Heretic Dawn (40 page)

“Ah, Monseigneur!” cried Quéribus, turning ashen. “Must you submit me to such torment?”

“Monsieur,” replied His Highness, “would you be ashamed in front of us, who order you thus, to appear in this doublet?”

“In front of you, Monseigneur, not in the least! But in front of the others!”

“The others are nothing, where we are not present,” replied the Duc d’Anjou, with such majesty that I suspected that he sometimes forgot that he wasn’t the king of France.

“Baron de Quéribus,” he continued, “I shall see you here in an hour. Monsieur de Siorac as well.”

That was our invitation to take our leave. We had to bend to it, and leave the hall, I in his splendour, he in my rags. Samson followed along behind, very glad, I’m sure, to see me safe and quieter than a log. Quéribus was also mute and blushing deeply in his excessive debasement, shaking like a leaf and looking entirely crestfallen, submitting to the despair of a punishment that for him was as cruel as death itself, so immense is the vanity of our courtiers—how different from our Huguenot sense of nobility, which prefers to be rather than to appear, and inclines more to the possession of wealth than to the display of it.

“Ah, Monsieur,” I said, taking his arm and speaking quietly to him, “don’t put on such a long face. People will laugh at you if they think you’ve been humiliated. Instead, put on a smile! Look happy! And when people look surprised to see you thus, simply say, ‘Siorac and I have made a bet, and I’m going to be the winner!’”

“Heavens, Siorac,” laughed Quéribus, “you’ve got as much wit as courage! That’s excellent advice, and I’m going to follow it. It won’t be said that people here who don’t like me too much will have the pleasure of seeing me with my tail between my legs!”

And he stood up straight, squared his shoulders, held his head high and sallied forth into the courtyard of the Louvre, his lips opened in a smile (even if it was a bit jaundiced and forced). And I, seeing him in this disposition and hoping to fortify it, decided to recount my experience with the sorceress in Montpellier, who had
fornicated with me on a grave in the cemetery because she believed I was Beelzebub, but then, seeing me in the street later, threw a curse on me which, for the next ten days, left me completely impotent. My story got Quéribus laughing out loud till he had tears in his eyes and was holding his sides.

“Ah, Siorac,” he cried, “you’re too funny! And when you think that Monsieur de Montaigne’s sachet of herbs helped you regain your virility, but turned out to be empty—I mean the sachet not your virility.”

And he laughed even louder at his own wit, and I along with him until we were bent over with mirth. Seeing this, several of the courtiers (which must come from the Old French word “
courre
”—to hunt—rather than from “court”, since they seem always to be out of breath from chasing the higher-ups, begging favours), their attention attracted by our hilarity, came up to ask Quéribus the reason for his strange attire, and, obtaining no response because he was laughing so hard, decided they simply had to know the secret that had us prey to such mirth. Plus, when the crowd saw that we were followed by the dreamy Samson, by Giacomi, on his way back from his fencing, by Miroul, all amazed, and by Montesquiou (who, no doubt, had been told to follow us to ensure that we didn’t hide for the hour of the punishment), their curiosity was so whetted that they fell in behind us and we soon had an impressive following, since there are as many gapers at court as there are in the city, who were bent on solving the mystery of why one of Anjou’s lordlings would go about in such a decrepit costume.

Our procession, as you might imagine, put us in a very merry mood, but suddenly Quéribus, squeezing my arm, whispered in my ear, in the most sportive tones, “Siorac, I suspect you of being of the same religion as the Grand Prieur of France.”

“And who is this great person?” I asked, secretly alarmed that he was talking about religion with a Huguenot.

“The bâtard—the Chevalier d’Angoulême. And thank God he has only the title and the revenues from the position, for, if he had to bless or absolve any of the ladies, the Devil knows what sprinkler he’d use, since there’s no crazier petticoat-chaser in the kingdom!”

We both laughed at this, and I even harder than he, since, looking back at our sheep-like following, I saw that many of them were laughing as well, without having heard a word of our conversation, simply to give the impression that they were in on the joke.

“Ah, good God, Siorac,” said Quéribus, “what a good companion you make! What a pity it would have been to kill you, since you possess all the talents it takes to make a gallant gentleman. What’s more,” he continued without a trace of vanity, “the more I look at you the more I think you look a bit like me.”

“Quéribus,” I said, pretending a sigh, “you flatter me. I have blonde hair and yours is golden. My eyes are grey-blue and yours are azure. I have pale skin and yours is white. My nose is straight enough, but yours is as though delicately chiselled and your lips as well, so that the ladies must go crazy over you. In a word, Monsieur, I think I’m the sketch and you’re the finished work.”

And even though my words were said a bit in jest, this beautiful speech so delighted Quéribus that he clasped me to him and gave me a dozen kisses, saying, “Ah, Siorac! Ah, my friend. I like you so well I don’t ever want us to part company. I open my house, my purse and my stables to you! Good God! I’m ready to give you anything I have, and more! And if there’s any lady in the court you desire, you have only to say her name and I’ll do everything in my power to make her yours!”

It seemed to me that Quéribus was overdoing it and was trying to impress me with his power. I was wrong. For when I’d got to know the court better, I discovered that everything was done to excess in Paris: be it friendship or hatred. A certain gentleman that I heard about,
having been left for two weeks by his intimate companion, went into such mourning that he let his beard grow and gave up eating and drinking, taking only the minimum necessary to survive until the return of his absent friend.

I expressed my deep gratitude as fervently as I could to this friend who, only a hour previously, had wanted to cut my throat: it was my turn to embrace him and plant a dozen kisses on his cheeks, and I told him that the lady had already been selected, that she’d invited me that very evening for supper—to be followed by “dessert”—and that she lived in the rue Trouvevache. When I mentioned this street, Quéribus broke out laughing uncontrollably.

“Ah, Siorac,” he said, “I know the lady. It’s the Baronne des T.! There’s not a decent-looking gentleman at court who hasn’t also been invited to her little suppers, but
caro mio
, it’s very light fare! The lady is an arch-coquette: for soup you’ll have sweet nothings, and the little minx gives nothing away beyond her lips; she keeps you amused with little snacks but the pot roast never gets to the table.”

As he was explaining this, someone tapped him on the shoulder, and, turning round, we saw Monsieur de Montesquiou who, looking as austere as ever with the two bars, eyebrows and moustache, lining his face, told us the hour had now elapsed and that we were to return to the hall where His Highness was waiting for us.

Accordingly, we headed that way, followed, still, by our Panurgic procession, which Montesquiou halted with his raised hand at the entrance to the gallery, Quéribus and I still enjoying our various stories and witticisms, eyes shining and faces smiling, and our cheeks nearly worn out with all the kisses we’d exchanged.

I was so fascinated by the Duc d’Anjou and by the very Italian subtlety of his behaviour (but wasn’t he, after all, the son of a Medici mother and the heir of all the charm, cunning and appreciation of beauty of his Florentine family?) that I was looking forward to seeing
him again and hearing him speak. And yet there was a scruple that was bothering me, scarcely larger than a pebble in a boot that, though it doesn’t prevent you from walking, nevertheless reminds you constantly of its presence: how could I admire the sworn enemy of my party, the victor at Jarnac and Moncontour, the man who murdered Condé by means of the hand of this very grim Montesquiou who was escorting me to him? And if, however, as Delay had pointed out, there were really four kings in this war-torn kingdom—Charles IX, Coligny, the Duc d’Anjou and Guise—why should I be surprised that each of the four, feeling threatened by the others, should plot their rivals’ destruction, and that there should be a series of constantly shifting alliances in order for the four to keep each other in check? And in this present, strange and almost unnatural convergence, in which we saw Charles IX make Coligny his advisor—out of mistrust of his mother and hatred of his brother—Anjou might well enter into some understanding with Guise, though he should have worried more about Guise’s unquenchable ambitions to unseat the entire Valois family, as events later proved only too well. And so the papist party presently had two heads, like Janus, under one bonnet: Anjou and Guise, each of whom was unable to keep from hoping that the other would falter and leave the terrain open to him.

In the midst of such thoughts, I found myself very disappointed that, as we re-entered the hall, Anjou was not there, and nor was the crowd of his courtiers; instead there were only five or six people, among whom I recognized Fogacer, next to a very serious-looking character with an honest face that I liked well enough, and who must have been Dr Miron (who, in truth, did not turn out to be so stupid and ignorant in his practice as Fogacer had said; indeed, quite the contrary). As we came in, a tall, well-built gentleman with a high forehead and a bold look in his eye (who I discovered later was called Du Guast) stepped over to us and said:

“Messieurs, His Highness was unable to wait for you, but was called away by the queen, his mother. Before he left, however, he dictated a letter to the Baron de Quéribus that he asked me to give him.”

Whereupon Du Guast handed the letter to Quéribus, who opened it straightaway, read it and, his handsome face illuminated by the most exalted joy, said, nearly shaking with happiness:

“Oh, God! What a good, loyal and beneficent prince! And if I had a thousand lives to give, I’d offer all of them to him! Read this, Siorac! It is about you as well.”

Reader, I was able to keep this letter, after pressing Quéribus so hard for it that he finally gave it to me, and here it is, sadly written by his secretary, but signed by his hand and composed in his own style:

My Quéribus was practically beside himself with inexpressible happiness at the doublet that His Highness had had brought to him. Du Guast handed it to him, though with what I thought was a jealous smile (due perhaps to the fact that he envied this unprecedented privilege) and the baron put it on and buttoned it, his hands trembling with joy, its splendour inundating his dazzled countenance. I believe he was more honoured with this gift than if he’d received from the king the order of Saint-Michel, or from the papal nuncio a rosary of beads blessed by the Pope.

This princely vestment was made of pale-blue satin (like the one Quéribus had given me), and though it was decorated with as many precious stones and pearls as was the white garment worn by the Duc d’Anjou during our conversation, I am quite certain that the baron counted as of little consequence the monetary value that he might have realized from the sale of these decorations, compared to the intimate and particular favour displayed by the prince and the tender words that had accompanied it in his letter.

But for my part, it hadn’t escaped me that, while Du Guast was counting out one by one into my purse the shiny and tintinnabulating
écus, Anjou had not so much linked Quéribus to me as he had tied the two of us to himself. He had tried, so to speak, to kill two pigeons with one shot of his arquebus, attempting both to rein in duels in his court and to attach us to him, using a combination of largesse and flattery in a letter that he well knew, as he dictated it, would be cherished in time by both of us well beyond the gifts he’d bestowed on us.

Well, certainly, I couldn’t forget that that the Duc d’Anjou was the grandson of a Florentine lord, to whom Machiavelli had dedicated his famous work,
The Prince
. Of course, the duc knew very well that you command the arms and hearts of men as much by honour as by the promise of favours. But in the application of this great precept, this letter displayed such easy finesse. What an example of Italian
gentilezza
, in which nothing was missing, not even real emotion! How astonishing his passage from the formal
vous
to the intimate
tu
when, almost in the same phrase, he orders the obedience of his subject and asks for his friendship! Nevertheless, beneath these caressing words, how could one miss the expression of an authority that brooks no refusal? Anjou had once said: “Others don’t exist when we are not there.” Beneath this velvety paw, the claws were always ready to be bared.