Paris: The Novel (89 page)

He glanced around. It was a quiet, sleepy evening. Hardly anyone was moving about in the square.

He stepped back into the carriage and closed the door.

She had removed her gown. He could see that she had a splendid body. She reached out her hand to pull him toward her.

The coachman did not return for over an hour.

It was October when Geneviève told her sister.

“Does your husband know?” Catherine asked.

“I told him.”

“Does he think the baby could be his?”

“No. It’s impossible.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Geneviève told her everything.

“You’re insane!” cried Catherine.

“I know.” Geneviève shook her head. “I can’t believe I did it.”

“Why? Was it the risk? The danger?”

“Yes. That made it exciting. I was so bored. I wanted something … exciting to happen.”

“Does Perceval know what you did? I mean, going out into the streets like that and …?”

“No. I lied to him about that. He thinks it was something that suddenly happened … A moment’s madness … You know.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Preserve the honor of the family name, of course. What else?”

•  1685  •

Perceval d’Artagnan gazed at his daughter Amélie. He was a medium-sized man with a potbelly, and the long wig that was the fashion of the day disguised the fact that he was entirely bald. Whoever Amélie’s real father
was, d’Artagnan thought, he seemed to have bequeathed her a fine head of dark brown hair. In other respects, she looked very like her mother.

Amélie herself, of course, had no idea. She thought he was her father. She loved him as a father. So he found himself torn.

How could he not love the pretty little child who would come running up to him in total innocence and put her hand in his? The child whom he carried on his shoulder and taught to ride? She was sweet-natured, truthful, everything he could have desired in a daughter. He loved her for herself.

And only sometimes, when he was quite alone, did he secretly allow himself to feel the black rage, the hatred that was in his heart—not for the child herself, but for his wife.

Geneviève had not been unfaithful to him again. She had sworn an oath and he’d been sure she would keep it. For the last twenty years they had gotten along together as well as most married couples. Some affection had grown up between them, especially because of his kindness to little Amélie. But during those years he had learned another sad truth: Small wounds are healed by time; but time can only bandage great wounds, which continue to bleed in secret.

And now Amélie was in love. She was not yet twenty. Her mother had discovered the state of her feelings the day before, and had asked him to talk to her.

“My child,” he said, firmly, but as kindly as possible, “You can’t marry this man, you know.”

She stared at him miserably.

“Is he intending to ask for your hand?”

“He loves me. I am sure he loves me.”

He smiled at her fondly and shook his head. The whole business was absurd, but he knew that didn’t make it any easier for Amélie.

If only Geneviève’s sister hadn’t married a tradesman, none of this would have happened. In all likelihood, Amélie would never have met Pierre Renard. But of course, when she went to see her cousins, she met all sorts of townspeople like him, whom she would not have been familiar with in her own home.

Pierre Renard was a pleasant, handsome man in his late twenties. He was a younger son, but his family were modestly wealthy. Any young girl might have fallen in love with him.

But he couldn’t marry Amélie.

In the first place, he was a Protestant. Until late in the reign of Henry IV, his forebears had been good Catholics. But then his grandfather had married a second wife who was Protestant and converted himself. Pierre’s father had built up a considerable fortune, but never returned to the Catholic faith. Whether nineteen-year-old Amélie, seriously in love for the first time, imagined that she could convert her husband back to the true faith, or whether she planned to become a heretic herself, d’Artagnan did not know. He didn’t even need to find out.

For a second objection overrode even the religious one. Pierre Renard was not noble.

“I couldn’t let you lose everything that your nobility gives you, my child,” he told her. “When you are older you will thank me for saving you and your children from such a terrible and permanent blow.”

It was true that he was saving her from herself. But there was another thought, equally important, in his mind. Whatever the circumstances of her birth, she bore his name. His family honor was at stake. No one bearing the name of d’Artagnan was going to marry out of the nobility.

“You must put this young man out of your thoughts, Amélie, and you must not see him again.”

As she left the room, he could see that she was about to weep, but there was nothing else to be done.

His eldest son and daughter were both married, quite happily, into noble families like his own. He’d known that it was time to find a husband for Amélie too. This little incident was a reminder that he’d better make a start.

The letter he had received that morning came at an opportune moment, therefore. He decided to reply to it at once.

The following days were hard for Amélie. When she had confessed to her mother that she was in love, she hadn’t told her everything.

The crisis had begun after she confided her feelings for Pierre Renard to her cousin Isabelle. Isabelle had told her brother Yves, who’d discovered from Pierre that he was in love with Amélie, but that since she was both noble and Catholic, and he couldn’t abandon his Protestant faith, he thought there was no hope. Isabelle had passed this information back to Amélie.

“If he asked me, I’d probably elope with him,” said Amélie.

“But what about his religion?” Isabelle had objected.

It was certainly true that in the last few years, life had become much more difficult for the Huguenot community. Louis XIV believed the old adage: “The people follow the faith of their king.” He liked order. Protestants in a Catholic country meant disorder. And he could point to the earlier troubles in France and in many other countries to prove his assertion.

King Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes had protected the Huguenots for more than eighty years. But nowadays, the Sun King was putting more and more pressure on them to convert. He’d even started quartering cavalry troops in Protestant households, making the owners’ lives a misery. And there was every sign that the persecutions were likely to get worse.

“You’d have to be mad to become a Protestant now,” Isabelle told her.

But Amélie was too much in love to care.

She didn’t care that he wasn’t noble either. When she looked at the lives of her cousins, they seemed quite happy, living without the social burdens and prohibitions that were the price to be paid for a noble’s pride and tax reliefs.

Wisely, she didn’t say any of this to her parents.

But she thought of Pierre. She thought of him constantly. She yearned just to be in his presence. If only she could talk to him.

What a fool she’d been to confess her secret to her mother. She had little doubt that her cousins would have let Pierre know her feelings for him by now. If she’d just kept her mouth shut with her mother, she and Pierre might have met at her cousins’ house, just as they had before. She could have given him an opening. They might have reached an understanding. Even if he’d told her that love between them was impossible, that would have been something. He could have told her that he loved her all the same.

Instead of which, she was left in doubt. Her parents were keeping her away from her cousins, so there was no news from them. She kept hoping, foolishly, that he would appear, that he’d come to the house to see her father and ask for her hand. He might be refused, but the fact that he’d come would have meant the world to her. She knew it made no sense. Her father’s house lay a short way west of the Cardinal’s Palace—the Palais Royal as it was called now—and she’d stare out her window moodily into the rue Saint-Honoré, in case he should go by. If he’d come to the window with a ladder, she’d have scrambled onto it. An even more absurd idea. But she couldn’t help it. These were her sad daydreams.

It was on a Friday in mid-October that her mother came into her bedroom and gave her a strange look.

“There is news that you should know, Amélie. Yesterday the king took a great decision. He is revoking the Edict of Nantes. It will become law on Monday.”

“What will that mean for the Protestants?” Amélie asked.

“They will all be forced to become Catholic. The king is sending troops to all the main routes out of the kingdom to stop the Huguenots from escaping.”

“Then Pierre Renard will be a Catholic.”

“No doubt.” She looked at her daughter sadly. “It won’t help you, Amélie. He still won’t be a noble.”

On Monday, the Revocation became law.

On Wednesday, her aunt Catherine came to the house, accompanied by Isabelle. Amélie anxiously took Isabelle to one side to ask if there was any news of Pierre Renard.

“You haven’t heard?”

“I’ve heard nothing.”

“Pierre Renard has vanished.” Isabelle took her by the arm. “You’d better forget him, Amélie. The whole family’s gone. Nobody knows where they are. But I don’t think he’ll be coming back.”

All over France, a similar pattern could be found. Some families acted at once, others waited for months. But the Edict of Fontainebleau, as the king’s order was called, had just made their lives impossible.

All Protestant churches were to be destroyed and any Protestant religious meeting, even a small group in a private house, was illegal. The participants would have all their property seized. Any child born to a Protestant parent was to be baptized Catholic and sent to Catholic schools. Failure would mean a huge fine of five hundred livres. Protestant ministers had two weeks to renounce their faith or leave France. If caught after that, they’d be sent to the galleys. Ordinary members of the Protestant congregation trying to leave France would be arrested. Men to the galleys, women stripped of all their possessions.