Heretic Dawn (Fortunes of France 3) E-Book

Robert Merle

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The third book in the swashbuckling Fortunes of France series - devious courtly intrigues build to a horrific and bloody climax in the most powerful instalment yet 1572: Returning from his studies in Montpellier, Pierre de Siorac is ambushed by a jealous PŽrigord nobleman. A duel ensues, and Pierre must subsequently travel to Paris, to seek his pardon from the King. The capital city and the royal court are a disorienting new environment for Pierre: a world of sweet words and fierce pride, where coquettish smiles hide behind fans, and murderous intents behind elegant bows; a world of genteel tennis matches and deadly swordplay, whose elaborate social graces mask a simmering tension that will soon explode to engulf the entire city in one of history's most infamous bouts of butchery - and signal the dawn of a new and bloody era in the history of France. Here, Pierre faces the greatest challenge of his young existence - to make his way through this deceptively dangerous milieu, to win a royal pardon, and finally to escape from Paris with his life, and the lives of his beloved companions, intact. Heretic Dawn is the third book in the swashbuckling Fortunes of France series, after The Brethren and City of Wisdom and Blood. Robert Merle (1908-2004) was born in French Algeria, before moving to mainland France in 1918. Originally an English teacher, Merle served as an interpreter with British Expeditionary Force during the Second World War, and was captured by the German army at Dunkirk, the experience of which served as the basis for his Goncourt-prize-winning Weekend at Zuydcoote. He published the 13 volumes of his hugely popular Fortunes of France series over four decades, from 1977 to 2003, the final volume appearing just a year before his death in 2004.

Leseprobe

Praise for Fortunes of France

“Modern-day Dumas finally crosses the channel” Observer

“An enjoyable read, distinguished by its author’s erudition and wit” Sunday Times

“Swashbuckling historical fiction… For all its philosophical depth [The Brethren] is a hugely entertaining romp… The comparisons with Dumas seem both natural and deserved and the next 12 instalments [are] a thrilling prospect” Guardian

“Historical fiction at its very best… This fast paced and heady brew is colourfully leavened with love and sex and a great deal of humour and wit. The second instalment cannot be published too soon” We Love This Book

“A highly anticipated tome that’s been described as Game of Thrones meets The Three Musketeers” Mariella Frostrup on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book

“A vivid novel by France’s modern Dumas… [there is] plenty of evidence in the rich characterisation and vivid historical detail that a reader’s long-term commitment will be amply rewarded” Sunday Times

“A sprawling, earthy tale of peril, love, lust, death, dazzling philosophical debate and political intrigue… an engrossing saga” Gransnet

“A master of the historical novel” Guardian

“So rich in historical detail… the characters are engaging” Sunday Express

“Compelling… a French epic” Kirkus Reviews

“This is old-fashioned story-telling. It has swagger and vibrancy with big characters… A gripping story with humour and strength and real attention to historical detail” Mature Times

“Swashbuckling” Newsday

“Cleverly depicts France’s epic religious wars through the intimate prism of one family’s experience. It’s beautifully written too” Metro

“A lively adventure… anyone keen on historical fiction [should] look forward to the next instalment” Telegraph

“The spectacular 13-volume evocation of 16th–17th-century France” Independent

“The Dumas of the twentieth century” Neues Deutschland

“A wonderful, colourful, breathlessly narrated historical panorama” Zeitpunkt

“Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who has attained both popular success and the admiration of critics. The doyen of our novelists is a happy man” Le Figaro

Fortunes of France

HERETIC DAWN

ROBERT MERLE

Translated from the French by T. Jefferson Kline

PUSHKIN PRESS LONDON

Contents

Title Page12345678910About the PublisherAbout the AuthorCopyright

HERETIC DAWN

1

THERE’S ONE THING I’M CERTAIN OF. We’re just like the sea—tranquillity is merely a surface impression. Beneath, everything is motion, tumult and undercurrents. So a man should never consider his happiness assured or his soul in peace at last. Once we believe we’re content, we discover something else that sets our appetites on edge.

As I rode away from Monsieur de Montcalm’s chateau, glad as I was to be reunited with my father, looking so hale and happy, and as delighted as I felt that we were on our way to Sarlat, my beloved Mespech and all its dear inhabitants, my joy was far from unalloyed. Every now and again I felt a sudden stab at my heart at the thought of leaving Angelina de Montcalm behind, and of the uncertain happiness we’d vowed to each other, betokened by the pledge I wore on the little finger of my left hand: the gold ring studded with an azure stone that she’d given me in the little turret that flanked the east wall of Barbentane.

“Ha!” I thought. “I’m a Huguenot heretic and a penniless little brother with no inheritance! How dare I tempt Fortune by asking for her hand, even if it’s for her future hand? Given Monsieur de Montcalm’s obvious distaste for me, will she really consent to wait so long, especially given all the studies I must complete and the years of hard work necessary to earn a doctorate and set up practice as a physician? I’ll never have enough bread in my basket to offer her the life to which her rank entitles her—or mine entitles me, for that matter!

“Haven of grace! How I love her! And how forbidding and horrible the idea of losing her! But however much I trust her word, shouldn’t I fear her father’s tyranny, her mother’s intrusiveness, the girl’s own apprehension about growing old while she languishes interminably, never fully certain of her future, in these precarious times, when a man’s life—especially a Huguenot’s—weighs no more in the balance than that of a chicken?”

And yet, in the midst of these worries that so knotted my throat, I derived enormous comfort from recalling her slow, languid and gracious step, the tender light in her doe’s eyes and the marvellous benevolence of her soul. “No indeed,” I mused. “Whatever may befall me, I know I’ve not made the wrong choice! Were I to search the whole world over, I’d never find a woman who joined so much heart to so much beauty.”

My father had decided that we’d go by way of the Cévennes in order to reach Périgord by the mountainous road, rather than take the easier and prettier route through Carcassonne and Toulouse. After the surprise attack on Meaux, where the leaders of the reformed religion, Condé and Coligny, had nearly seized the king himself, the war between Catholics and Huguenots had suddenly spread throughout the kingdom, and since the two cities I mentioned were now in the hands of the papists, it would have been extremely dangerous for us to stop there, no matter how well armed we were. Certainly, with my father, my two Siorac cousins, myself, my half-brother Samson, our valet Miroul, our Gascon Cabusse and our mason Jonas, we were only a party of eight—enough to defend ourselves against any ambushes by highwaymen we might encounter in the mountains, but not enough to confront a royal militia.

In Sarlat and throughout the surrounding region, we were well respected by the papists themselves (except for some of the most bloodthirsty of them) because my father was a loyalist Huguenot and had never taken up arms against his king, but also because he had supplied the city with food during the plague and then, afterwards, rid the town of the butcher-baron of la Lendrevie and his rascals. But in Carcassonne and Toulouse, no one knew us, and we knew that Huguenots were all assumed to be rebels, so that if we were taken, we’d be immediately condemned and put to the sword.

As soon as the mountain roads became too steep to maintain a brisk trot, we slowed our sweating horses to a walk, and my father, pulling up alongside me, and seeing me all dreamy and lost in “malancholy” (as my poor Fontanette would say in her southern dialect), bade me tell him all about my life as a medical student in Montpellier, expanding on what I’d been able to write in my letters, and without embellishments or omissions of any kind.

“Oh, Father,” I laughed. “If you really want the unvarnished and sincere version, we’d better ride on ahead of the others. I wouldn’t want the more shameful parts of my story to be overheard by my cousins or by our men—and certainly not by my beloved Samson, whose dove-like innocence would no doubt be sullied by my account.”

At this my father burst out laughing, and immediately gave spur to his horse in order to put some distance between us and the others. And so I told him everything: my life, my labours, my loves, the incredible setbacks, joys and perils I’d experienced in Montpellier and in Nîmes—though I confess I omitted the piteous demise of my poor Fontanette, not because I wanted to hide it from him, but because I was sure, in the telling of it, to burst into tears, as I had already done at Barbentane, sitting at my Angelina’s knees.

“My son,” said my father when I’d done with my story, “you’re lively, valiant, quick to forgive and quick to anger as well. You take many risks. You always want to right any wrongs you witness, which is a noble but perilous instinct. And though you always seem to be clear-headed in your actions, you seem not always to reflect before you act. Listen well to what I have to say: caution, prudence and patience are the teats of adventure. If you want to live a long time in this cruel century, imbibe their milk above all. Husband Fortune carefully and she will care for you. Nosse haec omnia, salus est adolescentis.”*

As he spoke these words, I looked at my father, overcome with tenderness that he should finish his speech, as I would have expected, with a quotation from Cicero. This hero of the battles of Ceresole and Calais was as proud of his prowess in Latin as he was of his knowledge of medicine, which was his first vocation, as you may perhaps remember, dear reader. Handsome and lithe in his physical presence, without a trace of fat, sitting straight as an “I” on his horse, his eyes a brilliant blue, his hair only slightly grey despite his more than fifty years, he had not changed a whit in all the years I had known him.

“My father,” I replied, “you’re right and I thank you for your wise counsel. I will try to correct my lack of prudence. But,” I continued with a wry smile, “would you be a baron if you hadn’t wagered everything on your first duel, which forced you to abandon your study of medicine to become a soldier?”

“Pierre de Siorac,” frowned my father, “honour dictated my actions, and honour must come first in everything we do. I doubt you could claim the same motive in all the risks that you’ve run. Firstly, isn’t it patently evident that you risk the hooligan’s knife when you frequent rich ladies of the night?”

“That rascal got the worst of it!”

“By a stroke of luck! And didn’t you break every law known to man when you went digging up two dead men in the Saint-Denis cemetery in order to dissect them?”

“So did the great Vesalius!”

“And risked his life doing so! And, by the way, was it to further the work of dissection that you fornicated with a bewitching sorceress on the tomb of the Grand Inquisitor?”

“But I absolutely had to get her away from where we were exhuming the bodies!”

“To get away from her?” replied Jean de Siorac, pretending that he had misheard what I’d said. “To get away from her by having your way with her? That’s a strange way of getting away from someone!”

Here he laughed at his little joke, and I along with him, though I was pretty certain he would have done the same thing in my place, since, to my knowledge, he’d never been able to resist a petticoat, diabolical or otherwise.

“And thirdly, my son,” he continued, still frowning, “where on earth did you get the idea that you should shoot the atheist abbot Cabassus on his gibbet?”

“I did it out of compassion. He was suffering terribly.”

“And it was your compassion, I’ll warrant, that led you to save Bishop Bernard d’Elbène of Nîmes?”

“Naturally!”

“And in that case you did the right thing: your sense of honour dictated that you save an honest enemy from vile murder. But for the grave-robbing, the arquebus shot and the fornication, no excuse. In none of that do I see any attention to the law, reason or prudence. You acted like a madman.”

I had no answer to give him on that score, though I still held my head high, humility not being one of my strong points.

“My son,” Jean de Siorac continued in the gravest tone and turning to look me in the eye, “I have decided that you may not return to Montpellier until our war with the papists has ended.”

“But Father!” I cried, with inexpressible sadness and bitterness. “What about my medical studies and all the time I have devoted to them?”

“You will work at Mespech, diligently studying your books and helping me with dissection.”

Not knowing how to answer this, I fell silent, and, though in my heart of hearts I loved life at Mespech, I couldn’t help feeling bitterly disappointed at having to remain far from Montpellier for such a long time—and, in truth, far from Barbentane as well.

“Pierre, my son,” said Jean de Siorac, who, having guessed my thoughts, considerably softened his tone, “don’t despair. Great love is but fortified by absence. If it should die from such a separation, well, then it wasn’t great enough.”

Which, however true it may have been, wasn’t much consolation.

“For me, your safety must come first,” he reflected, “and that’s why I must pull you away from the troubles in Montpellier as long as papists and Huguenots continue to cut each other’s throats in the name of Christ. François is my eldest son,” he continued, not without a hint of sadness, “and he will inherit Mespech. And François,” he added with a sigh, “is what he is and what you know him to be. But you, my younger son, shine with such valour and talent that I have no doubt that it is in your stars to add great lustre to the name you bear. On the other hand, you are impetuous, imprudent and high-handed. So, God willing, I intend to keep you alive, for you have but one life and I wouldn’t want it to be nipped in the bud, as that would turn my old age into bitterness and pain. For, my son, I shall tell you my true feelings: I value you infinitely more than all my wealth and titles.”

Although exceedingly touched by his words, I could not speak, so tight was the knot in my throat, and tears flowed down my cheeks, for my father had never before told me how much he loved me, no matter how easily he expressed his feelings—being, like me and like the person he had made me, a spontaneous man who always spoke his mind and hid nothing, except from his enemies.

Oh, reader! As used as I was to Mespech (where we arrived by forced march a mere fifteen days after leaving Barbentane), I was very happy to be there again, a prince in this chateau, loved and adored by all, masters and servants alike, and loving all of them in return, right down to the last valet, and, what’s more, rediscovering the sweet embrace of my good old nursemaid Barberine, whose arms wrapped me happily into her bosom that first night at home, while my father reviewed his correspondence. I didn’t fail to ask permission to read the dispatches arriving from the north concerning our religious troubles (for news travelled fast from Huguenot to Huguenot), and pored over them, hoping for news of the victory of our side—naturally desiring, out of love of humanity and the kingdom, an end to this bloody struggle, but also looking for news that would assure my rapid return to Montpellier and to my Angelina.

The fortunes of war seemed, at least momentarily, to smile on us. Having scarcely 2,000 soldiers, Condé and Coligny, with astonishing fearlessness, had been able to isolate in Paris—an immense city entirely won over to the papists—the 20,000 soldiers of the constable, Montmorency.

It was marvellous! The fly was putting the elephant to flight! And worse than that, was starving it to death. Pillaging the villages (except for Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Aubervilliers, which they were occupying), the Huguenots had emptied the barns, burnt the mills and stopped all carts trying to enter Paris. Gonesse bread no longer reached the capital. The Saint-Cloud market was empty: neither butter nor meat could get through from Normandy.

The 300,000 Parisians, gnawed by hunger and even more by the hatred stirred up by their strident prelates, dreamt of attacking this handful of insolent reformists, who had the temerity to make fools of their enemies. But Montmorency temporized. He didn’t want to unsheathe his sword yet—not, as some suggested nastily, because he wanted to spare Condé and Coligny, who were his nephews (a perfect example of this fratricidal war!), but because, being as he was excessively cautious and lacking in nerve, he preferred to await the arrival of Spanish reinforcements before attacking.

However, the Parisians’ unruliness forced his hand, and so Montmorency, to punish their disobedience, set up as his avant-garde a ragged bunch of volunteers, hiding their fat bourgeois paunches beneath their costly, shining armour, who marched out of the city gates in front of the paid Swiss guards. Coligny and his poor meagre devils, dressed all in white, fell upon them, routed them and put them to flight. As they fled, these portly merchants ran full pelt into the Swiss, throwing their ranks into disorder—a turn of events that Montmorency, a man of limited imagination, had not foreseen.

The Turkish ambassador, watching this action from the hillside of the little village of Montmartre, was agape at the daring and courage of our white cassocks. “If His Highness had these whites,” he was reported to have said, “he could circle the entire earth, for nothing could withstand their advance!”

And, indeed, nothing could withstand Condé’s attack, who, at the head of his horsemen, pushed his assault directly at Montmorency. One of Condé’s lieutenants, the Scotsman Robert Stuart, who’d earlier been cruelly tortured by the papists, sought out Montmorency and broke his back with a single pistol shot.

The head of the royal armies now dead, our little army, too small to carry off a victory, withdrew, undefeated, to Montereau, where it sought to increase the size of its ranks, while, within the capital, the Parisians licked their Huguenot wounds, and worked to augment their own numbers. And so a sort of truce was established that lasted pretty much the entire winter, each side working to fortify itself for the decisive battle. And how interminable this winter seemed to me, isolated in my little crenellated nest! I suffered, too, from the frost and snow in Périgord, after the sweet warmth of the Montpellier skies. I wrote to my doctor-father, Chancellor Saporta, to Maître Sanche and to Fogacer. I wrote on every one of God’s days to my Angelina. And I wrote once a month to Madame de Joyeuse and to Thomassine.

I must confess that my body missed these last two as much as my heart missed Angelina. You must understand that it isn’t that I didn’t wish to remain faithful to my sweet angel, but how could I be condemned for such a long time to the gall and bitterness of chastity, I who so appreciated the delicacies of the female body? To be able to manage that, our animal natures, born of those imperious organs (each one of which pushes so hard to accomplish its mission), would have to stop forcing their way into our brain canals! But when these daily pleasures are no longer available, the resulting abstinence cries out to those lively spirits in great number and we are tyrannized in our leisure moments during the day and especially at night when we need to be sleeping. And so, when my daydreams turned to dreams of love, I couldn’t help remembering the pleasures I’d indulged in from time to time at the needle shop and at the Joyeuse residence in Montpellier—thoughts which unsettled me when I wanted to think only of the pleasures that awaited me in Angelina’s arms. Alas, the Périgordian proverb is right: you can’t eat the smell of roast meat; and the bouquet of future loves cannot replace the humble crust of bread whose merit is to be there when our stomachs are growling and our mouth is watering.

At the present moment, to tell the truth, I had nothing—neither the celestial ambrosia nor the earthly crust—being stuck in Mespech like a prisoner, forbidden to visit Sarlat or any of our villages, since the Brethren (my father and Sauveterre) feared for our safety in these troubled times.

I had found Uncle Sauveterre much greyed, his neck even thinner in his Huguenot collar, and dragging his wounded leg behind him. Nor had his perpetually sour temperament improved—he spoke scarcely three words a day (of which two were quotations from the Bible), constantly frowning and muttering about Jean de Siorac’s weakness for Franchou, my late mother’s former chambermaid, though my uncle seemed to dote on the bastard my father had sired, who was already a year old and whom they’d named David.

Franchou, who was nursing him, was already pregnant again, and happy that my father had let her know he’d be content to have a daughter, since at Mespech, he said, with Jacquou and Annet (my milk brothers, Barberine’s sons) there were plenty of males, and he wanted a pretty sweetling to brighten up our old walls. Having heard this, Franchou was able to abandon herself unreservedly to the pleasures of being with child, assured that the fruit of her loins would be well received, for, as much as my father wanted a girl, no one has ever seen a man turn up his nose at the birth of a son.

That winter, despite the cold and snow, we had wonderful Sunday dinners at Mespech, when Cabusse would come from le Breuil with Cathau; our stonemason Jonas from his cave house with Sarrazine; and Coulondre Iron-arm from the les Beunes mill with Jacotte—the three wenches looking so fresh and pretty in their Sunday dress, their lace bonnets perched on their heads, and each carrying a baby in her arms—not to mention Franchou, who was proudest of all of them, since her baby boy was the son of a baron. We never left the table without at least one of the four undoing her bodice and pulling her lily-white breast to nurse her babe—except Cathau, who always turned away while she breastfed since Cabusse was so jealous. But there was certainly enough, with the three others, to satisfy our eyes and soften our hearts, and my father, in his place at the head of the table, would silence Sauveterre’s sardonic sermons with a wave of his hand, so that he could quietly savour the beauty of these nursings, which he never tired of, so much did he love life. Sauveterre, for his part, kept his eyes lowered in his belief that woman is nothing but trickery and the source of eternal damnation—at best an ephemeral pleasure followed by a life of worry. And yet even he was overjoyed at the idea that Mespech’s community of little Huguenots was multiplying, and would carry forward the torch, after we were gone, of the only true religion in this world.

On one particular evening, I noticed Barberine watching Jacotte suckle her little Emmanuel, who, unlike his taciturn father Coulondre Iron-arm, was as noisy a little one as we’d ever had in this house. “Oh, my time has come and gone,” she sighed. “Now that Madame has departed this world,” she whispered, dropping her voice so as not to sadden the baron with her memories, “what am I doing here? What good am I, since all I know how to do is to give milk like a poor cow in the barn? At least when Madame was here, as soon as she knew she was pregnant, I’d get pregnant by my husband so that Madame only needed a part-time nurse at the beginning until I could deliver and provide both babes all the milk they needed. But now what good am I? It breaks my heart to see these strong young wenches giving suck to their babes just as I used to do for the baron’s children. And now look at me! What good am I any more? I don’t even know how to cook a roast like Maligou or run the household like Alazaïs!”

“Barberine,” I replied, “are you saying it was nothing to have nursed François de Siorac, who will be the next Baron de Mespech? Am I myself not going to be a great doctor in the city someday? And my beautiful little sister Catherine, who will someday marry a great lord?”

At that, Catherine blushed with pleasure, lowered her azure eyes and, in her confusion, took her two braids in her mouth. She was approaching adulthood with Little Sissy (the daughter la Maligou claimed to have had by a Gypsy captain, who, through sorcery, had forced himself on her fifteen times in her barn). I remembered how my jealous little Catherine would rage in mute fury when she was three years old and saw me carrying Little Sissy on my shoulders—Little Sissy who was now a grown woman, while Catherine was still a child, having no other beauty than her marvellous face, all pink and white, with her sky-blue eyes, golden hair, full red lips and cute little nose. But as for her body, she hadn’t yet fleshed out, so her legs were long and thin, her derrière and bosom as flat as my hand.

I couldn’t help noticing this difference the next morning, when, strolling from room to room, I entered, full of my own thoughts, the room in the east tower my father called “the baths” because there was a huge oak tub in front of the open fire, which Alazaïs, la Maligou and Barberine had filled with pails of hot water brought from the kitchen.

“Hey, Pierre!” cried Barberine. “Be off with you, my pretty boy! An honest lad doesn’t go peeping at the girls while they’re in their bath!”

“What?” I countered. “Isn’t Catherine my sister? And Little Sissy practically the same? Haven’t I already seen them naked a hundred times when they were little?”

So saying, hands on my hips, I stepped up to the tub, enjoying the sight of these fresh flowers in their natural state. Catherine, blushing crimson, sank down up to her neck in the soapy water, but Little Sissy, devil that she was, suddenly exclaimed, “I’m clean enough, Barberine!” and stepped out of the tub, naked as she was, and had the effrontery to go and stand in front of the fire, turning this way and that to dry herself, batting her eyelashes coyly as she did so, her large, jade-black eyes glancing slyly at me. There was no need for me walk around her to caress her with my eyes: her efforts to dry all her parts exposed her golden Saracen skin to the light of the fire, displaying her graceful arms and her high, apple-like breasts, and, below one of the finest waists you ever saw, her thighs and buttocks nicely rounded, neither too skinny nor too corpulent.

“Oh, you vile strumpet!” cried little Catherine, her blue eyes suddenly filling with bitterness. “You beastly creature! Shameless hussy! Cover yourself, Gypsy witch! You wicked prune! Don’t you know it’s a capital and deadly sin to let a man see what you’re showing him?”

“There, there, my little pearl!” laughed Barberine. “There’s no sin in looking, only in doing. Looking’s not the same as licking! And tasting isn’t taking. But of course, one often leads to the other, as we know all too well. Eh, my little rooster?” she said, turning to me. “I’ve already told you, get a hold of yourself! I know not what designs your master has for this pretty lass, but it’s not for you to go turning her head with your hungry looks before we know what he has in mind for her!”

“Dear Barberine,” I cooed, giving her a peck on the cheek (and on her voluminous bosom, as much for my own pleasure as to pacify her), “I meant no harm, as you know very well!”

“I know you meant exactly the opposite, you rascal!” returned Barberine, half in jest and half in earnest. “You’re breathing fire like a stallion in a field of mares! What a pity you can’t pass on some of this ardour to your brother François, who’s as cold as a herring in a barrel of brine.”

“Oh, he’s not as cold as you think,” I retorted. “He goes about dreaming of his Diane de Fontenac.”

“Dreaming is like meat without sauce,” replied Barberine, “if there’s no touching that comes of it! And how’s François supposed to marry the daughter of the sworn enemy of Mespech?”

Her words immediately brought my Angelina to mind and the obstacle that her parents’ religion put in the way of our cherished project—despite the fact that they liked me well enough—and, suddenly filled with melancholy, I left the women and their bath. But wishing to rid myself of these dark thoughts, I headed towards the hall where Cabusse was giving a fencing lesson to François, who greeted me with a wave of his épée, but nary a smile or a trace of any light in his eyes as he felt very little love for me. What a difference from my beautiful, strong, innocent angel, Samson, who, as soon as he caught sight of me, leapt from his stool, threw his arms around me and gave me a dozen kisses on both cheeks. Still holding his hand, I sat down by his side and watched François, who, to tell the truth, was not a bad-looking fellow, neither weak not awkward in body, able to shoot accurately with both hands, as good a horseman as any and far from ignorant. But he was unbearably withdrawn, tight-lipped, rigid, secretive and infinitely bitter, all too conscious of his rank and of his future barony, haughty with our servants, and, while little Hélix was still alive, haughtily disdainful of my affection for her, clearly preferring his own inaccessible and noble loves.

And there was no doubt about their inaccessibility, for the robber Baron de Fontenac, whose lands bordered our own, dreamt of and breathed and lived only for our destruction, covering his wickedness under the mantle of the papist religion. It’s true that his wife did not resemble him in the least, being of sweet temper and Christian virtues, and in this her daughter, thank God, took after her mother. But these poor women had no leverage against this angry wild boar, who swore vengeance against the Brethren for having had his father banished for his crimes and for managing to get their hands on our beautiful domain, an acquisition which made them not only his closest neighbour but kept him from becoming the most powerful baron in the whole Sarlat region.

Of course, during the time we were ministering to his daughter, Diane, while she was infected with the plague, we’d hoped for some reconciliation since no other doctor in Sarlat would have consented to go near the Fontenac castle and the baron had been obliged to ask my father for help. Jean de Siorac consented only on condition that she be brought to Mespech and quarantined in one of our tower rooms, where he’d managed to cure her—the only lasting impairment from her confinement being the incurable longing that spread to François’s heart.

Alas, this dog of a baron didn’t even have the gratitude of a cur: as soon as the internecine wars that raged among the subjects of the same king recommenced, we learnt that he’d urged several other Catholic noblemen of the Sarlat region to join him in a surprise attack on Mespech in order to destroy this “nest of heretics”. Their scheme was greeted with cold stares from virtually every one of our neighbours, given how much respect the Brethren had inspired in the region, and how little this wicked baron. Puymartin (who, though a papist, was a good friend of ours, having fought with us against the butcher-baron of la Lendrevie) was the first to warn us of Fontenac’s machinations, and urged us to be careful since, having failed to mount a direct attack on us, the rascal might use stealth or ambush instead.

This warning, brought by a horseman on 16th February, redoubled our vigilance and limited our excursions beyond Mespech’s walls. When we did venture out, we went in a well-armed troop with helmets, halberds and pistols, preceded by the Siorac brothers, both great hunters whose sharp eyes and ears were alert to any danger.

At nightfall, our household and livestock were carefully secured behind our walls, all our doors bolted; the massive oak doors of the entry tower were locked and secured on the inside by iron bars, and the portcullis lowered. When it wasn’t raining, we’d put torches in sockets at regular intervals in the chateau’s walls which could be lit at the first alarm and which would allow us to see the number and position of our assailants. To Escorgol, who normally guarded the main entrance, the Brethren added my valet, Miroul (“Miroul’s got bright eyes! Oh yes, but / One is blue, and the other’s chestnut”, little Hélix would sing when feeling some relief from her long agony), so that at the first suspicious sound, Escorgol could dispatch him to us to quietly spread the alarm, since he was so fast and agile.

My father took Samson and me on a tour of the underground passage that had been dug while we were away in Montpellier, and that now linked the chateau with the mill at les Beunes, which was the weak point in our defences. Our mason Jonas had reinforced it with small loopholes in the walls, but it was only a one-storey structure with but a wooden stockade to protect it, and could not have sustained an attack by twenty resolute ruffians with only Coulondre and his Jacotte to defend it. They were brave enough, but Coulondre had only one arm and Jacotte a nursling to attend to.

The mill was an attractive target, for, year in year out, it was full of sacks of grain, since the entire valley brought their harvest to be ground there—not only grains for their flour but walnuts for their oil, and our many swine and Coulondre’s were kept there to enjoy the rich spillage from it—extraordinary treasures in these times of famine, and all too likely to tempt the palates of the bands of beggars afoot in the region. We well remembered that in 1557 (when I was only six) Fontenac took advantage of my father’s absence at the siege of Calais to finance and dispatch a large band of Gypsies to attack Mespech. They’d come very close to taking the chateau, and Uncle Sauveterre had managed to avert disaster only by paying them a large ransom to get them to withdraw.

“But Father,” I protested, “if this underground passage allows us to send help to the mill, couldn’t it also, if the mill were taken, permit our enemy to invade the chateau?”

“Pierre, my son,” he replied, “remember, first of all, that the passage leads to just inside the outer walls of our fortress, and from there you’d still have to cross the moat surrounding our walls, which could only be managed by taking the two drawbridges, the one that links the bridge with the island and the second which connects the island to our lodgings. Secondly, the opening of the passage is secured by a metal grille which can only be opened from outside. What’s more, twenty yards behind this opening another metal grille can be lowered which would trap our assailants in a cage and put them at our mercy.”

“But how would that put them at our merthy?” asked Samson, his azure eyes widening in wonderment while he lisped the word “mercy”, as was his wont.

“By this trapdoor that you see here,” my father explained, “we can creep down to the roof of the passageway that covers the section between the two grilles and hit our trapped enemies from above with lances and pikes and, if they’re wearing armour, with arquebuses.”

“What a pity,” sighed Samson, “to have to kill so many people.”

“True enough,” agreed Jean de Siorac, “but, dear Samson, can you imagine what they would do to us if they were to take Mespech? And to the women of our household?”

This said, he worked the grilles in their casings to make sure he could raise and lower them at will.

During the night of 24th February, scarcely a week after Puymartin’s warning, my father entered my room, lantern in hand, and told me in a calm voice to get up and arm myself for battle, as he feared a surprise attack, since Escorgol had heard some men moving about near the les Beunes mill, and noticed a fire burning in the woods nearby. I obeyed immediately, arming myself, and went down to the courtyard. The night was clear and frosty and I found there, gathered in the most ghostly silence, all of the men of Mespech, wearing helmets and cuirasses, and each armed with a pike or an arquebus.

My father, lantern in hand, had two pistols stuck in his belt. “My brother,” he said to Sauveterre, “I’ll take Pierre, my cousins and Miroul to assure the defence of the ramparts near the lake. You’ll have Faujanet, François and Petremol to guard the ramparts nearest the lodgings. Don’t light the torches set in the ramparts and not a word out of anyone! We’re going to give these villains a nasty welcome! There’s no worse surprise than to be surprised when you believe you’re going to blindside your enemy!”

I was very glad to remain with my father, convinced that, at his side, I’d see some action and earn his praise—all the more so since, once we’d passed the drawbridge, he sent Samson and the Siorac cousins off to patrol the catwalk on the ramparts, keeping only Miroul and me with him, which made me feel even more important. Lantern in hand, though it was hardly of use since the moon was so bright, my father headed immediately towards the exit from the underground passage, but once there, instead of raising the first grille as I thought he would do, he lowered the second.

“What, Father?” I whispered. “Aren’t we going to take the passage and head to the mill to give a hand to Coulondre and Jacotte?”

“Is that what you’d do if you were me?”

“Assuredly!”

He smiled and in the light of the moon his eyes were shining from beneath the visor of his helmet. “Well, you’d be wrong. How do you know the enemy isn’t already in the passage at the other end?”

Of course, at this I fell silent, ashamed of my stupidity. And I was more astonished yet when I saw him, lantern in hand, raise the grille at our end of the tunnel. “Pierre, my boy, once I’m inside, lower the grille again but don’t raise the second one yet—wait until I give my express command to do so.”

“But Father,” I gasped in fear, “what are you going to do, caught in this trap?”

“Hide in a niche in the wall that’s farther up on the right and is just big enough to hide a man, cover my lantern and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Jacotte.”

“So, Father, what must I do in the meantime?”

“Stand ready to raise the grille at the exit. Miroul should be ready to raise and lower the second one. Don’t show yourself. The moon is up.”

I knelt out of sight at a right angle to the grille, straining to see into the inky darkness into which my father had disappeared, crouching in his niche like a fox in its den. His lantern, though covered, emitted a little light, but he knew how to keep marvellously quiet—so quiet that, listen as intently as I might, I couldn’t hear his breathing. On the other hand, I had no trouble hearing the clatter of wooden shoes as Jacotte hurried through the tunnel.

“Who goes there?” hissed my father, without emerging the least bit from his hiding place and without showing his lantern.

“Jacotte.”

“Alone?”

“With my sweetling.”

My father then said something that would have astonished me if I hadn’t understood from the way he pronounced the words that they were a code they’d agreed on long before: “Is the babe well, Jacotte?”

“Well indeed.”

Which doubtless meant that no one was standing behind her with a knife in her ribs, for my father uncovered his lantern and held it out at arm’s length, but without yet showing the rest of his body. I could now see that Jacotte was standing behind the second grille, breathing hard from her run through the passage, looking pale and terrified. She was, indeed, alone.

“Miroul! The grille!” said my father.

And immediately the grille was raised and as soon as Jacotte passed beneath it, it was lowered after her.

“Pierre! The grille!” ordered my father.

I raised the grille blocking the exit and my father, leading the good wench by the arm, emerged with her from the passage.

Jacotte was a tall, robust and resolute lass, who, with the little knife she wore in her belt, had killed a highwayman two years before when he and three others had tried to rape her behind a hedgerow in the fields. Coulondre Iron-arm, who luckily happened on the scene, dispatched the three others—one of the reasons that she’d married him, though he was twice her age. And yet as strong and courageous as she was, she was trembling like a bitch before a wolf, not for herself, but for her husband, who’d ordered her to leave him at the mill.

“How many are they?” whispered my father.

“At least a dozen but not more than two score.”

“Do they have firearms?”

“Oh, yes, but didn’t shoot. And, respecting your orders, Coulondre didn’t fire either. But the poor man,” she continued, her voice trembling, “won’t be able to hold out for long. The rascals have piled some sticks in front of the door and lit them, and oak though it may be, the door’s going to burn.”

“It’ll burn all right, but those villains won’t piss any straighter because of it. Miroul! Go fetch Alazaïs! On the double, my lad, on the double!”

Miroul was off like he’d been shot from a crossbow and, for the few minutes that he was gone, my father, frowning, pinched his nose as he meditated on what he’d do next—and I wasn’t about to interrupt him!

Alazaïs, who, as my father put it, “had the strength of two grown men, not counting her considerable moral strength” (being a severe and implacable Huguenot), appeared, wearing a cuirass with a brace of pistols and a cutlass tucked in her belt.

“Alazaïs,” my father said, “hie thee quick as a bird and warn Cabusse at the le Breuil farm and Jonas in the quarry to arm themselves and be on guard. They may be attacked too!”

“I’m off!” she panted.

“And tell Escorgol to send me Samson and the Siorac brothers. We’re going to lend a hand to Coulondre Iron-arm!”

“Ah, Monsieur!” breathed Jacotte in relief, but couldn’t get another word out through the tears that choked her.

“Jacotte,” replied my father, tapping her shoulder, “go tell Sauveterre where I’m headed, and tell him not to budge until I return. And as for you, take your babe to Barberine and then hurry back and close the grille after we’ve gone.”

Which she did. And so we headed into the passageway, running like madmen, with Samson, Miroul and the Siorac brothers following me and my father, who, despite his fifty-three years, was bounding along like a hare, his lantern extended in front of him. It’s true that the passage ran steeply downhill since Mespech, as its name indicates, is set on a hill and the les Beunes mill is down in the valley.

Coulondre was immensely relieved to see us appear at his mill, though his long, sad, Lenten face gave no sign of it and he breathed not a word nor a sigh. The room which the tunnel opened into was quite large and on our left was the door the assailants were trying to set fire to, and we could hear the flames crackling through the thick oak. On our right was a latticed enclosure that opened onto the pigsty where the sows, piglets and hogs were squealing in panic at the smell of the fire.

“Monsieur,” hissed Coulondre, “shall we save the animals and push them into the tunnel?”

“No,” said my father as he studied the burning door, “there’s not enough time and we have more urgent things to do. My friends, let’s pile the bags of grain to create a rampart that will protect us when they come in, and with the door to the tunnel behind us, we’ll be able to escape if need be. Make a thick pile, shoulder high, so we can hide behind it as they come in.”

We did as he ordered and he pitched in, working as hard and as fast as any of us, his face radiant with the excitement of the work and the impending battle.

All our labours no doubt made some noise, but I guessed that the ruffians outside couldn’t hear us, partly because our entire porcine population was squealing loud enough to break one’s eardrums. Our wall of grain now a yard thick and chest high, with gaps here and there to allow us to see our assailants, we all crouched down behind it. Having lit the wicks of our arquebuses and primed our pistols, we waited feverishly, our hearts pounding, yet secure in the knowledge that we had the underground passageway behind us.

“My brave lads,” my father said, “when I shout ‘God with us!’ stand, make a terrible din and fire!”

“’Tis certain,” growled Coulondre Iron-arm, “I’ll shoot straight at ’em and aim to kill! When I think these villains are burning my oak door with my own firewood!” He said this with heaviness in his voice, but then Coulondre always sounded sad, being so taciturn by nature and lugubrious of tone—despite the fact that he’d done all right for himself, was well paid for keeping our mill and our swine, and, though already grey, married to a strong and handsome young woman who took good care of him.

“Don’t worry, Coulondre,” soothed my father, who held him in great affection. “Don’t worry! Don’t cry over your door. At Mespech I’ve got plenty of seasoned oak and finely cut! I’ll tell Faujanet to make you a new door, even stronger than this one and braced with iron!”

“Thank God and thank you, my master!” replied Coulondre, who’d only complained so that he’d be promised a new door. And however much his grey eyes retained their usual sad expression, I thought I could see a hint of a smile behind them. And I felt secretly happy as well, not only to be here, however much my heart was pounding, beside my father and my brother Samson, not just because it recalled our struggle in la Lendrevie when we took on the butcher-baron, but because this battle looked to be ours, since the villains thought the mill was unguarded and that the miller was, as he always was on Sunday nights, away at Mespech, Coulondre having been careful to make no sound when they had begun their attack.

“Pierre,” my father whispered, “I know how brave you are but don’t be foolhardy. When you’ve fired your pistols, I want you to duck out of sight. There’s no shame in taking cover.”

“Father,” I replied, deeply touched by his great love, “don’t worry! I’ve learnt my lesson. Caution, prudence and patience are the teats of adventure.”

My father laughed at this, but his laugh was as silent as a carp and I, having received such excellent advice, decided that the best thing I could do would be to pass along some good advice to my brother. I elbowed him softly and whispered:

“My brother, remember, I beg you, not to be so slow in firing as you were in the battle in la Lendrevie and when we fought the highwaymen in the Corbières.”

“I promith, Pierre,” he lisped, and as he spoke the door of the mill burst into flames, illuminating his beautiful face, and I couldn’t resist throwing my arms about him and embracing him, which elicited a bit of a smile from my father.

“What an incredible force, two brothers who love each other as you do!” he said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the door in flames. “It’s the same with Sauveterre and me: no one has ever been able to defeat us, and no less so, as you’ll soon see, than this dog Fontenac! My brothers in arms, God keep you! Here we go, I believe!”

When you think about how long it takes a beautiful oak to grow, it’s a pity that it can burn as quickly as this poor door did—and all the more pity that it took so much careful artistry to fashion it. My Huguenot heart bled to see such a waste of this handsome and well-crafted portal—not to mention the massacre these villains would have wreaked on our pigs, our grains and our mill if they’d been able. The bitterness of these thoughts sharpened my anger against these miscreants and eradicated any compassion I might have felt. Clutching my pistols in both hands, I wanted only to dispatch them quickly.

Meanwhile, the fire burned so hot that the iron hinges gave way and a few blows from a sledgehammer and a battering ram finished it off. They’d soon dragged it outside and now had their way clear. And clear they no doubt believed it was, and the house empty, for they crowded inside, as one might say, as grains into a mill, torches in hand, as if they wanted to set fire to everything inside, and our pigs set up an even more deafening wail of squealing.

“God with us!” shouted my father in a stentorian voice. And rushing out from behind our sacks we let out screams that would have unstopped a deaf man’s ears, and the highwaymen were frozen in their tracks and stood open-mouthed in disbelief, changed into pillars of salt like Lot’s wife. We shot them like pigeons, and except for one among them who thought to throw himself on the ground, we mortally wounded or killed all of them. Coulondre Iron-arm leapt forward to dispatch the sole survivor, but my father prevented him from this, and, hoping to interrogate him, ordered that his hands be tied and that he be brought back through the tunnel to Mespech.

This was a good-looking fellow, about thirty years of age, black of hair and of skin like a Saracen, with fiery eyes and a proud mien, and well spoken, it appeared.

We threw him down on the ground in the great hall of Mespech, and my father, standing over him, hands on hips, said with his usual jolly and playful manner, “Your name, you rascal!”

“Captain Bouillac, Monsieur,” the fellow answered proudly, his black eyes emitting sparks.

“Captain!” replied Jean de Siorac. “Some sort of captain you are!”

“At your service, Monsieur.”

“You serve me ill, villain! I intend to hang you.”

“Monsieur!” answered Bouillac without dropping his proud manner. “May I not buy my freedom?”

“What?” spat my father. “Take stolen money from a blackguard?”

“How now? All money is good when given,” returned Bouillac. “What’s more, this money’s honest wages. I was paid for my services.”

“I think,” said Sauveterre, stepping forward into the hall with a furled brow and his usual limp, causing all our people to give way to his dark humours, “I think we should hang this blackguard straightaway.”

“But wait!” replied my father. “None among us was killed or wounded.”

“I still think we should hang the bastard.”

“But wait! Bouillac, where did you get this money?”

“I’ll be glad to tell you, Monsieur, if you accept my offer.”

“You’ll tell all once I put you on the rack!” answered Sauveterre, his eyes burning with anger.

“True enough,” said Bouillac without losing his haughty demeanour, “but torture takes time and you’re very pressed for time. As for me, since I’m destined for the noose in any case, I have an eternity to kill!”

At this flash of wit, which was not without its salt, aftertaste or piquancy, my father broke out laughing in admiration of the bravery of this rascal, and very interested in what he still might learn from him.

“Bouillac,” said he, “let’s talk frankly. How much will you offer us for your life?”

“One hundred écus.”

We all fell silent and looked at each other, so struck were we that a highwayman should have such a hoard. But at the sound of these coins, Sauveterre changed his expression and said, with a cutting tone, “Two hundred.”

“For shame, Monsieur!” said Bouillac. “Bargaining with a beggar!”

“A good Huguenot always bargains!” laughed my father.

“Two hundred,” repeated Sauveterre.

“Oh, Monsieur, you’re strangling me!”

“Perhaps you’d prefer another kind of strangling!”

“Agreed! Agreed!” confessed Bouillac with a huge sigh. “My neck will have it no other way.”

“We have a bargain!” crowed my father. “But now we have a battle against time!”

“Monsieur, while we were preparing to kill your swine and burn your mill, Captain Belves’s band was heading to le Breuil to massacre your sheep.”

“By the belly of St Vitus!” cried my father. “I thought so! How many are they?”

“Seven, with Belves.”

“I thank you, Bouillac. I’m going to head off this attack.”

Rushing from the room, my father ordered Miroul, Faujanet, Petremol and the two Siorac brothers to saddle up immediately and gallop to help Cabusse, who luckily wasn’t alone since he had the Herculean Jonas with him and possibly Alazaïs as well, if she’d been able to reach the sheepfold, which I calculated she would have since she was a crafty wench.

“Bouillac,” said my father on re-entering the hall, “who paid for and planned all this?”

“A brigand who robs and steals without ever leaving the comfort of his chateau or dirtying his hands.”

“Fontenac?”

Bouillac nodded but said not a word, and my father well understood the reason for his reticence, merely looking Bouillac in the eye.

“Monsieur,” said the highwayman, “am I free to go?”

“Certainly, once your ransom’s paid.”

“I’m off to get it,” said Bouillac, “as long as you’ll return my horse to me, and my pistols, sword and dagger, which are the tools of my trade and without which I’m unable to exercise my particular talents.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Sauveterre. “We’ll release you unarmed. If you want your tools, it’ll cost you another fifty écus.”

“Ah, Monsieur,” returned Bouillac, “you’re feeding me poisoned fruit!”

“Fifty écus… or nothing,” ventured my father.

“Nothing?” said Bouillac, frowning.

“Nothing, on condition that you formally bear witness against Fontenac before Ricou, the magistrate.”

Bouillac fell silent and thought about this for several minutes before finally giving in. But little did his testimony matter in the long run, for ’twas in vain that the Brethren brought his evidence to the parliament in Bordeaux, since the papist judges were so inflamed against the Huguenots that nothing ever came of our complaint.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Scarcely an hour after we captured Bouillac, Michel Siorac (who could now be distinguished from his brother by the deep scar on his left cheek from the battle in la Lendrevie) appeared in front of the chateau gate at Mespech on his frothy-mouthed gelding and shouted to Escorgol that they’d killed all the intruders at the le Breuil farm or put them to flight. My father and Sauveterre put their heads together and decided that, after having dispatched the wounded men, they’d pile the bodies on a cart and, in the dark of night, take the dead from the two bands and dump them on Fontenac’s drawbridge.

“Let him bury them,” snarled Sauveterre, “since he paid them!”

But before dispatching the funeral wagon to its intended destination, my father picked out one of the thinnest men killed at les Beunes for us to dissect before rigor mortis set in. Alazaïs carried the cadaver on her back up to the library of Mespech, where, having laid him out on the large table, she shamelessly undressed him without batting an eye. She made no more of a naked man than of a flea and put all her love in the Lord, directing her entire appetite to the Eternal.

Miroul started a roaring fire in the hearth and lit a large number of candles, and, still sweaty from combat, our helmets and cuirasses scarcely removed, my father set about the prosection. He had no compunction about this, even though it was a task which, at the school of medicine in Montpellier, no ordinary doctors would have stooped to, considering themselves too elevated for such work, according to some vainglorious belief that to touch a body would lower them to the level of the labourer, who is considered inferior by the learned physician. The sad consequence of this practice is that the prosector, normally a barber surgeon, ends up knowing a great deal more about the human anatomy than the doctor, since he has delved in with his hands (which no eye can replace) and discovered the physics of the relationships of the organs within the body.

And so it was, by the light of a candelabrum that Miroul held high above his head, that my father, in the silence of our exhausted household (Sauveterre himself having long since gone to bed, hunched, broken and dragging his lame leg behind him like an old crow), cut into the chest of this poor devil, who that very morning had been alive and sure of victory, while I sponged away his blood, to get a better view of his insides.

“This churl had a lot of blood,” I said. “It’s gushing like a cataract!”

“Hah!” agreed my father. “You’re right about that! It flows. And that’s the great mystery of life. Blood flows through our bodies. But why? But how? What force makes it flow upwards when we’re standing? Notice that if blood flowed like the water through the les Beunes mill or the Dordogne or any of our earth’s rivers, our brains would naturally empty of blood and our heels fill up with it the minute we got up in the morning. But that’s not what happens. So blood must possess some mysterious property that moves and circulates it through the body. But what is this property?”

“Do we know what this property is, Father?”

“We don’t yet know completely, but perhaps we’re on our way to discovering it. Miroul, bring your candelabrum nearer. Look at his heart, Pierre. Do you see these little doors? Sylvius in Paris and Acquapendente in Padua have described them in great detail. They’re doors, no doubt about it, or sluices, which, opening and closing by turns, admit or refuse the flow of blood. Is the heart the motor we’re looking for? Servetus thought so, for he wrote about the ‘attraction’ the heart exerts on blood.”

“Servetus? Michael Servetus whom Calvin burned at the stake in Geneva?”

“He burned him for heresy, not because of his medical theories, both of which, to tell the truth, Servetus included in his book Christianismi restitutio, all the copies of which were set on fire and reduced, like their author, to ashes.”

“All of them, Father?” I gasped through the knot in my throat that practically stifled my voice as I remembered the atheist abbot, Cabassus, who was burnt alive on the public square in Montpellier along with his treatise, Nego.

“All but one,” replied my father. “All but one that luckily fell away from the pyre a little singed by the fire, but still intact.† I bought it from a little Jewish bookseller in Geneva on one of my trips there. I still have it.”

And, laying his knife on the cadaver, my father went to look for Servetus’s treatise on the shelves in his library, and, his eyes shining with a strange light, he opened it to a page bookmarked by a ribbon. I’m not ashamed to say that I caught my breath, so possessed was I from head to heel by such a burning desire for learning that it made my heart nearly leap out of my chest.

“Here’s the magnum opus,” he said, his hands trembling feverishly. “My son, I abhor the theology that is set out in these pages, but I treasure the medical knowledge they hold, above all my other possessions, for Servetus has provided a luminous explanation of the function of our noblest organs. Listen, Pierre, open your ears to what I’m going to read to you, for this is the ultimate and unsurpassable summum‡ of the medical knowledge of our times.

“The mass of blood flows through the lungs, and there receives the benefits of purification, eliminating all impurities and fatty humours, after which it is recalled by the attraction of the heart.”

“Oh, Father!” I exclaimed, trembling like a leaf in April. “Read it again, I beg you! What a sublime passage! I feel illuminated by its beauty!”

And so my father, his voice trembling, reread the passage that I’ve just written here in a pen as shaky as his voice was, for I was careful to memorize it word for word, to seal it for ever in the storehouse of my mind. It’s still there, entire, intact and untouched like the most glorious banner ever planted on the shores of a new land by this peaceful explorer of the human anatomy.

“How can it be, Father, that our minds are so suddenly illuminated by the striking clarity of this text? Why is it that we immediately believe it to be true?”