Angelique - Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 8 - Read online

ALONE AND STUNNED, Angelique passed her little handkerchief over her perspiring brow. This conversation, to which she had listened with fascination, left her disconcerted. She was sick and tired of all these stories of God, Solomon, heresy and magic. Then, reproaching herself for these irreverent thoughts, she made an act of contrition. Finally she decided that men were insufferable with their squabbles and that God Himself must be exasperated by them.
Angelique could not decide what to do. She was dying to go into the wing of the castle from which the thunderous din had come. Joffrey had seemed genuinely alarmed. Had anyone been hurt? . . . Yet she did not move. The mystery in which the Comte wrapped his studies had made her understand more than once that this was the only realm in which he did not tolerate a laymans curiosity. The elucidations he had deigned to give the Archbishop had been of fered reluctantly and solely out of regard for the visitor’s position. But even these had not sufficed to allay the prelate’s suspicions.
Angelique shuddered. Witchcraft! She threw a glance around her. In this delightful setting the word seemed a sinister joke. But there were still too many things Angelique knew nothing about.
‘I shall go and have a look,* she decided. ‘So much the worse if he is vexed.’
But at that moment she heard her husband’s step and, soon after, he came into the drawing-room. His hands were black with soot. He was smiling, though.
“Nothing serious, thank goodness. Kouassi-Ba got a few scratches, but he hid himself so well under the table that I thought for a moment that the explosion had volatilised him. The material damage, however, is serious. My most precious retorts of special Bohemian glass are in pieces; there is not a single one left.”
At a sign from him, two pages stepped forward, carrying a basin and a golden ewer. He washed his hands, then straightened his lace cuff's with a flick of his finger.
Angelique screwed up her courage.
“Is it necessary, Joffrey, for you to devote so many hours to this dangerous work?”
“It is necessary to have gold in order to live,” said the Comte, indicating with a sweeping gesture the magnificent drawing-room. “But that isn’t the question. I find a pleasure in this work that nothing else can give me. It’s my life purpose .*9
Ang6lique felt a twinge at her heart, as if those words deprived her of a precious treasure. But, noticing that her husband was watching her attentively, she strove to assume an air of indifference. He smiled.
“It’s the only purpose in my life, except to conquer you,” he concluded with a chivalrous flourish.
“I do not set myself up as a rival to your phials and retorts/’ said Angelique a little too quickly. “However, I must confess that Mon¬seigneur’s words have perturbed me.”
“Really?”
“Did you not sense a hidden menace in them?”
He did not answer immediately. Leaning against the window, he was gazing thoughtfully out at the flat roofs of the city, closely grouped so that their round tiles formed a vast carpet of mingled hues of clover and poppies. To the right, the high tower of Assezat with its lantern pro¬claimed the glory of the pastel traders, whose fields still covered the surrounding countryside. Pastel, a plant abundantly cultivated, had for centuries provided the only natural colouring matter and had made the fortune of the burghers and traders of Toulouse.
Angelique returned to her arm-chair and a little blackamoor placed at her side the basket-work box in which the shimmering silk threads of her tapestry were entangled. The palace was quiet. Angelique reflected that she would be lunching alone with the Comte de Peyrac, unless the inevitable Bernard d’Andijos happened to invite himself. . . .
“Did you notice,” the Comte said suddenly, “the Grand Inquisitor’s art? First he talked of morals, stresses in passing the ‘orgies’ at the Gay Learning, alludes to my voyages, and thence leads us on to Solomon. In short, one discovers all at once that the Baron Benoit de Frontenac, Archbishop of Toulouse, is asking me to share with him my secret of the manufacture of gold, failing which he will have me burned as a sorcerer on the Place des Salines.”
“That is the threat I thought I divined,” said Angelique, frightened. “Do you think he really imagines that you have dealings with the devil?”
' “He? No. He leaves that to his credulous Becher. The Archbishop has too positive a mind and knows me too well. But he is convinced that I have the secret of scientifically multiplying gold and silver. He wants to know it in order to be able to make use of it himself.”
“He’s a vile creature!” cried the young woman. “And yet he seems so dignified, so full of faith, so generous.”
“He is. His wealth goes into his good works. He holds open table every day for impecunious of ficers. He has taken in charge the fire service, the foundlings’ home, I know not what else. He labours for the good of souls and the greatness of God. Still, his private demon is the demon of domination. He hankers after the days when the sole master of a city and even of a province was the bishop, who, crazier in hand, rendered justice, punished, recompensed. Therefore, when he sees across from his cathedral the growing influence of Gay Learning, he rebels. If things go on in this way, then in another few years it'll be the Comte de Peyrac, your husband, my dear Ang^lique, who will rule over Toulouse. Gold and silver give power, and thus power will fall into the hands of a henchman of Satan! So Monseigneur does not hesitate. Either we share the power, or else . .
“What will happen?”
“Don't be afraid, my dear. Although the intrigues of an Archbishop of Toulouse might be disastrous for us, I don’t see why it should come to such extremes. He has shown his cards. He wants to have the secret of gold¬making. I shall gladly let him have it.”
“So you do possess it?” gasped Angelique, opening her eyes wide.
“Let’s not confuse things. I possess no magic formula for creating gold. My aim is not so much to amass wealth as to put the forces of nature to work.”
“But isn't this a somewhat heretical idea, as Monseigneur would say?”
Joffrey burst out laughing.
“I see you have been well catechised. You are beginning to struggle in the cobwebs of all those specious arguments. Alas, I admit it's difficult to see through them. Yet the medieval Church did not excommunicate millers, who used wind and water to turn the blades of their mills. But today’s Church would go to war against me, if I tried to build on the heights around Toulouse the same steam-pump of condensed water that I have set up in your mine at Argentiere. Yet it isn’t because I place a glass or stone receptacle on the fire of a smithy that Lucifer will suddenly drop into it. . . .”
“I must admit the explosion just now was very impressive. Mon¬seigneur was greatly troubled by it, and I think this time he was sincere. Did you do it on purpose?”
“No, it was sheer carelessness. I let a preparation get too dry—ful¬minant gold obtained from rolled gold and royal water and then pre¬cipitated by ammonia. There was no spontaneous generation involved in this operation.”
“What is it that you call ammonia?”
“A product which the Arabs manufactured centuries ago, calling it volatile alkali. A learned Spanish monk, who is a friend of mine, recently sent me a demi-john of it. I might manufacture it myself, but it's a tedious business, and in order to advance my research I prefer to buy my products whenever it is possible to find them ready-made. This manufacture of pure ingredients gready delays the progress of a science which fools like that monkBecher call chemistry, as opposed to alchemy, which is for them the science of sciences, that is to say an obscure mixture of vital fluids, religious formulas and Heaven knows what else. But I am boring you. . . .”
“No, I assure you,” said Angelique with shining eyes. “I could listen to you for hours.”
He responded with a smile, which was rendered even more ironical by the scars on his left cheek.
“What a funny little mind! Never would I have dreamed of talking to a woman of such things. I, too, enjoy talking to you. I have the im¬pression that you can understand anything. And yet . . . weren’t you on the brink of crediting me with sinister powers when you first arrived in Languedoc? Do I still frighten you?”
Angelique felt herself blush, but she bravely returned his gaze.
“No! You are still a stranger to me and that is, I think, because you are not like anybody else, but you no longer frighten me.”
He hobbled over to where he had sat during the Archbishop’s visit in the chair just behind her. Although he did not fear, at certain moments and with provocative insolence, to show his disfigured face deliberately in the glare of light, he sought, at others, the shadow of darkness. His voice then took on new intonations, as if the soul of Jeffrey de Pcyrac, delivered from its fleshly envelope, could at last express itself freely.
So Angelique could feci near her the invisible presence of the ‘red man’ who had so terrified her. This was certainly the same man, but she had changed. She was on the point of putting the anxious womanly question: ‘Do you love me?’
Suddenly her pride rebelled, for she remembered the voice that had said: “You’ll come. . . . They all come.”
In order to dispel her confusion, she led the conversation back to the scientific field where their minds had met so strangely.
“Since you see no reason for not yielding up your secret, why do you refuse to receive this friar, Becher, of whom Monseigneur seems to think so highly?” ;
“Well—I suppose I could satisfy him to that extent. What troubles me is not the matter of revealing my secret but of making people understand it. I would exhaust myself in vain to prove that matter can be transformed but not transmuted. The minds of these people are not ripe for such revelations. And the pride of those sham scientists is such that they’d cry havoc if I assured them that my two most valuable assistants in this research have been a black-skinned Moor and a rustic Saxon miner.”
“Kouassi-Ba, and the old hump-backed Fritz Hauer, at Argentiere?”
“Yes. Kouassi-Ba told me that when he was still a child and free, some-where in the heart of his wild Africa, he saw gold being worked according
Co the ancient methods learned from the Egyptians. The Pharaohs and King Solomon had gold mines,even in those parts; but I ask you, my dear, what will Monseigneur say if \ confess to him that King Solomon’s secret is in the keeping of my negro Kouassi-Ba? Yet he it is who guided me in my laboratory work, and gave me the idea of treating certain rocks containing invisible gold. As for Fritz Hauer, he is a miner thoroughly at home underground, a mole who breathes in the bowels of the earth. These Saxon miners have handed down their knowledge from father to son, and thanks to them I can kt last find my way through Nature’s odd mystifications and employ successfully all the various ingredients: lead, silver or vitriol, corrosive sublimate and others.”
“Did you ever manufacture corrosive sublimate and vitriol?” inquired Angelique, for whom these words were vaguely familiar.
“I did indeed, and this helped me to demonstrate the ineptitude of all alchemy, for from corrosive sublimate I can extract at will either quick¬silver or yellow and red mercury, and these latter bodies, in turn, I can transform back into quicksilver. The original weight of mercury will not only undergo no increase but, on the contrary, it will diminish, because there is loss through evaporation. In the same way I can, by certain processes, extract silver from lead, and gold from certain ostensibly sterile rocks. But if I were to inscribe over the door of my laboratory the words ‘Nothing is lost, nothing is created’, my philosophy would seem very daring and even in opposition to the spirit of Genesis.”
“Doesn’t a process of this type enable you to send to Argentiere Mexican gold ingots that you buy in London?”
“You are a clever little minx, but I find Molines rather garrulous. Never mind, if he’s talked to you, he must have judged that he could. Yes, the Spanish ingots can be melted down again on a smithy with pyrites or lead ore. They then Assume the appearance of a grey-black stony dross, which even the most finicky Customs of ficer cannot possibly suspect. And it’s this matte which your father’s good little mules transport from England to Poitou, or from Spam to Toulouse, where it is once again transformed, by me or by my Saxon Hauer, into fine, glistening gold.”
“That is a ‘fiscal fraud’,” declared Angflique rather sternly.
“You are adorable when you talk like that. This fraud in no way harms either the kingdom or His Majesty, and it makes me rich. Anyway, I shall soon call on Fritz to start work in a gold mine I have discovered at a place called Salsigne, not far from Narbonne. With the gold from that moun¬tain and the silver from Poitou, I shall no longer need precious ore from America nor have to resort to this fraud, as you call it.”
“Why haven’t you tried to interest the King in your discoveries? There may well be other parts in France that could be worked according to your methods, and the King would be very grateful to you.”
“The King is far away, my pretty one, and I’m not cut out to be a courtier. Only people of that sort can hope to exert some influence over the destinies of the kingdom. I don’t deny that Monsieur de Mazarin is devoted to the Crown, but he is above all an international intriguer. As for Monsieur Fouquet, who is instructed to find silver for Cardinal Mazarin, he is a financial genius, but to make the country rich by a well- planned exploitation of its natural wealth is, I believe, a matter of com¬plete indifference to him.”
“Monsieur Fouquet,” exclaimed Angelique, “that’s it! I remember now where I heard of Roman vitriol and corrosive sublimate! It was at the Chateau du Plessis.”
The whole scene rose again before her eyes. The Italian in his rough homespun gown, the naked woman among the laces, the Prince de Condi and the sandalwood casket in which gleamed the emerald flask.
“What are you thinking of ?” asked the Comte de Peyrac.
“Of a curious adventure I had a long time ago.”
And then, although she had kept silent for so long, she told him the whole story of the casket, all the details of which had remained etched in her memory.
“Monsieur de Condi’s intention,” she added, “was no doubt to poison the Cardinal, and perhaps even the King and his young brother. Less understandable to me were those letters, a sort of signed oath which the Prince and the other lords were to hand to Monsieur Fouquet. Wait! The wording escapes me. ... It was something like this: ‘I pledge my loyalty solely to Monsieur Fouquet, place all my possessions at his disposal. . . .’”
Joffrey de Peyrac had listened to her in silence. Then he laughed scornfully:
“A fine lot indeed! And when you think that Fouquet at that time was merely an obscure member of Parliament! But with his financial skill he was already able to make princes do his bidding. Now he is the richest man in the kingdom, apart from Mazarin, of course. Which proves that there was room for both of them in His Majesty’s warm sun. So you were bold enough to get hold of that casket? You concealed it?”
An instinctive prudence suddenly sealed her lips.
“No, I threw it into the water-lily pond in the big park.”
“And do you think anyone suspected your part in this disappearance?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think they attached much importance to my small person. Still, I did hint at the casket to the Prince de Condi.”
“Did you? But that was foolhardy!”
“I had to, in order to obtain exemption of transport taxes for my father’s mules. Oh, that’s quite a talc,” she said laughingly, “and I know now that you were indirecdy mixed up with it. But I’d gladly start this sort of rashness all over again, were it only to see the ashen faces of that arrogant crowd.”
When she had finished telling the story of her skirmish with the Prince de Conde, her husband nodded.
“I am almost surprised to find you still alive at my side. Actually you must have seemed too innocent to them. But it’s a dangerous thing to get tangled as a pawn in courtiers* intrigues. Making away with a little girl wouldn’t embarrass them, if the need arose.”
He got up as he talked and Angelique saw him advance towards a door-hanging, which he quickly pulled aside. He returned with a vexed air.
“I am not nimble enough to catch eavesdroppers.”
“Someone was listening?”
“I am certain of it.”
“This isn’t the first time that I have had the impression that we are being spied upon.”
He sat down behind her again. The heat was getting more oppressive, but the city suddenly began to vibrate with a thousand bells ringing out the Angdus. The young woman crossed herself devoutly and murmured an orison to the Virgin Mary. The mighty wave of sound broke over them and for a long while Angelique and her husband, who were seated by the open window, could not exchange a word. So they remained silent, and the intimacy which was growing between them stirred Angelique deeply.
‘Not only does his presence not displease me, it actually makes me happy,’ she thought to herself with surprise. ‘If he kissed me now, would I find it unpleasant?’
Once again, she became conscious of her husband’s eyes on her white neck.
“No, my darling, I am not a magician,” he murmured. “Perhaps I have received some power from nature, but above all I have wanted to learn. Do you understand?” he said in that cajoling tone that charmed her. “I thirsted to learn all that was difficult: sciences, letters, and also women’s hearts. I applied myself with delight to this charming mystery. One thinks there is nothing behind the eyes of a woman and then one discovers a new world. Or else you imagine a new world and discover there’s noth¬ing .. . except a jingling bell. What is there behind your green eyes, which evoke fresh meadows and the tumultuous sea? . . .”
She heard him move, and his luxuriant black hair flowed over her naked shoulder like a warm, silky fur. She quivered at the touch of the lips which she was unconsciously yearning for. Savouring, with closed eyes, this long, ardent kiss, Angelique felt the hour of her defeat approaching. Then she would come trembling, still restive but submissive, like the others, to of fer herself to the embraces of this mysterious man.