Authors: Robert Merle
“Ah, Monsieur!” gushed Monsieur de La Place. “I am so indebted to you for teaching that little coxcomb a lesson. His men have committed every excess imaginable here, beating my servants and pillaging the entire house.”
“What! They pillaged the place?” said Charron, amazed. “I’ll put things right before leaving. My friend,” he continued, “I wish I could now guarantee your safety, but I cannot: to do so would be to disobey the king, who wants you kept here, perhaps so you can be interrogated about the finances of the Huguenots. On the other hand, I am able to give sanctuary to your entire family, either with me at the Hôtel de Ville, or with Biron at the arsenal.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de La Place, taking his hands in gratitude, “I cannot thank you enough and will continue to express my gratitude in the next world when I leave this one. And, once my family is safe, I promise to remain here awaiting orders from my king and I give you my word that I will make no attempt to flee.”
Charron seemed somewhat taken aback by this pledge, as though he weren’t asking for so much, but after a sideways glance at his blue helmets, who seemed uncomfortable with such displays of friendship for a Huguenot, he decided to remain silent. And when La Place’s family returned to the library, he hurried the anguished adieux of these poor people, who naturally feared the worst for their father despite Charron’s assurances that the king had ordered the cessation of all executions that morning. I later learnt that he was speaking the truth, and that the orders had indeed come from the Louvre that morning, but were almost immediately rescinded.
Before leaving, Charron ordered his blue helmets to expel the four Grand Châtelet guards and their captain from the house, which they did with admirable alacrity and not without some bruises and cuts administered to the departing troops. We watched their expulsion through the broken windows of the library, I in delight, Monsieur de La Place in tears at the departure of his family.
I heard Charron order Florine to rebolt and rebar the door. This done, he stationed six of his guards in front of (not within) the house, and with the rest—about fifteen or so—he surrounded the group of prisoners (as he affected to call them), and, taking the lead, set off with his men in tight formation and with brandished pikes, since the mob that had surrounded the house began hooting, shaking their fists and spitting at the “prisoners”, all the while chanting, “To the cause! To Madame la Cause! Kill! Kill!”
“Monsieur de La Place,” I urged, as soon as they turned the corner, “now your family is safe. But time is of the essence! We must look to your safety and get you out of here as quickly as possible. Those guards will be back soon to put the blue helmets to flight. Do you think you can count on the provost of the Grand Châtelet as you did on Charron?”
“Not at all! Senneçay is a viper and hates me, I’m certain. But, Monsieur de Siorac, I cannot leave this house. I gave my word to the provost of the merchants.”
“But he didn’t ask for your word and he seemed to regret that you’d given it!”
“Nevertheless, I did so,” replied Monsieur, his head held high and the Ten Commandments imprinted on his face. “I’ll wait here for the orders of the king, who knows me as his loyal subject and would never hand me over to my secret enemies.”
“What? You know who they are?”
“One of them is, like me, a magistrate at the palace, and would
be delighted by my assassination, coveting as he has done for so long my bonnet of office as president of the Court of Aids.”
“Well,” I thought, “so you can engineer the murder of a colleague simply in order to wear his black velvet, gold-braided president’s hat?”
“And what’s the name of this good friend?” I asked.
“Nully,” laughed Monsieur de La Place, “the dative of the Latin
nullus
, and that he is null and void I wouldn’t doubt.”
“So you’re saying that Senneçay would, for money, do Nully’s dirty work?”
“Yes, alas, it could happen, since Senneçay is accustomed, from what I’ve heard, to take money from any hand that proffers it.”
“Well then,” I cried, “it’s pure folly, Monsieur de La Place, to remain here!”
But I was wasting my breath. From the fidelity he’d sworn to Charron there was no turning back, no matter how much I (and Giacomi, who added his voice to mine) insisted, and this from the conviction, I believe, that, once they’d taken his life, they’d spare those of his loved ones.
“But Monsieur,” he said with a smile that, though sad, also displayed a sweet serenity that was not of this world, “you must take the advice you’ve so liberally offered me, and secure your own safety without delay. Take the secret staircase, saddle my horses and be gone! But may I ask you to take Florine to the rue des Grands-Augustins, to the home of her cousin, who may be able to take her in?”
As he was saying this, we heard a loud noise in the street, and, leaning out of the windows, saw a group of forty guards from the Grand Châtelet putting Charron’s men to flight, not without a few parting caresses from their axe handles. This done, there came a tremendous blow on the front door.
“That’s Senneçay,” sighed Monsieur de La Place, paling, yet calm, “and he’s got three or four of the most unruly
quarteniers
with him.
Florine, go and open the door, and come upstairs ahead of them so that you can quickly slip into the little room there until these men can lead you to safety.”
Saying this, he pointed to the secret staircase, and, after embracing him a final time, I headed there, followed by my companions, our heads bowed and our hearts beating heavily in our chests at the prospect that awaited our friend. Once in the staircase, I watched through a crack in the door as Senneçay burst into the room, armed for war, sword in hand and small shield on his arm as if he were just about to plunge valiantly into battle in the midst of a great clatter of pikes rather than entering into the quiet library of a magistrate who was alone and unarmed.
From having been for most of his life a man of exceedingly supple spine, the doer of the foulest deeds required by the Louvre, Senneçay had acquired a sly mixture of cruelty and deceit in his expression. His eyes were as shifty as a pair of servile, nervous little weasels, and his thin, colourless lips seemed to have been pulled inside his mouth and masticated by his various appetites. His face was entirely covered by red and purulent sores, as if his conscience were trying to push out the pus that it secreted.
Behind him, wearing the gold-embroidered collars of the captains, entered the three fellows whom Monsieur de La Place had described as the most unruly
quarteniers
, and who seemed to me to be more beasts than men, having the bearing, the muzzle and the smell of wild animals, one of them displaying his blood-spattered bare arms like a badge of honour, as if to remind us of the part he’d played in the butchery of the Huguenots over the last two days.
“Monsieur,” said Senneçay, without honouring Monsieur de La Place by using his title of president, and without even looking in his direction, his mendacious eyes flitting about the library without settling on any one thing, “I have express orders from the king to bring you to the Louvre.”
“To the Louvre, Monsieur!” cried Monsieur de La Place. “To the Louvre in the middle of this tumult! With the people on all sides screaming for death! Even in the middle of your guards, pikes at the ready, I’ll never make it there alive!”
“I guarantee you the opposite,” said Senneçay, without however being able—or wishing to?—look him in the eye, his gaze wandering all over the library. “I will give you for your security a captain from Paris who is well known to the citizenry and who will accompany you.”
“Who would that be?” asked La Place.
“Monsieur Pezou, here present.”
At which, Monsieur Pezou, who was a sort of red-haired giant with watery eyes, stuck out his enormous stomach and put his hands on his hips with an air of ostentation.
“Pezou!” cried Monsieur de La Place, looking at him with horror. “I will say this to his face: Pezou is reputed to be the most violently cruel of all the
quarteniers
! Monsieur, you couldn’t have made a worse choice! Do you not see how Pezou, even at this moment, is parading the blood of my countrymen on his arms?”
“Of course I’m parading it,” sneered Pezou, his watery eyes glinting with bloodthirstiness. “I swore to the Blessed Virgin that I wouldn’t wash my arms—but would eat and drink with all this crusty blood on them—until every last heretic has been eradicated.”
“Monsieur,” laughed another
quartenier
, “it’s always for his own good that we bleed a body that suffers from any disorder. And the body of the state is no different, which has suffered too terribly from your pestilential heresy. Moreover, that’s what we heard from Monsieur de Tavannes, at dawn on St Bartholomew’s morning: ‘Bleed ’em! Bleed ’em, my friends. A good bleeding is as beneficial in August as in May!’”
Hearing this, Pezou winked his pale eyes and, shaking his head with pleasure, repeated, “A good bleeding is as beneficial in August as in May!”
And whether or not it was the charm of this particular phrase, the three
quarteniers
looked at each other and burst out laughing uncontrollably, though their mirth seemed to embarrass Senneçay, who, though a devil through and through, was hypocritical enough to wish to hide his delight at this.
“Monsieur,” cried Monsieur de La Place, “you heard him! Are you going to deliver me into such evil hands? Monsieur, I demand and beg you to deliver me personally to the Louvre under your responsibility.”
“Monsieur,” soothed Senneçay, his voice dripping with sanctimoniousness, “you must excuse me. I regret that I have other business I must attend to. I cannot remain with you more than fifty paces. Pezou will do the rest.”
“So you see, Monsieur, that you’re now married to me!” laughed Pezou. “And by God, you won’t regret it!”
“Well then, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de La Place to Senneçay, his voice as ashen as his face, “this is treason! It’s a felony! I will not accompany this assassin. I refuse!”
Senneçay frowned deeply at these words, and immediately, without a word, walked over to the door of the library, opened it and called for half a dozen of his guards.
“Monsieur,” he hissed to Monsieur de La Place, coming back to him but, again, without looking him in the eye, “that’s enough rebelliousness and insurrection! When I speak in the name of the king I intend to be obeyed. If you do not willingly surrender to the king, I will have to have you bound hand and foot and carted to the Louvre.”
After a few moments of reflection, Monsieur de La Place conceded, “I will spare you this ultimate infamy. It would clearly be too great a burden on your conscience.”
This said, he took up his cape (without which no one of his nobility would have thought of going out into the street in Paris, even in this August heat), threw it over his shoulders and, his face ashen but
calm and full of determination, stepped towards the door. However, at the moment of crossing the threshold, he turned, without deigning to look at either Senneçay or the three
quarteniers
, and gazed one last time at his armchair, his writing table and his books.
His escort, as I learnt later, took him by way of the Petit Pont, which Senneçay did not cross, withdrawing as he said he would; Pezou took the lead of the troop, whom the mob accompanied, shouting “Kill! Kill!” but not daring to attack the guards. They continued through the Île de la Cité, but as they arrived at the corner of the rue de la Verrerie, Pezou ordered the guards to stop. A handful of assassins who had been posted there on purpose threw themselves on Monsieur de La Place and stabbed him to death without the guards preventing them in any wise.
As for me, I believe that, while the king did nothing to protect La Place, he had not specifically ordered his death either. Otherwise, his name would have been included on a list and he would have been murdered in his lodgings like so many others on Sunday, 24th August at dawn. In my view it was Senneçay who plotted this murder with Pezou and Nully, who’d had to give up his role as president of the Court of Aids during the Peace of Saint-Germain, and had never forgiven his rival. Pezou’s help was purchased with a few coins and Senneçay’s for a few écus, and so Nully managed to keep his reputation stainless by absenting himself from the murder.
And so it went in these sinister hours. It became acceptable for anyone who so desired to murder his heretic, one in order to usurp his place, another in order to inherit his money, another simply to exact his revenge and another still to win a lawsuit. Thus, for example, the famous Bussy d’Amboise, who’d sued the Huguenot Antoine de Clermont over the marquisate of Renel, went after him on the morning of the 24th and put an end to their legal proceedings by stabbing him to death.
As soon as Monsieur de La Place had left with his executioners, I ran to close and lock the library door, convinced that the minute they saw the door of the house unguarded, the mob would swarm inside to pillage it. Florine emerged from the little cabinet in tears, and I had to prevent her from going to gather her affairs from her room since we could already hear the marauders downstairs, who were swarming through the house like rats through a block of cheese.
So I pulled the wench into the secret staircase, drew the wooden panel closed and down we went into the darkness, Fröhlich leading the way while I brought up the rear. Our Swiss giant would have simply knocked down the door at the bottom if I hadn’t stopped him and asked Miroul to find the latch, which he did and immediately provided us access to the stables. Once there, Florine showed us, hidden behind the stacks of hay, the door that led out onto the rue Boutebrie, which appeared, when we peeked out, to be calm and deserted. You can imagine that we lost no time in saddling our horses for fear that the pillagers would decide that they wanted them as well, and, Florine mounting up behind Miroul, we burst out into the street and turned right, then right again and took the rue de la Harpe down to the Pont Saint-Michel, and from there the left quay along to the rue des Grands-Augustins, where one of Florine’s cousins was living at the home of her aunt, who was a very beneficent lady.