The Rhetoric of Death (6 page)

“True. But never forget, the arts are for imitating nature, Maître du Luc. ‘The monkeys of nature,' as our dear Père Menestrier says so well in his learned treatise on ballets. Are there clocks in nature? No, there are not clocks in nature.”

“But there
is
time,” Charles murmured, admiring a sketch for the Horizon's shimmering costume, half black, half white.

Jouvancy chuckled. “All right, Maître Charles du Luc. I see we will get on together. And whether we do or not, we have a ballet to present in just two more weeks. Not to mention the tragedy.” He cocked his head, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Though I am pleased to have you here, I have been wondering—so late in our rehearsals, a bare two weeks before a show, is a peculiar time to acquire an assistant. Not that I am ungrateful, of course.” He waited hopefully.

Smiling blandly, Charles shrugged and gave the answer he'd prepared. “My superiors decided I had been at Carpentras long enough. In addition to teaching at the school, I had also been a student there, you know.”

“I see. Well, your arrival comes just as I am realizing that this production is hopeless.”

“Hopeless? Do they really dance so badly?”

“No, no, thanks to Beauchamps, they dance very well, most of them. But they do not care
why
they dance. They do not care that the dance is meant to show every movement of the emotions and the eloquence of the soul shining through the body. Without that, it is nothing. Yet these wretched boys only want to show the shapely leg, jump higher than their
confrères
, and wear the richest costume. Though surely you know all that. Boys are boys, even at little Carpentras.”

“True,” Charles laughed. “But as long as they didn't trip over their feet and the ballet amused parents and patrons, the rector there was satisfied.” Though Charles hadn't been. Only rarely had he come across a boy who had it in him to make what he danced burn with beauty. “After all, the ballets are to adorn the yearly prize-giving and provide some enjoyment for the boys near the end of the school year, are they not,
mon père
?”

“Of course, but you are at Louis le Grand now. The king himself is our patron, my dear Maître du Luc, which means that he helps pay for the ballet. As well as the year's academic prizes. Do you have any idea what those suitably bound tomes we give as prizes cost? So the ballet must be superb, because we cannot afford to lose the king's money! Anything less would be an insult, since King Louis was such a very gifted dancer himself. And I do not say that only because he is the king. Look.”

He pointed to the wall behind Charles. Charles turned in his chair and saw a gilt-framed painting of a half-grown boy in a golden tonneau—a stiff, tight-waisted coat standing out over his breeches like a very short skirt. The coat's full sleeves were tied with yellow ribbons at elbow and wrist, and the shoes, heeled and square-toed, sported rayed golden suns. The boy's face was still softly rounded and his silky light brown hair curled on his shoulders. He wore a crown with golden rays, and above it a tall sheaf of waving white plumes.

“That is the king,” Jouvancy said reverently. “Only fourteen, dancing as France's Rising Sun in Cardinal Mazarin's
Ballet of Night
. I was there and I tell you, it was magnificent. My father wanted me to see the king reclaim his kingdom after the horrors of the nobles' revolt—the Fronde, that was, before your time. Anyway, the room—in the Petit-Bourbon palace—was crowded beyond belief, and my father and I, being of little importance, were shoved away in a corner. It was February, but the room was stifling from the crowd, and I soon fell asleep on the floor—I was just ten. The ballet really did last all night, twelve hours. My father shook me awake at daybreak and lifted me up onto his shoulders in time to see our young Rising Sun come in at the east windows. Ah—” Something of the ten-year-old's wonder on that long-past morning glowed on Jouvancy's face. “It seemed to me that the sun himself had truly danced down into our midst. He did his sarabande down the room, with all the Graces dancing in his train. All around me courtiers were weeping and kneeling. Such a fine dancer he was, a beautiful dancer.” Jouvancy sighed. Then he laughed and returned to the present. “Though you'd never think it to look at him now,” he said, glancing down somewhat complacently at his own trim figure, “because he has become a very fine eater. Not fat, really. Just—ah—solid.”

In spite of his current feelings about Louis XIV, Charles was moved by this glimpse of the young monarch reclaiming his kingdom. But he still didn't much want to talk about the king.

“What is this year's ballet called,
mon père
?”

“
Les Travaux d'Hercules
. Hercules represents Louis, of course.”

Of course. So much for not talking about the king. And these labors of Hercules-Louis would inevitably include revoking the Edict of Nantes and outlawing the Huguenots, because college ballet, like court ballet, referred to real people and events. The people and events were always veiled under layers of allegory and symbol, but recognizable to the educated audience that easily read the code of Greek and Roman heroes and their myths.

“Is the ballet your creation, Père Jouvancy?”

“The livret, yes.” The priest picked up the blond wig from his desk and draped it on his fist. It looked like it had caught mange from someone's lap dog. He frowned at it and looked at Charles's thick, springy hair. “Nearly a match,” he murmured.

Charles involuntarily pressed his skullcap more firmly onto his head with his left hand and winced as his old shoulder wound twinged. Yesterday's wet, cold hours in the saddle had taken their toll.

“Are you hurt, Maître du Luc?”

“Just an old war souvenir,
mon père.
”

Jouvancy studied him with a gravity Charles had not seen until now. “Where were you wounded?”

“At the battle of St. Omer.”

“Ah, the Spanish Netherlands. Perhaps, then, you've come to this life as our St. Ignatius did?”

“In a small way,
mon père
. As I am a much smaller man. In the year when I was recovering, someone gave me the story of his life to read and—well—here I am.” Wanting to turn the conversation, he said, “Who is dancing the role of Hercules?”

“Philippe Douté,” Jouvancy said, with a worried sigh. “Our best dancer, who has longed for the starring role in the ballet since he was in the little boys' grammar class. But, I don't know why, lately he has not been as attentive as he should be. And last Friday he was so preoccupied and almost discourteous that Beauchamps threatened to replace him, even at this last minute.” The rhetoric professor picked up a wide, feathered hat, put it on the blond wig, and studied the effect. The mange still showed. “Which I truly pray does not happen, because this is Philippe's last year, and he is a bright, good boy, one of our best. He is also my nephew, I should tell you, so I am not unbiased. But even though he is presently as secretive and sullen as a thwarted courtier, he is a talented dancer and a good scholar. Ah, well, sixteen is a terrible age, all teachers know that.” He smiled at Charles. “Especially those, like you, who are not so very far from it.”

“Twelve years from sixteen,
mon père
,” Charles said, trying not to let his irritation make him sound as young as Jouvancy was making him out to be. In spite of his impressive size, people often thought him younger than he was. He supposed the time would come when he would enjoy that, but it had not come yet.

“Oh, I am not impugning your maturity, Maître du Luc,” Jouvancy said earnestly. “Far from it.” He considered Charles gravely. “I suppose it is your—enthusiasm, I must call it—the impression you give of throwing yourself into things, that makes one think of you as younger than you are.” He eyed Charles for a moment. “As I watched you last night at your supper, I found myself thinking what a bad courtier you would make.”

Panic lurched in Charles's stomach. Jouvancy was all too shrewd, and Charles could ill afford to be as transparent as the rhetoric master seemed to find him.

“Or what a good actor, perhaps?” he suggested lightly.

Jouvancy blinked. “Well, yes, that, too, I suppose. But I hope you were
not
acting and that you are indeed glad to be with us.”

“Assuredly I am glad,
mon père
! Glad and grateful. I was merely pointing out another way to read the evidence—always a danger of being devoted to rhetorical logic, don't you find?”

“Yes, true, there is that.”

He tried the hat on the brunette wig and Charles watched in silence, giving the tension he had created a moment to settle. Then he asked what tragedy they were playing with the ballet.

“
Clovis
—the Frankish king, you know. Though the tragedy seems hardly to matter these days, now that men use their Latin so little, once they leave school. And most women, of course, never learn any.” Jouvancy's jaw set stubbornly. “But our syllabus requires Latin drama.
And
—” He stabbed the air with his wig-draped fist and the hat cocked itself at a rakish angle. “—the audience must sit through the Latin if they want to see the ballet, since we have the good sense to alternate the tragedy acts with the ballet parts. And, of course,
Clovis
has some good swordplay. That always helps hold their interest.”

“Is this
Clovis
one of yours?”

Jouvancy nodded proudly.

“I look forward to it,” Charles said sincerely. Europe's vernacular languages might be shouldering Latin aside in many areas of modern life, but Jouvancy's elegant tragedies were still in demand by rhetoric masters throughout the Jesuit college system. Which pleased Charles deeply, since he loved Latin for itself and the rhetoric master's Latin was exquisite.

“You'll be sick of play and ballet both before August the seventh,” Jouvancy said, but his brown eyes danced. “To work, then, while your enthusiasm lasts, Maître du Luc!” He draped the wig over the sugar cone and opened the ballet livre.

A
bell clanged, and Charles looked up hopefully from the livret in his lap. He'd had more than enough of Hercules-Louis's anti-Huguenot labors.

“ . . . And then,” Père Jouvancy prattled on happily, “the ballet's fourth and final part.” Ballets had parts and entrées where plays had acts and scenes. “The crown of everything that has gone before! This part's first entrée has Hercules throwing down the giants trying to scale heaven—a compliment to Louis's piety in destroying the Huguenots, of course. In the second entrée, Hercules razes Troy—that is Louis destroying the nests of heresy. Huguenot churches,” he added helpfully, as though Charles might not get it.

Charles kept his eyes on the livret and said nothing.

“And the third entrée—Hercules helping Atlas hold up heaven—that is Louis defending true religion. And then the last entrée and the best!” Jouvancy's face was as gleeful as a rule-breaking boy's. “We have a new machine for that one. It's a seven-headed Hydra representing the Huguenots' false religion, and the Opera workmen have made it wonderfully dragonish and horrible! Hercules defeats the monster and sends it back to hell, as our crowning compliment to the king and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes!” Fortunately for Charles, Jouvancy rushed on without waiting for a reaction. “Then comes the tragedy's last act and the ballet's grand finale—with both casts onstage, of course. And after that, we have the dear old philosopher Diogenes—that's Père Montville—descending from the heavens with his lantern. If that cloud machine can be stopped from creaking like the gates of hell! Diogenes brings the boys receiving the laurel crowns and the rest of the prizes onto the stage. And then, grace
au bon Dieu
, we can all breathe!” He threw himself back in his chair and beamed at Charles. “But we cannot breathe yet, because that was the warning bell for afternoon classes. We must hurry.”

He started for the door and Charles got slowly to his feet, staring at the livret in his hand.

“Maître du Luc? Is something wrong?”

“No. That is—I beg your pardon,
mon père
, I was just thinking.” He put the livret on the desk and joined Jouvancy at the door.

“Of what?”

Charles dredged up a smile. “Of what we are readying for the stage.”

“I am glad to see you take it so seriously!
Avaunt,
then, into the lists!”

He plunged down the stairs. Charles followed, thinking that, in spite of his distaste for the strident allegory of both ballet and tragedy, he couldn't hold the little priest's enthusiasm against him. He suspected that, for Jouvancy, the stage and the doings of heroes were often more real than the world beyond the college walls. The rhetoric master seemed to see the Edict of Nantes's revocation the same way he saw Hercules's labors: as a heroic story ripe for stage effects.

Outside in the courtyard, the students had put away their games and were scattering to classes. Jouvancy caught up with a group of older boys and shepherded them briskly toward the rhetoric classroom Montville had pointed out earlier. Feeling his mouth go dry, as though he were once more a student dancer about to step onstage, Charles followed in their wake.

“Your new realm, Maître du Luc,” Jouvancy said over his shoulder, as they went into the weathered stone building and turned left into the classroom. The big room had the usual beamed ceiling and plain plastered walls, but its tall, small-paned windows flooded it with the day's sunless light. The students were taking battered plumed hats from pegs along one wall and hanging up their black gowns. In shirts and breeches, and wearing the oddly shabby hats, they took their places on rows of benches. Charles followed Jouvancy to the small dais, eyeing the dusty tapestry in somber browns and greens that hung behind it. The tapestry showed Socrates forced to drink hemlock by his enemies. Feeling the thirty or so pairs of assessing eyes on his back, Charles wondered if drinking hemlock might be easier than facing new students. His heart was thumping and his mouth was still as dry as the morning's bread. But this happened every time he faced a new class, and he concentrated on gathering spit in his mouth, so he could talk when the moment came.