Angelique Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 7
Angelique - Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 7 - Read online
ANGEUQUE WAS SITTING in the Venetian gallery of mirrors
in the palace. She did not yet know what she was going to do and what her
attitude would be. Since her return that morning from the pavilion on the
Garonne, she had not seen Joffrey de Peyrac. Cement informed her that the
Count had shut himself up with Kouassi-Ба the Moor in the laboratory.
Ang£lique bit her lips angrily. Joffrey might not appear again for hours. But then she didn’t want him to, anyway. She did not care one way or the other. She was still too annoyed by the hoax he had played on her the night before.
She decided to go to the pantry where today the first liqueurs of the season were being bottled. The table set at the Palace of Gay Learning was reputed to be the most exquisite in the province. Joffrey de Peyrac took great personal pains with the menus of fered to his guests, and Clement, who had undeniable talents in this respect, had assumed an important role in the palace menage.
Hardly, however, had Angelique reached the kitchens, which today smelt of oranges, aniseed and aromatic spices, when a breathless little blackamoor came to announce that the Baron Benoit de Frontenac, Archbishop of Toulouse, asked to pay his respects to her and to her husband.
Morning was not the usual time for visits, which were normally made in the cooler hours of the evening. Moreover, for several months now, after goodness knows what new quarrel over precedence, the Archbishop had not set foot in the palace of the Comte de Peyrac, whom he accused of challenging his own influence over the minds of the Toulousians.
Intrigued and vaguely disturbed, Angelique removed the apron she had just pinned to her dress and quickly smoothed her hair. She wore it rather long and falling in curls over her lace collar as was the fashion. She arrived in the entrance hall and saw the tall figure of the Archbishop in red robe and white cape-collar at the top of the flight of stairs. Down in the gardens, Monseigneur’s escort, his lackeys with swords at their sides, his pages and grandees on horseback, made a great deal of noise around the carriage and its six bay horses.
Angelique dropped down on her knees to kiss the pastoral ring, but as she rose again the Archbishop kissed her hand, to indicate by this worldly gesture that his visit was devoid of solemnity.
“Please, Madame, don’t let your genuflexions make me measure the weight of my age compared with your youthfulness.”
“Monseigneur, I only meant to show you the respect I feel for an illustrious man clothed in the dignity conferred on him by His Holiness the Pope and by God Himself.”
Meanwhile the prelate had removed his hat and gloves and was handing them to one of the young abbes in his retinue, whom he motioned to leave.
“My suite will wait for me outside. I would like to talk to you, Madame, far from frivolous ears.”
Angflique cast a mocking glance at the little аЬЬё who was being accused of having frivolous ears, and who was blushing.
In the salon, the young woman, after ordering refreshments, apologised for her husband’s absence. She would have the visitor’s presence an¬nounced to him.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting myself. I was in the pantry supervising the confection of our liqueurs. But I am wasting your time, Monseigneur, in talking of these trifling details.”
“Nothing is trifling in the eyes of Our Lord. Think of the servant Martha. It is rare in our days to see a great lady busy herself with house¬hold affairs. Yet the mistress of a house sets the example of dignity and diligence for heir servants. And when, as in your case, the grace of Mary mingles with the goodness of Martha . . .”
But the Archbishop’s voice sounded preoccupied, and the worldly banter did not seem an art he relished. Despite his fine bearing and the deliberately forthright gaze of his blue eyes, there was something suspicious about him that always struck one. Joffrey had observed one day that the Archbishop was a man who excelled at making people feel guilty.
After rubbing his hands thoughtfully, he repeated that he was very happy to see again die young woman, who had made so few appearances at the episcopal palace since that already distant day when he had of ficiated at her marriage at the cathedral.
Suddenly he asked her:
“Do you, Madame, know anything about your husband’s work as an alchemist?”
“Indeed I don’t,” replied Angelique, unruffled. “The Comte de Peyrac has a taste for the sciences. . . .”
“He is even said to be a great scientist.”
“I believe it. He spends long hours in his laboratory, but he has never shown it to me. No doubt he considers that this sort of thing is of no interest to women.”
She opened her fan and made use of it to conceal a smile or perhaps a sense of discomfort which she felt under the prelate’s piercing eyes.
“It is my duty to sound the hearts of men,” he said as if he had detected her confusion. “But do not be perturbed, my daughter. I can see in your eyes that you are upright and, despite your young years, of outstanding character. And there may still be time for your husband to repent of his faults and abjure his heresies.”
Angёlique uttered a little cry.
“But I swear to you that you are mistaken, Monseigneur. It may be
that my husband does not conduct himself like an exemplary Catholic, but he has no concern whatsoever with the Reform or other Huguenot beliefs. I even heard him mock those ‘sad beards of Geneva* who, he says, have been commissioned by Heaven to deprive all mankind of their love of laughter/’ ..
“Deceptive words,” said the prelate sombrely. “Are not notorious Protestants constantly seen visiting his home, your home, Madame?” “They are scientists with whom he discusses science, and not religion.” “Science and religion have intimate bonds. I have been informed recently that the famous Italian Bernalli paid him a visit. Do you know that this man, after being in conflict with Rome over his impious writings, has taken refuge in Switzerland, where he became converted to Pro¬testantism? But let us not tarry over these significant signs of a state of mind I deplore. The question that has intrigued me for many years is this. The Comte de Pcyrac is a very rich man and getting ever richer. Whence comes this vast profusion of gold?”
“But, Monseigneur, does he not belong to one of the oldest families in Languedoc, related even to the ancient Comtes de Toulouse, who had as much power over Aquitaine as the Kings in the Ile-de-France?”
The prelate gave a little scornful laugh.
“That is correct. But titles of nobility don’t signify riches. Your husband’s very parents were so poor that the magnificent palace where you reign today was falling to ruin, and this no more than fifteen years ago. Did Monsieur de Peyrac never talk to you about his youth?”
“N . . . no,” murmured Angelique, surprised by her own ignorance. “He was the youngest of the family and so poor, I repeat, that at sixteen he sailed to distant lands. He wasn’t seen again for many years and was believed to be dead, when he suddenly reappeared. His parents and his elder brother had died. Their creditors had split up the estate among themselves. He bought back the lot and, ever since, his fortune has grown constantly. He happens, moreover, to be a nobleman who is never seen at Court, he even makes a show of keeping away from it and he is not in receipt of any royal pension.”
“But he has land,” said Angelique, who felt oppressed. “In the moun¬tains he breeds sheep from which he obtains wool. He has a big cloth factory to weave the wool, olive groves, silkworm-breeding farms, gold and silver mines. . . .”
“Gold and silver, you say?”
“Yes, Monseigneur, the Comte de Peyrac owns numerous quarries in France from which he claims he extracts quantities of gold and silver.” “How appropriate a term, Madame,” said the prelate in a suave voice.
“From which he claims he extracts gold and silver! . . . That’s what I wanted to hear. The dreadful assumption is getting stronger.”
“What do you mean, Monseigneur? You alarm me.”
The Archbishop of Toulouse lagain fixed upon her his clear gaze, which grew as hard as steel. He said very slowly:
“I do not doubt that your husband may be one of the greatest scientists of our time; that’s why I believe, Madame, that he has actually discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, that is to say Solomon’s secret of manufacturing gold by magic. But what path has he taken to reach this goal? I greatly fear he has acquired this power by a pact with the devil!”
Once more Angeliquc held the fan before her lips in order not to burst out laughing. She had expected an allusion to the real pact in which the Count was involved and of which Molines and her father’s confidences had given her some hint; she was not without apprehension, for she knew that such activities on a nobleman’s part represented a stain that could throw discredit on his house. Therefore the odd charge made by the Archbishop, who was said to be a man of great intelligence, struck her at first as being extremely funny. Was he speaking seriously?
In a sudden flash she recalled that Toulouse was, of all the cities of France, the one where the Inquisition had still maintained a headquarters. The dreadful medieval institution of the tribunal against heretics preserved powers in Toulouse that even the King’s authority did not dare to contest.
The laughing city of Toulouse was also the red city which had massacred the greatest number of Huguenots in the course of a century. It had seen, long before Paris, its own bloody St. Bartholomew’s Night. Religious ceremonies were more numerous here than anywhere else. It was a real ‘ringing island’ with its bells perpetually calling the faithful to service, a city quite as much submerged under crucifixes, holy pictures and relics as under flowers. The Spanish flame smothered the pure Latin clarity in¬herited from former Roman conquerors. Side by side with the brother¬hoods of pleasure, such аз the ‘Princes of Love’ and the ‘Abbots of Youth’, famous for their pranks, one could meet in the streets processions of flagellants, their eyes glowing with mystical passion, slashing them¬selves with switches and thorns till the pavement ran with their bloody traces.
Angelique, caught up in die whirlwind of a life of pleasure, had never given much thought to this aspect of Toulouse. But she was aware that it was the Archbishop himself, this man seated in front of her in the tall tapestry arm-chair and raising a glass of iced lemonade to his lips, who was still the Grand Master of the Inquisition.
Therefore it was in a sincerely disturbed voice that she murmured: “Monseigneur, you cannot possibly level a charge of witchcraft against my husband. ... Is not gold-making a current practice in this country which God has endowed with His richest gifts, scattering in its soil gold in a pure state?”
She added shrewdly:
“I have been told that you yourself employ teams of gold-washers who rinse the gravel of the Garonne in baskets and of ten bring back a booty of gold sand and nuggets with which you relieve much poverty.”
“Your objection is not devoid of common sense, my daughter. But it’s just because I know something of the working of the soil’s gold that I maintain that were one to wash the gravel of all the rivers and brooks of Languedoc, the yield would still not amount to half of what the Comte de Peyrac appears to possess. I am well informed, believe me.”
‘I do not doubt it,’ thought Angelique. ‘It’s true the Spanish gold traffic on mule-back has been going on for a long while. . . .*
The blue eyes watched her hesitation closely. She snapped her fan shut rather nervously.
“A scientist is not necessarily a henchman of the devil. Aren’t there supposed to be scientists at Court who have set up a glass lens to look at the stars and the mountains of the moon, and doesn’t the King’s uncle, Monsieur Gaston d’Orleans, indulge in these observations under the guidance of the Abbe Picard?”
“Yes indeed, and I know Abbe Picard personally. He is not only an astronomer, but the King’s Grand Geometrician.”
So you see . . .
“The Church is broad-minded, Madame. She has authorised all sorts of researches, even the most daring, like that of Abbe Picard whom you mentioned. I go even farther. I have under my command, at the Arch-bishopric, a very learned monk, of the Franciscan Order, Friar Becher. He has been doing research work for years on the transmutation of gold, but with my authorisation as well as with Rome’s. I confess it has cost me a great deal so far, particularly in special materials which I have to import from Spain and Italy. This man, who knows the most ancient traditions of his art, asserts that, in order to succeed, one must have a higher re¬velation which can only come from God or Satan.”
“And has he succeeded?”
“Not yet.”
“Poor man. He must be on bad terms with both God and Satan, despite your high protection.”
Angelique bit her lips, immediately regretting her malice. She thought
she was going to stifle and felt obliged to blurt out any kind of foolishness to free herself from this constraint. The conversation seemed to her as silly as it was dangerous.
She turned towards the door, hoping to hear her husband’s uneven step approaching in the gallery, and gave a start.
“Oh! you were here all the time !”
“I’ve just come this moment,” said the Comte, “and it is unforgivable, Monsieur, to have kept you waiting so long. I must admit that your visit was announced to me almost an hour ago, but it was impossible to interrupt the very delicate handling of a certain retort.”
He was still dressed in his alchemist’s smock, which touched the ground. It was a sort of wide shirt, on which the embroidered signs of the zodiac mingled with vari-coloured acid stains. Angflique had no doubt that he had not changed his clothes out of a certain obstinacy, just as he made a point of calling the Archbishop of Toulouse ‘Monsieur*, thus putting himself on an equal footing with the Baron Benoit de Frontenac.
The Comte de Peyrac motioned to a footman in the ante-room, who helped him to take of f his garment. He then approached and bowed. A ray of sunlight made the heavy, lustrous locks of his dark mane glisten.
‘He has the most wonderful hair in the world,* thought Angelique.
Her heart beat faster than she cared to admit. The scene of the previous night rose again before her eyes.
‘It can’t be true,* she told herself again. ‘Someone else must have been singing. Oh, I’ll never forgive him!’
The Cointe de Peyrac had meanwhile pushed forward a high stool and sat down close to Angelique, though a little behind her. He was thus out of her sight but she felt the warmth of his breath, whose scent reminded her all too strongly of an intoxicating moment. Moreover, she was conscious of the fact that Joffrey de Peyrac, while exchanging banalities with the Archbishop, was availing himself of the opportunity to caress his young wife’s neck and shoulders with his eyes, even plunging boldly into the soft shadows of her bodice, seeking the young breasts whose perfection he had ascertained the very night before.
He deliberately played this game in front of the prelate, whose strict senses of virtue was common knowledge.
Indeed, though the Archbishop of Toulouse had inherited his of fice from one of his uncles, he had insisted on receiving Orders and of assuming his responsibilities not only as an administrator of the most important sec in France but also as a shepherd of souls. His exemplary life of fered no grounds for criticism and had rendered him still more redoubtable.
Ang£lique felt an urge to turn to her husband and implore him: ‘1 beg of you, be cautious !*
Yet at the same time she was relishing his silent homage. Her virginal skin, starved of caresses, was longing for a more direct contact, for those knowing lips that would waken he*~to voluptuousness. Sitting very straight and a little stiffly, she felt a flame rising to her cheeks. She told herself that she was being ridiculous that there was nothing in all this to irritate the Archbishop since she was, after all, the wife of that man and belonged to him. She felt invaded by the desire to be his, to surrender herself, gravely, with closed eyes, to his embrace. Her discomfort could certainly not escape Joffrey de Peyrac and he must be amused by it. ‘He is playing with me like a cat with a mouse, he’s avenging himself for my having spumed him/ she thought with dismay.
To dispel her confusion, she called one of the little blackamoors who was drowsing on a cushion in a comer of the room, and ordered him to fetch a comfit-box. By the time the child had brought the ebony and mother-of-pearl case containing nuts, comfits, spiced sugar almonds and rose-sugar, Angelique had recovered her self-control and was following the two men’s conversation more attentively.
“No, Monsieur,” the Comte de Peyrac was saying, as he casually munched a violet-flavoured lozenge, “don’t think that I have gone in for science for the purpose of learning the secrets of power and might. I’ve always had a natural taste for these things. Had I remained poor, for instance, I should have tried to obtain a post as water engineer to the King. You cannot imagine how backward we are in France in all these matters of irrigation, pumping, and so on. The Romans knew ten times more
than we do, and when I visited Egypt and China ”
“I know that you have travelled widely, Comte. Have you not been to those countries of the Orient where the secrets of the Three Magi are still known?”
Joffrey started to laugh.
“I went there but I did not come across the Three Magi. Magic is not my concern. I leave this to your good gullible Becher.”
“Becher always asks when he may be allowed the pleasure of seeing one of your experiments and becoming your pupil in chemistry.”
“I am not a schoolmaster, sir. And even if I were, I know I’d keep narrow minds at arm’s length.”
“Yet this friar is regarded as having a subtle mind.”
“In scholastics, no doubt, but in sciences of observation he is worthless. He does not see things as they are, but as he believes they are. I call such a man unintelligent and narrow-minded.”
“Well, that is your point of view. I am too ignorant in lay sciences to judge the merits of your antipathy. But don t forget that Abbe Becher, whom you treat as an ignoramus, published in 1639 a remarkable book on alchemy for which, incidentally, I had some difficulty in getting the imprimatur of Rome.”
“The Church’s approval or rebuke has no bearing on a scientific writ¬ing,” said the Comte somewhat dryly.
“Allow me to differ. Does not the spirit of the Church embrace the whole of nature and its phenomena?”
“I don’t know why it should. Remember, Monseigneur, Our Lord’s words: ‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s’. Caesar is the external power over men, but also the external power over things. In speaking thus, the Son of God meant to affirm the independence of the realm of the soul, the religious domain, from the realm of matter, and I have no doubt that abstract science is included in the latter.”
The prelate nodded several times, while a bland smile split his narrow lips.
“I admire your dialectics. They are worthy of the great tradition and show that you have well assimilated the theological teaching you received in the University of our city. Nevertheless, that is where the judgment of the high clergy intervenes to settle arguments, for nothing looks more like reason than unreason.”
“Monseigneur, that phrase of yours delights me. For I hold that, unless it is a question of strictly Church matters, that is, of dogma and morals, I must draw my arguments from observed facts alone, and not from logicians’ quibbles. In other words, I must trust the methods of observation exposed by Bacon in his Novum Organum published in 1620, as well as the indications given by the mathematician Descartes, whose Discourse on Method will remain one of the monuments of philosophy and mathematics. . . .”
Angelique could see that the names of the two savants were practically unknown to the prelate, who was considered a learned man. She was fearful lest the discussion take a harsher turn, and especially lest Joffrey do nothing to placate the Archbishop.
‘Why must men argue over the respective merits of pin-heads?’ she wondered. But more than anything she feared that the Archbishop’s skilful digressions were meant to lead Joffrey de Peyrac into a trap.
The churchman’s susceptibility seemed to have been wounded. His pale, carefully-shaven cheeks flushed, and he dropped his eyelids with an expression of haughty cunning which frightened the young woman.
“Monsieur de Peyrac,” he said, “you speak of power: power over men, power over things. Did it ever occur to you that the extraordinary success of your life might seem suspect to many, and particularly to the watchful attention of the Church? Your wealth increases daily, your scientific work brings to you scientists who have grown grey over their studies. I talked to one of them last year, a German mathematician. He was amazed that you had solved, as if they were child’s play, problems on which the greatest minds of our day have pondered in vain. You speak a dozen languages . . .”
“Pic de la Mirandole, in the last century, spoke eighteen.”
“You have a voice that makes the great Italian singer Maroni go pale with jealousy, you versify delightfully, you carry to its highest point— forgive me, Madame—the art of attracting women. . . .”
“And this? . . .”
Angelique guessed, with an aching heart, that JofFrey de Peyrac had raised a hand to his disfigured cheek.
The Archbishop’s embarrassment resolved itself in an angry grimace.
“Ah, you manage, goodness knows how, to make people forget it. You’re a man of too many parts, believe me.”
“Your charges surprise and shake me,” said the Comte slowly. “I had not yet realised that I was the butt of so much envy. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that I was burdened with a cruel disadvantage.”
He leaned forward, and his eyes shone as if he had just discovered the point of a good joke.
“Do you know, Monseigneur, that I am, after a fashion, a Huguenot martyr?”
“You a Huguenot?” exclaimed the horrified prelate.
“I said ‘after a fashion*. Here’s my story: my mother entrusted me, on birth, to a woman she had chosen, not according to her religion but according to the size of her breasts. It so happened that this wet-nurse was a Huguenot. She took me to her village in the Ccvennes, which was dominated by the chateau of a Protestant seigneur. Not far from there, as could be expected, there was another seigneur and some Catholic villages. I don’t know the exact order of what happened next. I was three years old when Catholics and Huguenots started fighting. My nurse and the women of her village had taken shelter in the chateau of the reformed seigneur. The Catholics took it by storm towards the middle of the night. They cut everyone’s throat and then set fire to the house. As for me, after having my face slashed by three sabre-cuts, I was flung out of the window and fell two storeys into a snow-covered courtyard. The snow saved me from the shower of flaming d£bris that fell all around me. In the morning, one of the Catholics who had comeback for loot, and who recognised me as the child of Toulouse nobles, picked me up and put me into a basket on his back together with my foster-sister Margot, the only other one to have escaped the slaughter. The man passed through several snowstorms before reaching the plains. When he arrived in Toulouse, I was still alive. My mother carried me to a terrace in the sun, undressed me and forbade the doctors to come near me, for she said they’d finish me of f. I remained like that, stretched out in the sun, for years. It was only towards the age of twelve that I was able to walk. At sixteen I sailed away. That’s how I came to have leisure enough for studying. Thanks to my illness and lying motionless first, thanks to my voyages afterwards. There is nothing suspicious about it.”
The Archbishop remained silent for a moment, then said musingly: “Your story explains a good many things. I am no longer surprised by your sympathy for the Protestants.”
”1 have no sympathy for Protestants.”
“Let’s say, then, your dislike of Catholics.”
“I have no dislike for Catholics. I am, Monsieur, a man of the past and am ill-accommodated to our intolerant age. I should have been bom a century or two ago, in the days of the Renaissance, a gender name than that of the Reform, when the French knights discovered Italy and, in its wake, the luminous heritage of Antiquity: Rome, Greece, Egypt, the lands of the Bible . .
Monseigneur de Frontenac gave an imperceptible start which did not escape Angelique.
‘He has got him where he wants him,’ she told herself.
“Let us talk of the Bible lands,” suggested the Archbishop gendy. “Does not the Scripture say that King Solomon was one of the first Wise Men and that he sent vessels to Ophir, where, far from indiscreet eyes, he had cheap metals changed into precious ones by transmutation? History says that he brought back his vessels laden with gold.”
“History also says that Solomon doubled taxes on his return, which proves he cannot have brought back much gold and, especially, that he had no idea as to when he would be able to replenish his stock. Had he really discovered the process of making gold, he would not have levied taxes nor gone to the trouble of sending his ships to Ophir.”
“He might have chosen, in his wisdom, not to let his subjects into a secret which they might have put to bad uses.”
“But I should go further: Solomon cannot have been familiar with the transmutadon of metals into gold, for such transmutation is an impossible phenomenon. Alchemy is an art which does not exist. It is a sinister farce come down to us from the Middle Ages and which will founder in ridicule anyway, for nobody will ever be able to perform this transmutation.”
“ “And I tell you,” cried the Archbishop, growing pale, “that I have with my own eyes seen ВёсЬег dip a tin spoon into a mixture of his own composition, and raise it again transformed into gold.” *...
“It was not transformed into gold, it was coated with gold. If the good man had only bothered to scrape of f this slight film with a chisel, he would have found the tin immediately underneath.”
“That is correct, but Becher asserts that this was only the beginning of transmutation, the starting-point of the phenomenon itself.”
There was a silence. Joffrey de Peyrac’s hand slipped over the arm-rest of Angelique’s chair, and lightly touched the young woman’s wrist.
The Comte said casually:
“If you are convinced your monk has found the magic formula, what¬ever have you come to see me about this morning?”
The Archbishop did not bat an eye.
“Becher is convinced that you know the supreme secret which permits the completion of the transmutation.”
The Comte de Peyrac burst into ringing laughter.
“I have never heard a funnier assertion. To think that I would throw myself into such childish research! Poor Becher, I gladly leave him to all the excitement and hopes of the false science he practises and . . .”
A dreadful noise, like that of a thunderclap or a cannon, interrupted him.
Joffrey started up and blanched.
“That’s . . . that’s the laboratory. I hope to God Kouassi-Ba hasn’t been killed!”
He hurried towards the door.
The Archbishop had sat up as straight as a judge. He gazed at Angelique in silence.
“I am leaving, Madame,” he said at last. “It seems that Satan is mani¬festing his fury in this house on account of my presence. Allow me to withdraw.”
And he strode away. The crack of whips and the coachman’s shouts could be heard as the Archbishop’s carriage drove away from the great porch.
Ang£lique bit her lips angrily. Joffrey might not appear again for hours. But then she didn’t want him to, anyway. She did not care one way or the other. She was still too annoyed by the hoax he had played on her the night before.
She decided to go to the pantry where today the first liqueurs of the season were being bottled. The table set at the Palace of Gay Learning was reputed to be the most exquisite in the province. Joffrey de Peyrac took great personal pains with the menus of fered to his guests, and Clement, who had undeniable talents in this respect, had assumed an important role in the palace menage.
Hardly, however, had Angelique reached the kitchens, which today smelt of oranges, aniseed and aromatic spices, when a breathless little blackamoor came to announce that the Baron Benoit de Frontenac, Archbishop of Toulouse, asked to pay his respects to her and to her husband.
Morning was not the usual time for visits, which were normally made in the cooler hours of the evening. Moreover, for several months now, after goodness knows what new quarrel over precedence, the Archbishop had not set foot in the palace of the Comte de Peyrac, whom he accused of challenging his own influence over the minds of the Toulousians.
Intrigued and vaguely disturbed, Angelique removed the apron she had just pinned to her dress and quickly smoothed her hair. She wore it rather long and falling in curls over her lace collar as was the fashion. She arrived in the entrance hall and saw the tall figure of the Archbishop in red robe and white cape-collar at the top of the flight of stairs. Down in the gardens, Monseigneur’s escort, his lackeys with swords at their sides, his pages and grandees on horseback, made a great deal of noise around the carriage and its six bay horses.
Angelique dropped down on her knees to kiss the pastoral ring, but as she rose again the Archbishop kissed her hand, to indicate by this worldly gesture that his visit was devoid of solemnity.
“Please, Madame, don’t let your genuflexions make me measure the weight of my age compared with your youthfulness.”
“Monseigneur, I only meant to show you the respect I feel for an illustrious man clothed in the dignity conferred on him by His Holiness the Pope and by God Himself.”
Meanwhile the prelate had removed his hat and gloves and was handing them to one of the young abbes in his retinue, whom he motioned to leave.
“My suite will wait for me outside. I would like to talk to you, Madame, far from frivolous ears.”
Angflique cast a mocking glance at the little аЬЬё who was being accused of having frivolous ears, and who was blushing.
In the salon, the young woman, after ordering refreshments, apologised for her husband’s absence. She would have the visitor’s presence an¬nounced to him.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting myself. I was in the pantry supervising the confection of our liqueurs. But I am wasting your time, Monseigneur, in talking of these trifling details.”
“Nothing is trifling in the eyes of Our Lord. Think of the servant Martha. It is rare in our days to see a great lady busy herself with house¬hold affairs. Yet the mistress of a house sets the example of dignity and diligence for heir servants. And when, as in your case, the grace of Mary mingles with the goodness of Martha . . .”
But the Archbishop’s voice sounded preoccupied, and the worldly banter did not seem an art he relished. Despite his fine bearing and the deliberately forthright gaze of his blue eyes, there was something suspicious about him that always struck one. Joffrey had observed one day that the Archbishop was a man who excelled at making people feel guilty.
After rubbing his hands thoughtfully, he repeated that he was very happy to see again die young woman, who had made so few appearances at the episcopal palace since that already distant day when he had of ficiated at her marriage at the cathedral.
Suddenly he asked her:
“Do you, Madame, know anything about your husband’s work as an alchemist?”
“Indeed I don’t,” replied Angelique, unruffled. “The Comte de Peyrac has a taste for the sciences. . . .”
“He is even said to be a great scientist.”
“I believe it. He spends long hours in his laboratory, but he has never shown it to me. No doubt he considers that this sort of thing is of no interest to women.”
She opened her fan and made use of it to conceal a smile or perhaps a sense of discomfort which she felt under the prelate’s piercing eyes.
“It is my duty to sound the hearts of men,” he said as if he had detected her confusion. “But do not be perturbed, my daughter. I can see in your eyes that you are upright and, despite your young years, of outstanding character. And there may still be time for your husband to repent of his faults and abjure his heresies.”
Angёlique uttered a little cry.
“But I swear to you that you are mistaken, Monseigneur. It may be
that my husband does not conduct himself like an exemplary Catholic, but he has no concern whatsoever with the Reform or other Huguenot beliefs. I even heard him mock those ‘sad beards of Geneva* who, he says, have been commissioned by Heaven to deprive all mankind of their love of laughter/’ ..
“Deceptive words,” said the prelate sombrely. “Are not notorious Protestants constantly seen visiting his home, your home, Madame?” “They are scientists with whom he discusses science, and not religion.” “Science and religion have intimate bonds. I have been informed recently that the famous Italian Bernalli paid him a visit. Do you know that this man, after being in conflict with Rome over his impious writings, has taken refuge in Switzerland, where he became converted to Pro¬testantism? But let us not tarry over these significant signs of a state of mind I deplore. The question that has intrigued me for many years is this. The Comte de Pcyrac is a very rich man and getting ever richer. Whence comes this vast profusion of gold?”
“But, Monseigneur, does he not belong to one of the oldest families in Languedoc, related even to the ancient Comtes de Toulouse, who had as much power over Aquitaine as the Kings in the Ile-de-France?”
The prelate gave a little scornful laugh.
“That is correct. But titles of nobility don’t signify riches. Your husband’s very parents were so poor that the magnificent palace where you reign today was falling to ruin, and this no more than fifteen years ago. Did Monsieur de Peyrac never talk to you about his youth?”
“N . . . no,” murmured Angelique, surprised by her own ignorance. “He was the youngest of the family and so poor, I repeat, that at sixteen he sailed to distant lands. He wasn’t seen again for many years and was believed to be dead, when he suddenly reappeared. His parents and his elder brother had died. Their creditors had split up the estate among themselves. He bought back the lot and, ever since, his fortune has grown constantly. He happens, moreover, to be a nobleman who is never seen at Court, he even makes a show of keeping away from it and he is not in receipt of any royal pension.”
“But he has land,” said Angelique, who felt oppressed. “In the moun¬tains he breeds sheep from which he obtains wool. He has a big cloth factory to weave the wool, olive groves, silkworm-breeding farms, gold and silver mines. . . .”
“Gold and silver, you say?”
“Yes, Monseigneur, the Comte de Peyrac owns numerous quarries in France from which he claims he extracts quantities of gold and silver.” “How appropriate a term, Madame,” said the prelate in a suave voice.
“From which he claims he extracts gold and silver! . . . That’s what I wanted to hear. The dreadful assumption is getting stronger.”
“What do you mean, Monseigneur? You alarm me.”
The Archbishop of Toulouse lagain fixed upon her his clear gaze, which grew as hard as steel. He said very slowly:
“I do not doubt that your husband may be one of the greatest scientists of our time; that’s why I believe, Madame, that he has actually discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, that is to say Solomon’s secret of manufacturing gold by magic. But what path has he taken to reach this goal? I greatly fear he has acquired this power by a pact with the devil!”
Once more Angeliquc held the fan before her lips in order not to burst out laughing. She had expected an allusion to the real pact in which the Count was involved and of which Molines and her father’s confidences had given her some hint; she was not without apprehension, for she knew that such activities on a nobleman’s part represented a stain that could throw discredit on his house. Therefore the odd charge made by the Archbishop, who was said to be a man of great intelligence, struck her at first as being extremely funny. Was he speaking seriously?
In a sudden flash she recalled that Toulouse was, of all the cities of France, the one where the Inquisition had still maintained a headquarters. The dreadful medieval institution of the tribunal against heretics preserved powers in Toulouse that even the King’s authority did not dare to contest.
The laughing city of Toulouse was also the red city which had massacred the greatest number of Huguenots in the course of a century. It had seen, long before Paris, its own bloody St. Bartholomew’s Night. Religious ceremonies were more numerous here than anywhere else. It was a real ‘ringing island’ with its bells perpetually calling the faithful to service, a city quite as much submerged under crucifixes, holy pictures and relics as under flowers. The Spanish flame smothered the pure Latin clarity in¬herited from former Roman conquerors. Side by side with the brother¬hoods of pleasure, such аз the ‘Princes of Love’ and the ‘Abbots of Youth’, famous for their pranks, one could meet in the streets processions of flagellants, their eyes glowing with mystical passion, slashing them¬selves with switches and thorns till the pavement ran with their bloody traces.
Angelique, caught up in die whirlwind of a life of pleasure, had never given much thought to this aspect of Toulouse. But she was aware that it was the Archbishop himself, this man seated in front of her in the tall tapestry arm-chair and raising a glass of iced lemonade to his lips, who was still the Grand Master of the Inquisition.
Therefore it was in a sincerely disturbed voice that she murmured: “Monseigneur, you cannot possibly level a charge of witchcraft against my husband. ... Is not gold-making a current practice in this country which God has endowed with His richest gifts, scattering in its soil gold in a pure state?”
She added shrewdly:
“I have been told that you yourself employ teams of gold-washers who rinse the gravel of the Garonne in baskets and of ten bring back a booty of gold sand and nuggets with which you relieve much poverty.”
“Your objection is not devoid of common sense, my daughter. But it’s just because I know something of the working of the soil’s gold that I maintain that were one to wash the gravel of all the rivers and brooks of Languedoc, the yield would still not amount to half of what the Comte de Peyrac appears to possess. I am well informed, believe me.”
‘I do not doubt it,’ thought Angelique. ‘It’s true the Spanish gold traffic on mule-back has been going on for a long while. . . .*
The blue eyes watched her hesitation closely. She snapped her fan shut rather nervously.
“A scientist is not necessarily a henchman of the devil. Aren’t there supposed to be scientists at Court who have set up a glass lens to look at the stars and the mountains of the moon, and doesn’t the King’s uncle, Monsieur Gaston d’Orleans, indulge in these observations under the guidance of the Abbe Picard?”
“Yes indeed, and I know Abbe Picard personally. He is not only an astronomer, but the King’s Grand Geometrician.”
So you see . . .
“The Church is broad-minded, Madame. She has authorised all sorts of researches, even the most daring, like that of Abbe Picard whom you mentioned. I go even farther. I have under my command, at the Arch-bishopric, a very learned monk, of the Franciscan Order, Friar Becher. He has been doing research work for years on the transmutation of gold, but with my authorisation as well as with Rome’s. I confess it has cost me a great deal so far, particularly in special materials which I have to import from Spain and Italy. This man, who knows the most ancient traditions of his art, asserts that, in order to succeed, one must have a higher re¬velation which can only come from God or Satan.”
“And has he succeeded?”
“Not yet.”
“Poor man. He must be on bad terms with both God and Satan, despite your high protection.”
Angelique bit her lips, immediately regretting her malice. She thought
she was going to stifle and felt obliged to blurt out any kind of foolishness to free herself from this constraint. The conversation seemed to her as silly as it was dangerous.
She turned towards the door, hoping to hear her husband’s uneven step approaching in the gallery, and gave a start.
“Oh! you were here all the time !”
“I’ve just come this moment,” said the Comte, “and it is unforgivable, Monsieur, to have kept you waiting so long. I must admit that your visit was announced to me almost an hour ago, but it was impossible to interrupt the very delicate handling of a certain retort.”
He was still dressed in his alchemist’s smock, which touched the ground. It was a sort of wide shirt, on which the embroidered signs of the zodiac mingled with vari-coloured acid stains. Angflique had no doubt that he had not changed his clothes out of a certain obstinacy, just as he made a point of calling the Archbishop of Toulouse ‘Monsieur*, thus putting himself on an equal footing with the Baron Benoit de Frontenac.
The Comte de Peyrac motioned to a footman in the ante-room, who helped him to take of f his garment. He then approached and bowed. A ray of sunlight made the heavy, lustrous locks of his dark mane glisten.
‘He has the most wonderful hair in the world,* thought Angelique.
Her heart beat faster than she cared to admit. The scene of the previous night rose again before her eyes.
‘It can’t be true,* she told herself again. ‘Someone else must have been singing. Oh, I’ll never forgive him!’
The Cointe de Peyrac had meanwhile pushed forward a high stool and sat down close to Angelique, though a little behind her. He was thus out of her sight but she felt the warmth of his breath, whose scent reminded her all too strongly of an intoxicating moment. Moreover, she was conscious of the fact that Joffrey de Peyrac, while exchanging banalities with the Archbishop, was availing himself of the opportunity to caress his young wife’s neck and shoulders with his eyes, even plunging boldly into the soft shadows of her bodice, seeking the young breasts whose perfection he had ascertained the very night before.
He deliberately played this game in front of the prelate, whose strict senses of virtue was common knowledge.
Indeed, though the Archbishop of Toulouse had inherited his of fice from one of his uncles, he had insisted on receiving Orders and of assuming his responsibilities not only as an administrator of the most important sec in France but also as a shepherd of souls. His exemplary life of fered no grounds for criticism and had rendered him still more redoubtable.
Ang£lique felt an urge to turn to her husband and implore him: ‘1 beg of you, be cautious !*
Yet at the same time she was relishing his silent homage. Her virginal skin, starved of caresses, was longing for a more direct contact, for those knowing lips that would waken he*~to voluptuousness. Sitting very straight and a little stiffly, she felt a flame rising to her cheeks. She told herself that she was being ridiculous that there was nothing in all this to irritate the Archbishop since she was, after all, the wife of that man and belonged to him. She felt invaded by the desire to be his, to surrender herself, gravely, with closed eyes, to his embrace. Her discomfort could certainly not escape Joffrey de Peyrac and he must be amused by it. ‘He is playing with me like a cat with a mouse, he’s avenging himself for my having spumed him/ she thought with dismay.
To dispel her confusion, she called one of the little blackamoors who was drowsing on a cushion in a comer of the room, and ordered him to fetch a comfit-box. By the time the child had brought the ebony and mother-of-pearl case containing nuts, comfits, spiced sugar almonds and rose-sugar, Angelique had recovered her self-control and was following the two men’s conversation more attentively.
“No, Monsieur,” the Comte de Peyrac was saying, as he casually munched a violet-flavoured lozenge, “don’t think that I have gone in for science for the purpose of learning the secrets of power and might. I’ve always had a natural taste for these things. Had I remained poor, for instance, I should have tried to obtain a post as water engineer to the King. You cannot imagine how backward we are in France in all these matters of irrigation, pumping, and so on. The Romans knew ten times more
than we do, and when I visited Egypt and China ”
“I know that you have travelled widely, Comte. Have you not been to those countries of the Orient where the secrets of the Three Magi are still known?”
Joffrey started to laugh.
“I went there but I did not come across the Three Magi. Magic is not my concern. I leave this to your good gullible Becher.”
“Becher always asks when he may be allowed the pleasure of seeing one of your experiments and becoming your pupil in chemistry.”
“I am not a schoolmaster, sir. And even if I were, I know I’d keep narrow minds at arm’s length.”
“Yet this friar is regarded as having a subtle mind.”
“In scholastics, no doubt, but in sciences of observation he is worthless. He does not see things as they are, but as he believes they are. I call such a man unintelligent and narrow-minded.”
“Well, that is your point of view. I am too ignorant in lay sciences to judge the merits of your antipathy. But don t forget that Abbe Becher, whom you treat as an ignoramus, published in 1639 a remarkable book on alchemy for which, incidentally, I had some difficulty in getting the imprimatur of Rome.”
“The Church’s approval or rebuke has no bearing on a scientific writ¬ing,” said the Comte somewhat dryly.
“Allow me to differ. Does not the spirit of the Church embrace the whole of nature and its phenomena?”
“I don’t know why it should. Remember, Monseigneur, Our Lord’s words: ‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s’. Caesar is the external power over men, but also the external power over things. In speaking thus, the Son of God meant to affirm the independence of the realm of the soul, the religious domain, from the realm of matter, and I have no doubt that abstract science is included in the latter.”
The prelate nodded several times, while a bland smile split his narrow lips.
“I admire your dialectics. They are worthy of the great tradition and show that you have well assimilated the theological teaching you received in the University of our city. Nevertheless, that is where the judgment of the high clergy intervenes to settle arguments, for nothing looks more like reason than unreason.”
“Monseigneur, that phrase of yours delights me. For I hold that, unless it is a question of strictly Church matters, that is, of dogma and morals, I must draw my arguments from observed facts alone, and not from logicians’ quibbles. In other words, I must trust the methods of observation exposed by Bacon in his Novum Organum published in 1620, as well as the indications given by the mathematician Descartes, whose Discourse on Method will remain one of the monuments of philosophy and mathematics. . . .”
Angelique could see that the names of the two savants were practically unknown to the prelate, who was considered a learned man. She was fearful lest the discussion take a harsher turn, and especially lest Joffrey do nothing to placate the Archbishop.
‘Why must men argue over the respective merits of pin-heads?’ she wondered. But more than anything she feared that the Archbishop’s skilful digressions were meant to lead Joffrey de Peyrac into a trap.
The churchman’s susceptibility seemed to have been wounded. His pale, carefully-shaven cheeks flushed, and he dropped his eyelids with an expression of haughty cunning which frightened the young woman.
“Monsieur de Peyrac,” he said, “you speak of power: power over men, power over things. Did it ever occur to you that the extraordinary success of your life might seem suspect to many, and particularly to the watchful attention of the Church? Your wealth increases daily, your scientific work brings to you scientists who have grown grey over their studies. I talked to one of them last year, a German mathematician. He was amazed that you had solved, as if they were child’s play, problems on which the greatest minds of our day have pondered in vain. You speak a dozen languages . . .”
“Pic de la Mirandole, in the last century, spoke eighteen.”
“You have a voice that makes the great Italian singer Maroni go pale with jealousy, you versify delightfully, you carry to its highest point— forgive me, Madame—the art of attracting women. . . .”
“And this? . . .”
Angelique guessed, with an aching heart, that JofFrey de Peyrac had raised a hand to his disfigured cheek.
The Archbishop’s embarrassment resolved itself in an angry grimace.
“Ah, you manage, goodness knows how, to make people forget it. You’re a man of too many parts, believe me.”
“Your charges surprise and shake me,” said the Comte slowly. “I had not yet realised that I was the butt of so much envy. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that I was burdened with a cruel disadvantage.”
He leaned forward, and his eyes shone as if he had just discovered the point of a good joke.
“Do you know, Monseigneur, that I am, after a fashion, a Huguenot martyr?”
“You a Huguenot?” exclaimed the horrified prelate.
“I said ‘after a fashion*. Here’s my story: my mother entrusted me, on birth, to a woman she had chosen, not according to her religion but according to the size of her breasts. It so happened that this wet-nurse was a Huguenot. She took me to her village in the Ccvennes, which was dominated by the chateau of a Protestant seigneur. Not far from there, as could be expected, there was another seigneur and some Catholic villages. I don’t know the exact order of what happened next. I was three years old when Catholics and Huguenots started fighting. My nurse and the women of her village had taken shelter in the chateau of the reformed seigneur. The Catholics took it by storm towards the middle of the night. They cut everyone’s throat and then set fire to the house. As for me, after having my face slashed by three sabre-cuts, I was flung out of the window and fell two storeys into a snow-covered courtyard. The snow saved me from the shower of flaming d£bris that fell all around me. In the morning, one of the Catholics who had comeback for loot, and who recognised me as the child of Toulouse nobles, picked me up and put me into a basket on his back together with my foster-sister Margot, the only other one to have escaped the slaughter. The man passed through several snowstorms before reaching the plains. When he arrived in Toulouse, I was still alive. My mother carried me to a terrace in the sun, undressed me and forbade the doctors to come near me, for she said they’d finish me of f. I remained like that, stretched out in the sun, for years. It was only towards the age of twelve that I was able to walk. At sixteen I sailed away. That’s how I came to have leisure enough for studying. Thanks to my illness and lying motionless first, thanks to my voyages afterwards. There is nothing suspicious about it.”
The Archbishop remained silent for a moment, then said musingly: “Your story explains a good many things. I am no longer surprised by your sympathy for the Protestants.”
”1 have no sympathy for Protestants.”
“Let’s say, then, your dislike of Catholics.”
“I have no dislike for Catholics. I am, Monsieur, a man of the past and am ill-accommodated to our intolerant age. I should have been bom a century or two ago, in the days of the Renaissance, a gender name than that of the Reform, when the French knights discovered Italy and, in its wake, the luminous heritage of Antiquity: Rome, Greece, Egypt, the lands of the Bible . .
Monseigneur de Frontenac gave an imperceptible start which did not escape Angelique.
‘He has got him where he wants him,’ she told herself.
“Let us talk of the Bible lands,” suggested the Archbishop gendy. “Does not the Scripture say that King Solomon was one of the first Wise Men and that he sent vessels to Ophir, where, far from indiscreet eyes, he had cheap metals changed into precious ones by transmutation? History says that he brought back his vessels laden with gold.”
“History also says that Solomon doubled taxes on his return, which proves he cannot have brought back much gold and, especially, that he had no idea as to when he would be able to replenish his stock. Had he really discovered the process of making gold, he would not have levied taxes nor gone to the trouble of sending his ships to Ophir.”
“He might have chosen, in his wisdom, not to let his subjects into a secret which they might have put to bad uses.”
“But I should go further: Solomon cannot have been familiar with the transmutadon of metals into gold, for such transmutation is an impossible phenomenon. Alchemy is an art which does not exist. It is a sinister farce come down to us from the Middle Ages and which will founder in ridicule anyway, for nobody will ever be able to perform this transmutation.”
“ “And I tell you,” cried the Archbishop, growing pale, “that I have with my own eyes seen ВёсЬег dip a tin spoon into a mixture of his own composition, and raise it again transformed into gold.” *...
“It was not transformed into gold, it was coated with gold. If the good man had only bothered to scrape of f this slight film with a chisel, he would have found the tin immediately underneath.”
“That is correct, but Becher asserts that this was only the beginning of transmutation, the starting-point of the phenomenon itself.”
There was a silence. Joffrey de Peyrac’s hand slipped over the arm-rest of Angelique’s chair, and lightly touched the young woman’s wrist.
The Comte said casually:
“If you are convinced your monk has found the magic formula, what¬ever have you come to see me about this morning?”
The Archbishop did not bat an eye.
“Becher is convinced that you know the supreme secret which permits the completion of the transmutation.”
The Comte de Peyrac burst into ringing laughter.
“I have never heard a funnier assertion. To think that I would throw myself into such childish research! Poor Becher, I gladly leave him to all the excitement and hopes of the false science he practises and . . .”
A dreadful noise, like that of a thunderclap or a cannon, interrupted him.
Joffrey started up and blanched.
“That’s . . . that’s the laboratory. I hope to God Kouassi-Ba hasn’t been killed!”
He hurried towards the door.
The Archbishop had sat up as straight as a judge. He gazed at Angelique in silence.
“I am leaving, Madame,” he said at last. “It seems that Satan is mani¬festing his fury in this house on account of my presence. Allow me to withdraw.”
And he strode away. The crack of whips and the coachman’s shouts could be heard as the Archbishop’s carriage drove away from the great porch.
Table of Contents | The next chapter