“Shhh, Franchou! They’ll hear us! Are you sick?”
“Only from fear and hunger. But otherwise I’m well. Since my mistress’s death I haven’t left this lodging.”
“I’m going to get you out. Do you think you can climb out of that window? You’re not a slim girl!”
“Of course!” Franchou replied. “I’ve got flesh enough, especially on my backside. But I’ll wriggle through as best I can. Fat mice have to get out of their holes.”
“Very good, I’ll go and fetch what we need.”
And leaving Samson to stand guard over the horses, my father led me through some neighbouring streets, searching in courtyards and sheds for a ladder. When he found one, which took some time because we needed one long enough to reach the attic window, we each took an end, and sweating heavily (for it was quite heavy and the heat overpowering) we came back to the house, greatly troubled by loud cries coming from that place.
“What’s this commotion?” frowned my father, quickening his pace. When we burst into the little square in front of Madame de La Valade’s house, we dropped the ladder in astonishment. Samson, whirling his white horse, pistol in hand, was holding at bay a band of thirty or so beggars, armed with pikes, cutlasses, scythes and iron bars, and two even carried blunderbusses. They surrounded him and our two tethered horses, yelling and growling, though no one had yet dared strike the first blow. Samson had not fired either (as I might have in his place). His angelic face betrayed neither fear nor anger and, with his reddish-blond hair flaming in the sun, he stared at this mob with his blue eyes wide in surprise, and repeated with his charming lisp, “Whath thith? Whath thith?”
“What’s this?” scolded my father in echo. “What do these people want? Be brave, Pierre and have at them!” So saying, and unsheathing his sword—I behind him brandishing my own—he strode into the crowd, distributing blows with the flat of his sabre, careful not to wound anyone, and opened a path to the horses, untied them, threw me the reins and leapt into his saddle. “Turn your horses’ backs to the wall so they can’t get behind us,” he whispered to me. And turning his gelding, which made some space around us, he backed him towards the La Valade house. My black jennet wasn’t as well trained, but I eventually got myself into position on his right with Samson on his left.
At this point, with our reins on the pommels of our saddles, all three of us held our pistols in both hands with our swords dangling at the ready from our right wrists. My father would have attacked straightaway had he had a couple of his veteran soldiers instead of his two sons at his sides. But he didn’t want to risk the lives of his rascals in a street fight. He preferred to talk his way out, all the more so since the populace, though armed, seemed more weak and hungry than truly menacing. “So, my friends!” he cried, rising in his stirrups, in a stentorian yet gay and military voice. “What’s all this fuss? Is this the way you greet visitors to la Lendrevie? Why are you rushing at us like this?”
“To kill you, Baron, you and your two sons!” shouted a large fat man standing at the front of the crowd, whom I recognized by his bulging black eyes, his clothing, his fat paunch and the large knife in his belt as Forcalquier, the butcher of la Lendrevie.
“These are nasty spiteful words!” laughed my father, all the while scanning the crowd and especially the two armed with blunderbusses with a vigilant eye. “Kill me, Maître Forcalquier! You want to try what the English couldn’t do! But supposing you try, those I don’t kill by my hand will die by the rope for this murder!”
“And who’ll hang ’em?” rasped Forcalquier. “La Porte?” (Hoots from the crowd greeted this name.) “That little turd of a police lieutenant is barricaded in his house! He’s scarcely got enough soldiers to guard his doors. And if he had enough to catch us, who’d judge us? The Présidial judges? They’ve fled!” (The jeers increased.) “Baron, figure it out for yourself. There are no more royal officers, bourgeois, judges or lords here. We’re the masters now.”
“And you’re the leader?”
“I am. I, Forcalquier have named myself Baron de La Lendrevie, and high commissioner of justice in these parts. You shall die, then. And your lads with you. Thus has my justice decided the case.” To this affront there was much laughter and applause, but if Forcalquier appeared resolute, those around him seemed to be much more inclined to enjoy his insolent threats than to enact them.
My father, feeling this mood in the crowd, continued his role in this dangerous game without changing tone: “Butcher-baron of la Lendrevie,” he said, reprising the tone of heady humour that had prevailed, “you’re very quick in your work, for never did judge render so hasty a decision! But pray, what may be the motive for your judgement: for what crimes are we to be punished?”
“For having approached an infected house and tried to remove the wench closed up in it. That’s a capital crime as you know quite well.”
“But this wench is healthy, I guarantee it and I’m a doctor! Her only malady is hunger!”
“We’re sick with hunger too!” cried a strident voice from the crowd, and this cry was immediately echoed from all corners of the square in a chant that was fed by lamentation and protest.
“All right, Baron! Enough talk!” shouted Forcalquier. “You hear my subjects! You must die!”
So saying, he pulled his knife from his great belt. Whether this man was brave or simply foolhardy, I cannot tell, for the cannon of one of my father’s pistols was trained directly at his heart. But my father did not fire. “Take care, Master Forcalquier!” he counselled gravely. “After the plague, you’ll be questioned, you and your subjects, about this commotion!”
“After the plague!” cried Forcalquier. “There won’t be an ‘after the plague’!” he pronounced with a great sweeping gesture of his knife as if he were beheading every person in the town. “I have it on divine authority,” he added, his bulging black eyes fixed on my father’s face. “The Virgin Mary appeared to me in a dream and told me, on the faith of her divine Son, that there won’t be man, woman nor child who survives the epidemic in la Lendrevie. Baron, you’ll be preceding us by a very little bit into the kingdom of death. The plague isn’t going to spare anyone here, Heaven has told me.” And he gave a quick slash with his knife in the air. “We’re all going to die!” he cried, raising his voice.
“All! All!” cried the crowd in a lugubrious echo.
And I could see by my father’s expression that he was beginning to fear the worst from these desperate peasants. And yet, when he spoke again, it was with the same jocular and friendly tone: “Good people, if we must die, what will my death profit you?”
“We can eat your horses!” cried one.
“So, my good friends,” my father answered with admirable repartee, “now I understand you and am reassured. It’s not wickedness that drives you, but hunger! And if that’s how it is, then I propose a ransom for our lives and for the freedom of this poor wench: a beautiful fresh side of beef slaughtered just yesterday! I said,” he continued, raising himself in his stirrups, “a beautiful fresh side of beef! My son Pierre will go and fetch it at the town gates. Fresh meat, my friends! You’re going to eat meat!”
I immediately spurred my black jennet through the crowd and valiantly took off like an arrow. The Siorac brothers were preparing to sell the last quarter of beef at the town’s meat counter when I got there. Shouting and waving, I told them to leave off and to follow me. And soon, the wagon lumbered after me with an infernal racket onto the square where my father was still holding sway over the crowd and preventing Forcalquier from getting a word in.
Sweat dripping from his forehead and his eyes, my father heaved a great sigh of relief seeing us arrive, all the more since the Siorac twins, armed for battle, their blunderbusses at the ready, scattered the crowd to either side—though not Forcalquier, who stood his ground, open-mouthed but still clenching his knife.
Immediately reholstering his pistols in his belt and leaping directly from his horse to the wagon without touching foot
to ground, my father—I cannot imagine where he found the superhuman strength to do this—raised the entire quarter of beef over his head, and standing thus, his feverish eyes on the crowd, shouted: “Hey there, Butcher-baron of la Lendrevie, cut up this portion for you and your subjects!”
And suddenly, from up there on the wagon, he hurled the slab of beef with all his might right down in the butcher’s face. So struck, Forcalquier staggered and fell backwards, hitting his head on the paving stones, and lay there unconscious. In a flash, the entire pack of beggars swarmed over him, dropping their arms and rushing like mad dogs at the meat, tearing it to pieces, some with their knives and others with their very teeth.
My father, seeing them occupied thus, leant the ladder against the infected house, and Franchou edged out of the window, feet first, then ankles, and thighs, but alas, being too wide in the middle, she stuck fast in the window frame at mid buttocks. “Ah, my sweet!” cried my father, “you’re too much of a good thing! Push, I beg you, push! Our lives depend on it!”
Twisting, trembling and pushing as hard as she could, Franchou, making plaintive little cries and a rosary’s worth of Sweet Jesuses, finally squeezed through, slid more than she climbed down the ladder and fell into my father’s arms, who, brandishing her as he had brandished the slab of beef, literally tossed her onto the bed of the cart.
In the wink of an eye, he leapt into his saddle and, all of us giving spur, whip and voice and shouting wild cries in our relief to get away, we galloped our five horses out of the square, their shoes raising a hail of sparks on the cursed paving stones of the town.
10
THE MOST PAINFUL PART of the trip to Sarlat for Samson and me was not the adventure in la Lendrevie, but the twenty days of quarantine that we had to spend in the north-east tower upon our return to Mespech. Michel and Benoît Siorac were no better pleased by their enforced reclusion in the room beneath ours. Through the spaces between the floorboards we could hear them take turns—but could never tell which one was talking since they sounded just alike—complaining the whole day long. And long it was: this period was punctuated only by the three meals brought each day by Escorgol. At least these were hearty enough, since my father wanted to fortify our veins and arteries against the entry of the fatal vapours.
My father had chosen Escorgol as messenger since he had survived the plague two years earlier in Nîmes. He had reason to believe that, having once triumphed over the venom, his body would chase it away again if attacked. Having received this assignment—as well as that of maintaining a hearty fire in each of our fireplaces—Escorgol was relieved of his duties as watchman at the gatehouse and replaced there by my father, who spent the term of his quarantine on the ground floor and Franchou hers on the first. It was my father who decided on this distribution, and I note from a brief but bitter allusion in the Book of Reason that Sauveterre would, had he been consulted, have made a different arrangement.
From the second day of our captivity onwards, Uncle de Sauveterre, fearing the effects of laziness, had us brought our Titus Livius and Latin dictionaries, as well as The History of Our Kings (which he had copied for us by hand), with instructions to translate one page of the first and to learn two pages of the second each day. Lastly, we were brought the Bible, with orders to read marked passages out loud thrice daily.
In his written instructions, Sauveterre exacted from me a promise not to help Samson with his Latin, but, in my written reply, I respectfully declined to make such a promise, since, as I argued, if Samson were deprived of Sauveterre’s usual help, he ought at least to have mine, without which he might quickly become despondent, since he took his studies so much to heart. And, after some reflection, Sauveterre consented on condition that I underline those passages I’d helped him with. Not that Samson was so bad in Latin, but he was weak in French, and it was precisely into French and not into langue d’oc that we had to translate our Latin. I was pretty fluent in the language of the north, since, while she was alive, my mother exhibited the elegant affectation of speaking only in French when addressing me or my father, who, for his part, also resorted to this tongue when talking about medicine. But poor Samson had had none of these advantages and was the sorrier for it.
I made other written requests to Sauveterre that met with varied responses: 1. “May I ask Escorgol to bring us two swords and two breastplates?”—“Granted. But take care in your enthusiasm not to poke his eyes out.” 2. “May I send Escorgol to fetch my cup-and-ball game?”—“Refused. You are no longer of an age, my nephew, to be wasting your time on such frivolous enjoyments.” 3. “May I correspond with my father about the plague?”—“Granted.” 4. “May I write to Catherine and to little Hélix?”—“Refused. You have nothing to say to these girls of the least consequence, either for them or for yourself.”
This was hardly my view of things, nor little Hélix’s, as the short note she succeeded in slipping under our bolted door one morning proved so well:
Dere Pier, I gav a notte for u to that wikid portur, butt he gav it to Soveterre who redit and putt it in the fire and ordurd Alazai to whipped me. Ha! mye pur reer! Butt thas nothing. Dere pier, mye thauts are about u all da longe and it mayks me very saad. Hélix.
I too, locked away in the north-east tower, had “thauts about little Hélix all da longe”, especially in the evening, when I’d blown out my lamp, and was alone in my bed with no one to snuggle up against. How sweet was my sleep after we’d tired ourselves out with our little games and I could rest my head on her sweet breasts, my left arm under her waist and my right leg draped between hers. Alas, poor little Hélix, where are you as I write this? In hell, or in Paradise? Even today I cannot think it such a great sin to have enjoyed such happiness, peace and quiet in your silky arms, nor such an iniquity that you fluttered around me with your happy chirping to entice me into your nest.
The room where we were sequestered was quite large, airy and wonderfully aromatic, for it served as our apple cellar with all our apples set out on screens, wrinkled, rumpled and shrivelled like a baby’s skin, but not rotten, though it was already July. Added to their delicious smell was the odour of the aromatics which burned day and night in the fireplace along with resins, which crackled in the flames. With this fire inside and the fire of the July sun outside, we toasted in an oven despite the open windows. It was even worse during our fencing practice, our torsos sweltering under the heavy breastplates. Our swordplay done, our sabres in place against the wall and our armour removed, we threw ourselves naked on our beds, panting, gasping for breath, our bodies bathed in sweat.
“Sweat,” wrote my father in answer to my anxious questions about prevention of the plague, “is one of the best remedies against contagion. That’s why Gilbert Erouard, a medical doctor at Montpellier (I hope, my son, that someday you shall study under him, for he is a very wise man), recommends the pestiferous to swallow a large glass of pickled anchovies every morning. This strong drink provokes abundant sweating and can produce a cure. Also, according to Erouard, salt—which we use as you know to preserve pork—consumes the unspeakable putrefactions that the venom introduces into the sick person’s body.
“Some doctors greatly value scorpion oil. They marinate 100 scorpions in a litre of walnut oil and administer this remedy, mixed with an equal amount of white wine. The drug provokes violent vomiting and thus, according to these doctors, attracts the venom and succeeds in evacuating it.
“I am not sure what to think of so brutal a cure,” wrote my father, “since the plague victim shows a great inclination to vomit anyway, and I do not see the need to add to it.
“I cannot see what advantage is to be gained by purging him, since he suffers already from a continual dysentery. Also, in my view, bleeding can only further debilitate the patient, when he is still so weak. And the same would be true of dieting.
“I have seen surgeons—oh what an ignorant race of men!—cauterize plague victims’ buboes with red-hot irons, and others attempt to cut them away with knives
. But those practices are as barbarous as they are useless. The bubo needs to drain without any intervention other than removing the pus, for if it evacuates it’s a sign that the venom seeks issue from the body. We must therefore allow it to egress.
“I administered theriacal water to Diane de Fontenac, which I’d confected from a number of different herbs and spices crushed in white wine: angelica, myrtle, scabious, juniper, saffron and cloves. I limited my care to this sole remedy, all the while making sure to feed the patient, to have her drink plenteously, and to keep her clean. I also worked to keep her fever down, and minimize her fears of death with words of hope. All else is prayer.”
This letter, which I’ve kept along with all the others my father wrote me, is proof enough, if such proof were lacking, that my father was, as Monsieur de Lascaux (who, great doctor though he was, had fled Sarlat at the first alarms of the plague) put it, “a heretic in medicine as in religion”. For, other than the theriacal water, he seemed to place no trust in the majority of the most celebrated remedies for the plague, including the pickled anchovies and the scorpion oil, which, years later, I still heard discussed by the doctors at Montpellier.
Oh, how slowly the time dragged by for me during my quarantine! Every day seemed a month—a month of very long days… And how great my languor and mournful indolence would have been—despite Titus Livius, the Bible and our kings—if I hadn’t had Samson’s company. What a godsend he was! To live twenty days, nay twenty times twenty-four hours, locked in close quarters with your brother, without the slightest cloud, nor the least hint of a quarrel or squabble, and end up loving him even more than before (if that’s possible), shows of what pure metal this brother was made, for, as for me, I know all too well of what imperfect stuff I am devised.
I’ve already described him, no doubt, but I want to recall his portrait once again: Samson was, first of all, handsome, of such a beauty to light up the darkness; his hair was strawberry blond, capping his robust appearance; his eyes of an azure blue; his skin as pale as his features were harmonious. I do not even speak of his face nor of his body, which were to become with the years worthy of a statue in their virile symmetry. But his great beauty, his grace and his infinite charms were but the outward and visible symbols of the soul that inhabited this envelope.