d appreciate them more, the less we adored them.

The most marvellous of all these idols, or at least the one that I found most pleasing, was a statue of the Virgin by the door of the cloister. She had a pretty, oval face and a small, straight nose, and her eyes were widened in surprise. It was so lifelike that I thought the sculptor must have had a Parisienne for his model—or, perhaps, even to share his bed! And he must have loved her enough to want to “revirginize” her in stone and to have left her gracious image for future generations.

Miroul waited outside to guard our horses, and I was sorry that he couldn’t share these treasures with me, and even more sorry that Giacomi wasn’t here, who so loved the arts and spoke so knowledgeably about them. But I scarcely had time to look around a bit before a little dark-haired cleric, no more than seventeen years in age, I guessed, approached me and, looking at me with soft eyes, asked in fluting tones:

“Monsieur, would you like to climb to the top of the towers of Notre-Dame? You can see all of Paris, since the cathedral is the tallest monument in the city.”

“Monsieur priest,” I asked in the most benign tones, but inside feeling quite wary, having very little confidence in those who wore those robes, “I’d be interested if it’s not too much money.”

“Won’t cost you much,” replied the priest, with a forced smile. “Five sols for the diocese. Three sols for the beadle, who will give us the key. And two for me, who will guide you to the top.”

He said this with such a suave and soft voice, and touched me so caressingly as he did so, and displayed such an engaging smile, that I couldn’t tell whether my guide was a man or a woman. Zeus himself, if I dare invoke him in a Christian church, might have been mistaken, though such a mistake seemed of little consequence to him if I am to believe the rape of Ganymede.

“Monsieur priest, agreed,” I said, backing away a bit with a cold look and without reaching for my purse.

“Well, then,” said the little cleric, “let’s see your money.”

“Oh, no! I’ll pay afterwards!”

“Oh, Monsieur!” he laughed. “I, Aymotin, am an honourable man!”

“Aymotin! That’s your name?”

“Yes! But I’m not a priest yet! Monsieur, without money, the beadle won’t give me the key.”

“All right. Here are three sols for the beadle. The five sols for the diocese will be paid once we’re at the top. And your two, Aymotin, when we’re back down here.”

“Oh, mercy, Monsieur, you bargain like a Jew, a Lombard or a Huguenot!”

“Which I’m not. Hurry, Aymotin, get me the key. I’ll gambol about a bit while I’m waiting for you.”

“Monsieur,” said Aymotin with a sly smile, “in Paris we don’t say ‘gambol about’, which is very
langue d’oc
—we say ‘take a stroll’.”

“So,” I said, “you speak
langue d’oc
too?”

“No. I was born in Paris and have never left. But I have a very good friend who speaks with the same jargon as you, mixing
langue d’oc
and French.”

And, giving me another of his sideways looks, and holding up his robe with both hands so as not to trip over it, he trotted off with surprising gracefulness.

He was so long in returning that I believed my three sols were lost
and gone, but eventually he returned, though I wasn’t sure whether his return was due to his probity or to the interest he’d taken in me.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have the key to the steps, but not the key to the bell tower: for that the beadle wanted three more sols.”

“So we won’t see the bells. Let’s go!”

The door unbolted—I had to lend him a hand, given the enormous weight and size of the key and the slenderness of his wrists—he climbed nimbly up ahead of me, frequently glancing back over his shoulder to give me a smile or an encouraging look.

Oh, reader, how immense and beautiful is Paris when seen from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame! What a thrill to see it stretching out at my feet like a picture, the houses so tiny and the Seine curving gently through its middle.

Meanwhile, Aymotin had become so winded from climbing the stairs that it was a pity seeing him gasping for breath.

“Aymotin,” I told him, “you climbed too quickly, and didn’t allow your lungs to purify the blood coming to your heart.”

“What?” cried Aymotin. “Are you a doctor too?”

“Too?” I asked, suddenly pricking up my ears. “You know another doctor?”

But Aymotin, reddening and shaking his black curls, replied evasively, “Oh, I know several doctors. There are no fewer than sixty-two doctors in Paris and you can see them from morning to night going to see their patients, wearing their square bonnets and astride their mules.”

Then, turning away from me, he walked up to the balustrade and with a wide, very gracious gesture, showed me the capital, as if he were offering it to me as a gift. “Behold, Monsieur, the most beautiful city in the world!” And stretching out his arm, he showed me that the island we were on also housed the palace, and the Sainte-Chapelle; on the right bank were the wheat markets, the second-hand clothing
markets, the sheet markets and, along the river, the Louvre, grandiose and almost menacing with its august white-marble exterior; just behind the Louvre was the wooden tower that marked the limit of the city, constructed as it was as part of the wall surrounding the capital. On the left bank there were numerous beautiful churches—too many to name; outside the walls was the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, whose three towers seemed so superb on this bright morning; within the walls, as if to mark the western edge of the city, the Tour de Nesle. Throughout the city we could see a web of turrets, clock towers, portcullises and gables that testified to the immeasurable riches of the lords and merchants who inhabit the capital. As I leant over, and while Aymotin continued his presentation, I could see below me on the place Notre-Dame the people walking, who looked like flies, and could even pick out my Pompée from her chestnut coat, though she looked no bigger than a mouse.

“As you see,” said Aymotin, “Paris is divided into three cities by the Seine that flows through its middle. To the right, there is the most extensive part which is called la Ville…”

“Like that,
la ville
?” I asked. “And the others?”

“Ville with a capital
v
,” replied Aymotin, “because that’s where the king lives in his Louvre. But some call it the Saint-Denis quarter. Then there’s the part where we are which is called, as you know, the Île de la Cité.”

“And to the left?”

“That’s called l’Université because of all the students who live and study there, who annoy the night watch, make mischief with the monks of Saint-Germain, bother the bourgeois and commit a thousand other pranks that I couldn’t describe.”

But Aymotin told me this without a trace of the morose severity that one would have expected of his robe, but rather with a somewhat malicious gleam in his eye.

“Some people call l’Université the Hulepoix quarter, just as they call la Ville the Saint-Denis quarter.”

“Hulepoix!” I laughed. “What a bizarre name! Hulepoix! I like it! But what are the names of the two little islands so full of greenery that I see in front of the Île de la Cité and are parallel to each other?”

“The one on the right is called the Îlot du Patriarche, and the one on the left the Îlot du Passeur-aux-Vaches.
||||
The king, to whom they belong, had the idea of connecting them and joining them to the Île de la Cité to sell them to builders, but the project died for lack of money. Behind you, Monsieur, there are three other little islands that you can’t see, since they’re hidden by the cathedral, and the king also wanted to join them into one and call it the Île Notre-Dame, but that project also fell into the dirty water of the Seine.”

“Are there cows on Îlot du Passeur-aux-Vaches?”

“Of course, and there’s no need for a cowherd, which is a great saving of money.”

“Well,” I mused, not knowing what to look at since I saw so many marvels, “how many people are there in this immense city?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

“And streets?”

“Four hundred and thirteen.”

“What! Someone counted them?”

“Naturally!” snorted Aymotin, his dander up, as if all of these streets belonged to him. “Listen to these verses that I learnt in school:

“Four hundred and thirteen!” I gasped. “How could you ever find someone you knew if you didn’t know where they lived?”

At this, Aymotin looked at me curiously and asked if I was in the situation I’d just described, and I, not wishing to speak to him about my Angelina, the thought of whom was driving me to despair, simply said that I was looking for a friend, who, like me, was a doctor from the Royal College of Medicine in Montpellier (at which I noticed that he trembled slightly, although he still appeared to be on his guard, maintaining the perpetually gay, suave and attentive smile that he wore like a mask on his pretty face).

“His name is Fogacer,” I said, “and though we are of different complexions, Fogacer being little interested in petticoats and I chasing them like mad, we get along well and have become great friends. Do you know him?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Aymotin rather too quickly, lowering his eyes and turning away.

“Aymotin,” I said, not without considerable heat, “if you know him, it would be tragic if you didn’t tell me how to find him; I need so much to see him.”

Turning back to face me, and looking me in the eye, Aymotin took a step towards me and spoke in very grave tones that I never would have expected either from his age nor from the silly antics that he’d thus far exhibited to me.

“Monsieur,” he announced, “I am, both as a cleric and by nature, discreet. And all the more so by my complexion, which is exactly what you have guessed it to be. My memory has therefore become
a tomb. A face, a name, an address—everything falls into its depths and is buried there. I could never remember anything that might incriminate another.”

Having reflected on this amazing declaration, I was more than ever convinced that Aymotin was a member of this great brotherhood, whose members, in the great appetite that they have for each other, have abolished all differences between them—of rank, of wealth, of knowledge and of religion, and live out, in this equality, their perilous passions, promising only to keep their mutual secret and knowing that there will be no quarter, for one or the other, if they are discovered.

“Aymotin,” I said, “that’s fine. I understand you. All I ask of you, then, is to remember a name and an address and to provide them to this doctor if Fortune were to lead you to cross paths. My name is Pierre de Siorac and I’m lodged in the rue de la Ferronnerie in the home of the bonnet-maker Maître Recroche. Here are the five sols for the cathedral chapter. And five more for you.”

“Monsieur,” said Aymotin, suddenly returning three of the sols I’d given him, “I’ve kept just two. And for what you’ve said, I would not ask for any payment. I will do what you ask if I can. I like to oblige good, honest and charitable people.”

And thereupon, contemplating me like a hen sparrow might her mate, shaking his black curls from right to left and uttering a deep sigh, he gave me such a piteous look that I might have accommodated it if he had only been of the tender sex to which he wanted so much to belong. But, finding this thought somewhat embarrassing, I again leant over the balustrade to cast a last glance at the square below, where the tiny size of the people seen from so high above had so diverted me only minutes before.

And recognizing Pompée by her chestnut coat, I was suddenly speechless to see her at the centre of a great tumult, and four or five beggars trying to wrest her away from Miroul, who was desperately
fighting them off with fists and kicks, and who was unable, finally, to avoid defeat by so many assailants.

“’Sblood, Aymotin!” I cried. “They’re trying to take my mare!”

And running, I hurtled down the stairs of the tower, rushed out the door, past the portal and onto the cathedral court, and unsheathing, fell like lightning on these miscreants, making strange cries and having at them with the flat of my sword, careful not to pierce any of them—except one who pulled out a knife from his rags and would have stabbed me, for which I punished him by slashing his arm with my dagger. At this, he dropped his weapon, and ran away, crying that he’d been killed, the others following behind him, disappearing into the adjoining streets like cockroaches into their holes.