The Dream Maker (6 page)

Money is pure dreams. To contemplate it is to cause the endless procession of the things of this world to parade before one's eyes.

My father-in-law tried very patiently to teach me the art of exchange. Very quickly he reproached me for not being sufficiently attentive to what I was doing. With money, as if I were staring into the fireplace, I tended to let my mind wander. For such a precise, meticulous activity as an exchange transaction, a disposition to daydreaming is not an asset: I made mistakes that could cost dearly. Even though my father-in-law handled important business, his margins were slim. The slightest negligence when weighing the metal or calculating proportions could severely affect his profit.

But he was a good man, and indulgent. I was his son-in-law. He saw my faults but did not withhold his trust. It was his conviction that each of us is capable of discovering the employment that suits him, provided he knows exactly what his aptitudes are. Mine would certainly not make me a moneychanger. It remained to be seen whether I would be good at anything else.

On thinking back on this era, I tell myself that it was dark and painful, yet fruitful. I was not getting on in life. In the opinion of my fellow citizens, I owed my position to my in-laws and not at all to my own merit. My father-in-law had settled us in a house he had expressly built for his daughter. Our first child was born the year after our wedding. He was a fine boy whom we called Jean. Three more were born in turn. Macé was happy. In our house, which still smelled of cement and fresh wood, the children's cries and the servants' chatter drowned the silence between Macé and myself. We loved each other sincerely, with that rather sad distance that both unites and separates people who lead lives of the mind.

I was full of doubts, plans, and hope. Many of my ideas were mere daydreams, but some of them would determine my life later on. Those years between the ages of twenty and thirty were a time when my idea of the world and the place I hoped to have in it would be decided, laboriously but forcefully.

As I made my way in my father-in-law's milieu, I began to have a broader and clearer view of the state of the country and those who exerted power. Prior to this, given my father's humble position, I had known only people whose lot it was to be submissive. The vagaries of war, the conflicts among noblemen, the uprisings among the people, were events we never perceived as anything other than the result of a destiny to which we had no choice but to submit. The Lords asserted that their power was God-given, as it had been with their ancestors in the days when a laborer entrusted himself to a knight for his defense. They were still arrayed in the immense prestige of the crusades, which had returned the true Cross to the heart of Christianity. My rebelliousness in the face of the humiliation my father was forced to undergo was mere schoolboy childishness: I knew, even though I did not accept it, that in becoming an adult I would also have to bow my head. The order of things seemed immutable to us. But as soon as I was at my father-in-law's, I understood that fear and subservience need not be inevitable.

When I went with Léodepart to visit nobility, I was able to see the difference between the treatment they reserved for him and that which was given to a simple furrier. My father-in-law was a link in the solid chain of money, however invisible. The noblemen feared him and were careful not to humiliate him.

I had been married for two years when at last the mad king died. His passing did not bring peace; on the contrary, it seemed as if his madness, which he had held captive in his person, was now spreading throughout the country. The nobility fought among themselves more than ever. No one seemed capable of assuming the sovereign's legacy. The Dauphin, Charles, stood by as John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was assassinated; he was hounded, fought by all, including his own mother. Shut away in her Paris mansion, she schemed with her son's enemies to entrust the throne of France to a three-year-old English sovereign.

One day I traveled with my father-in-law to Anjou, on a matter that required his presence. This was the first time in my life that I was leaving our town. I was horrified by what I saw. Just as glass, when it shatters, spreads over a large surface far beyond the point of impact, the quarrel among the noblemen had fragmented into innumerable local quarrels, ravaging the country. We went through entire villages in ruin. It was impossible to count how many barns, stables, and even houses had been burned to the ground. Famished peasants tilled tiny plots at the edge of the forest where they could hide at the first alarm. It was late autumn and the air was already cold. One day our horses were stopped mid-morning by a troop of several hundred wandering children; they were infested with ringworm and barefoot in the icy mud. They aroused less fear than pity. A bit farther along we met a minor lord and his troop who were equipped for hunting. From the questions he asked, we understood that he was after those children, they were his prey, and he hoped to bag the greatest number of “pieces” possible. He spoke of them as if they were wild boars or wolves. The human race had vanished from this realm; there were only enemy tribes who could not even concede to others the dignity of being a creature of God.

Traveling with us were four men-at-arms, and we had refrained from carrying anything valuable. We slept in small towns or fortresses where my father-in-law was known. There were times when we arrived at the expected place and found nothing but ruins.

I returned from that trip with the smell of death burning in my nostrils. At least now I knew the state of the realm. My mistrust of princes in particular and all lords in general went from instinctive to rational. What I had seen of them in the antechambers where my father used to wait had surely taught me their true nature. The era of chivalry was over. Not only did that caste no longer protect anyone, as they had in the time of my ancestors, but, on the contrary, they were now the source of all danger. Was the king's madness the cause or the consequence of so much unrest? No one could say. In any case, nothing was as it had been. Honor had become a pretext not to respect others but to crush them. The superiority of birth no longer gratified those who were so honored with a sense of duty; they seemed to think it gave them the right to look down on anyone inferior, to treat them like animals, even dispose of their lives.

Worse yet, as if it were not bad enough to be bringing the country to ruin, the lords were incapable of defending it. At Agincourt, the year I was fifteen, they had gone once again into battle, and their only concern was to strut about, show off their lineage, obey the rules of chivalry, wield their spears with dexterity, and parade their heavy, caparisoned chargers with elegance. Subsequently, though the English had only a third as many men, their simple archers and villeins, who had no honor but were clever and quick, were able to annihilate the French forces. And now that they had been defeated they were hailing a foreign king and placing the country under the thumb of an English regent whose only ambition was to humiliate the populace and pillage the land until there was nothing left.

When we reached our town it felt as if we had left hell behind. Bourges was certainly no paradise. The city was grayer than ever, living according to its lifeless rhythm. It was far from being the city of my dreams. But at least it was at peace. The wise old Duke had saved it from ruin. After his death, he had left his property exclusively to the Dauphin. Which meant that Charles, now king, stayed on there, and, for lack of anything better, made Bourges his capital. I had the opportunity to go to the palace on several occasions, but did not see him. It was said that since fleeing Paris at the time of the great massacres he stayed huddled in rooms without openings, and gave audience to no one. In any event, he did not stay in the same place for long, and he obliged his diminished court to travel from château to château like hunted prey.

No one knew what would become of this sovereign without a realm, at war with his entire family. At the time, and despite the role he would play later on in my life, he was in my opinion nothing more than one prince among others, and I placed no faith in him. When the Dauphin Charles became King Charles VII, my father died. The poor man just managed to tell me I must acknowledge the king's authority. Right to the end, he worried about the traces of rebelliousness he sensed in me. And it is true, in spite of the affection I bore my father, his subservience seemed to belong to another era.

My father-in-law's method seemed far more attractive. He had no sincere bonds with those he served, be it King Charles or his enemies. He merely got from them what he could. And because of his financial power, and the need for his services, he was always held in high esteem.

I endeavored to follow in his footsteps. For several years I managed without deriving a great deal of satisfaction. I did not realize it, but there is an age when you can force your nature with sincerity, and with each passing day convince yourself that you are following the path you must take, when in fact it is leading you away from your true wishes, setting you adrift. The most important thing is to preserve enough energy to be able to change the moment this disparity begins to make you suffer, once you have understood your error.

Therefore I decided that, of all the trades available to me, I would work with money. In those days it was a rare substance. The quantity of currency that was in circulation was hardly enough for the exchange. Many transactions, for lack of cash, had to resort to payments in kind or letters of credit. The most common coins were made of silver, the more valuable ones of gold. Of all the obstacles that stood in the way of trade, the lack of liquidity was one of the most significant. Those who dealt in money occupied a coveted place. If they were able to lend or send money to a faraway creditor by avoiding the vagaries of transport, they had great power at their disposal.

Initially I thought this power would satisfy me. My modest success went to my head, and, with the small amount my parents had left me as well as Macé's sizeable dowry, I had acquired the flattering reputation of a young man of fortune.

Adulthood had turned me into a tall, thin fellow; I puffed out my chest to make up for my birth defect—although Macé had taught me how to consider it without horror. I strove to be elegant at all public functions. I had set up an exchange workshop at the back of our courtyard and I had a vault where I was able to store items of value. I was consulted by the grandest houses in the town. A number of noblemen had been sufficiently humiliated in my presence for none of them ever to imagine treating me in any other way than with respect.

I fulfilled my Christian duties scrupulously, but saw this as nothing more than an obligatory custom. I cannot say when I stopped believing in God. In truth, since our escapade during the siege of Bourges, I had been addressing my prayers to a higher force that I did not locate in the usual images of Christ or God the Father. It seemed to me that one could only communicate with this invisible power through a rare, indescribable agency that was available only to the few. It would be impossible, for example, for an imbecile like Éloi, with his boastful manner, to communicate with God or even have an idea of his existence, despite the fact that he spent his Sunday mornings wearing an alb that was too small for him, circling around the priests at the cathedral and performing more genuflections than the liturgy required.

Macé's piety was more moving to me, although no more convincing. I watched her spend long hours on her knees, her face in her hands in prayerful attitude. But those images she worshipped, in particular a Holy Virgin in painted plaster, which had been cast for her from a statue in the Sainte-Chapelle, were unimaginatively human and inert, regardless of the artists' talent. It seemed clear to me that, in spite of her efforts, Macé could not communicate in this way with any of the true powers that radiated their will into our world. When we spoke, however, I could see in her the independence of dreamers, that consciously cultivated intuition that comes of being constantly in the presence of invisible realities and supernatural forces.

I do not have a very detailed memory of those years. They seem to form a block made from an alloy of equal parts routine and happiness. Children were born and grew; the house was full of them. They were well-fed and beloved. I was earning my living in an honest manner, and my business did not take me far beyond the town and its surroundings. The news that came from afar made us bless every day the happy fate that kept us sheltered from war, famine, and plague. We heard muffled rumors of the conflict between King Charles and the Englishman who claimed to reign over France from Paris. The Loire River marked the border between the two royal domains. At times peace seemed within reach, but no sooner did we believe it so than the battles had already resumed somewhere.

To put it bluntly, the situation was getting worse and worse. With my little trade in money, my little fortune, and my little family, I could only hope for relative prosperity, local and provisional. We were at the mercy of the slightest change in circumstances. I had grown accustomed to the situation as it stood; my only ambition was to go on occupying my modest, comfortable spot. On the surface I had given up on changing the world, let alone trying to discover a better one.

And yet my childhood ideas had not completely disappeared. They were buried in my head and sometimes came back to torment me. They were certainly the reason I suffered from migraines now and again. Bright colors would shine before my eyes, and a few seconds later half of my skull would be throbbing like a cathedral bourdon. I now know that this was a sign. My hopes and dreams came clattering back to me in the form of these flashes; they tore the fabric of the simple, familiar things that surrounded me. The leopard, if I helped him, could still leap out of his bag.

For a long time I did not understand these calls. When the catastrophe arrived, I was no longer able to ignore them.