The Dream Maker (45 page)

After several weeks had gone by, the regime of torture intensified. I was beaten, and although the blows were still bearable, they caused me to panic. I reiterated my offer to the judges to confess to whatever they liked.

After ten days during which the drubbing and flagellation increased regularly in intensity, I began to contemplate suicide. Just as I was trying to determine what, in the place where I was held, could be used for hanging, a timely delegation of magistrates came to announce that my request had been accepted after all. The bill of indictment would be drawn up that week and I must agree to sign it. I consented, trying to hide my enthusiasm, which might have been misinterpreted. The end of the year was spent in preparing the bill. As I had committed to accepting everything, it was up to my judges to set down grievances that would be both realistic and sufficiently grave to justify the sentence, which had quite obviously been decided upon well in advance.

I knew that all of this, whatever happened, would culminate in an incrimination of lèse-majesté, which was punishable by death.

However, I do not know whether it was the means used to obtain this verdict, which at times bordered on farce, or whether it was my intuition that the king was more interested in my fortune than in my life, and would not find it easy to make off with the former if he did not spare the latter, but I never believed in the eventuality of a capital execution.

When the commissioners appointed to judge me published their final indictment, the sentence handed down was indeed death. But less than a week later, this sentence was commuted and all that was demanded of me was that I make amends. The punishment consisted primarily of the confiscation of my property and a tribute of several hundred thousand écus. Now I had to find the means to pay it, for I would only be set free once I had discharged this enormous sum. In a way, I was hostage to myself. My life had been spared on condition I use it henceforth to pay a price for my freedom so high that all the days remaining would not suffice to obtain that price.

The king appointed a prosecutor to proceed with the liquidation of my property, starting with an inventory. The man chosen for this difficult task was Jean Dauvet, the same man in whose company I had carried out my mission to Rome. We knew each other well, and as far as I could remember Dauvet had no reason to reproach me. He was a magistrate, however, and as such belonged to a species that I had not known well before my arrest, but which I had subsequently come to know in detail. These individuals, through their profession, have resolved to stand apart from humanity, by embracing the abstract cause of the law. For them there is no such thing as an excuse, an error, suffering, or weakness—in short anything that is human. For them there is only the law, regardless of what injustice it might entail. They are the priests of that God who is devoid of mercy, and to please him, they will unscrupulously resort to lying and violence; they will condone the ignoble brutality of torturers, and will accept on faith denunciations made by the most vile individuals.

And it was thus that Dauvet zealously, competently, and, dare I say, honestly set about stripping me of my possessions. His methodical efforts to take stock of my property stemmed from the sentence handed down against me. For him that was sufficient reason to prove that his activity was just. He cared little that the powerful men in the king's entourage, the very same ones who had set themselves up as my judges, shamelessly helped themselves to my properties the moment he exhibited them. The letter of the law had been respected, and that was enough for Dauvet.

This period of my detention, after the relief that came with the sentencing, was also very instructive. First of all, as I followed Dauvet's progress in listing my affairs, I became more fully aware of just how widespread they were. The development of our company had been so rapid and so continuous, and it had required so much effort, that there had been no place left for contemplation. Moreover, my role in these affairs, most of the time, was to give the initial impetus. After this, others had caused my business to prosper, and for the most part I was unaware of how far they had gone.

It was a great satisfaction to me to measure the impact and range of the network we had created.

At the same time I learned what had made this success possible. It was precisely what neither Dauvet nor the predators sharing my possessions had understood: the company I had created had grown to this degree because it was alive and no one controlled it. It was a huge organism, and freedom was given to every member of it to act as they saw fit. By seizing whatever they could grab, by sequestering my belongings, by dismembering every piece of cloth contained in our stores, Dauvet and the dogs running with his pack were merely ferreting through the entrails of a dead beast. Everything they took was then no longer free and thus ceased to live. The moment it was evaluated, the worth of my erstwhile property became inert and began to decrease, because its true worth came only from the free and unceasing movement of trade.

Dauvet's balance sheets gave me hope, because beyond the assets the prosecutor had listed and frozen, I could see—without telling him of course—everything he had not yet touched and which escaped his notice. I knew that Guillaume de Varye, who had been arrested at the same time as me, had managed to escape. Jean de Villages, Antoine Noir, and all the others, most of whom had sought refuge in Provence or in Italy, or were hiding in regions that escaped the king's control, were doing what they could to conceal as many things as possible from Dauvet's deadly inventory. In their hands, these supplies and stores and ships continued to do business, and thus to live.

They managed to get messages to me. Thus I was apprised of the fact that the business had been greatly affected but was not dead.

The situation was fairly obvious. Dauvet would never succeed in raising the sums demanded of me simply by seizing the remains. But the rest of my business, which was still beyond his reach and would always remain so, or so I hoped, continued to generate considerable profit. The choice was simple. Could I ask my friends to go on working with a sole purpose in mind: to give the king everything they earned in order to obtain my release? Or, would I give precedence to our business, and let it prosper without me? That would mean bidding farewell to my freedom.

Then there came the terrible ceremony at the Château in Poitiers, to which I had been transferred, where I had to kneel down before Dauvet, who was representing the king, and ask for mercy from God, the sovereign, and the law.

This ultimate humiliation was a dual deliverance. First of all it made me intimately aware that everything had been lost; I did not have the right to ask Guillaume or any of the others to sacrifice themselves in order to buy my freedom. Particularly from a king who had shown he was perfectly capable of committing such an injustice in the first place: he would never grant me my freedom. I sent word to them the very next day.

Finally, as if placing a seal on the end of my trial, this ceremony marked the beginning of a new condition for me which, as I have said, was very much like that of a hostage waiting for his ransom to be paid. In every respect it was a more tolerable condition. As they were no longer hoping to obtain a confession from me, my jailers found it pointless to torment me. The first favor I asked, and which to my great surprise was granted, was to have the presence of my valet Marc restored to me.

In truth, he had never left me. He had been following me from town to town, wherever my place of detention happened to be. As he had not been authorized to see me before now, he generally stayed in a rundown inn where he would quickly earn the deep affection of the cook or serving woman.

As soon as he could join me and speak to me, my first prison collapsed, the one in which I had locked myself. I immediately stopped feeling resigned to my fate, and I banished the quandary that had occupied my mind all through the previous weeks. It was no longer a question of paying for my freedom or of staying in jail until my death. With Marc, one thing became amply clear: I had to set myself free.

 

*

 

But the outlook for freedom was not so simple. In Poitiers I was kept locked in two rooms where the windows had been walled up. The door leading to the outside was fitted with iron plates and locked with three bolts. There were a number of henchmen living and sleeping on the other side. The daylight barely filtered through a tiny barred window above the door.

Marc was allowed to come in at the end of the morning with my laundry and lunch. He stayed with me until they rang Vespers at the chapel.

When he first talked to me about escaping, after an initial rush of enthusiasm I was immediately discouraged by the material obstacles we would face and above all by my feeble physical condition. Before I could even begin to plan my flight, I had to regain my energy, my muscles, the health that these twenty months of reclusion had altered. Careful to evade the guards' notice, under Marc's supervision I began a program of physical exercise. My appetite returned and Marc, with the help of his connections in the kitchen, was able to improve my everyday fare, adding meat and seasonal fruit to the menu.

I asked permission, and it was granted, under very strict conditions, to be able to enjoy a walk in the courtyard of the Château every morning. The still pale sunlight of winter helped me emerge from the stupor into which the darkness of my jails had plunged me. Once again, as at the beginning of my incarceration, I felt the lightness of my new condition, where I was no longer burdened with the weight of my responsibilities. This only made detention all the more disagreeable, because it created an obstacle to the full enjoyment of my new freedom. My eagerness to plan my escape was all the greater for it.

Throughout this entire period Marc did not discuss his activity with me, but he was constantly exploring the château and its surroundings, on the lookout for any breaches in the surveillance. At the beginning of the spring, when he saw that I was physically ready to envisage a grab at freedom, he shared his findings with me.

He had learned everything there was to know about the entire populace of the château, and knew in detail the vices, habits, and foibles of the château's garrison, from the head guard to the most insignificant bucket-carrying valet. Marc did not know how to read or write, but his mind had the precision of a carefully annotated almanac. All those on whom my liberty might depend to even the slightest degree had been recorded in his memory and associated with a particular weakness. One might be a drunkard, another a cuckold, a third had a liking for fine food, or yet another might be obsessed with his mistress—Marc knew everything. His world, let it be said in passing, was not an ugly one. For him these foibles were the natural elements of the human condition. He never observed them in order to deliver the slightest judgment, only to obtain his particular ends. In this respect he was not unlike the prosecutor Dauvet. Both of them accepted the law, one of man and the other of nature. In the presence of such people I came to realize how much I had lived in the ignorance and scorn of those laws, determined as I was to escape them. In a way, we represented the two opposite and complementary poles of human conscience: submission to what is, and the desire to create another world. Although I could acknowledge the worth of people who thought like Dauvet or Marc, I remained attached to my dreams. Because I am convinced that those who conform in full with existing laws may have a good life, and obtain high rank, and triumph over adversity, but they will never produce anything great.

However, given my extreme deprivation, I had no choice but to defer to Marc. I was infinitely grateful to him for his efforts.

He did not limit himself to compiling a list of the weaknesses of the château's inhabitants. He subjected them to a subtle treatment that converted each of those vices into a same unit of value: money. Whether they went about it through drunkenness, adultery, or cupidity, in the end they all proved vulnerable to that universal property which in itself is nothing, but is worth everything. Once he had put a price on every man in the château, Marc began, with me, to lay down the precise plans that would enable us to know whom we actually needed. And, therefore, how much money.

 

*

 

Yesterday, Elvira and I moved to her cousin's sheepfold and I had to interrupt my story. We left at night so no one could inform the spies watching me of our direction. The island is not very big, but every island always has its surprises. When you see an island from the coast you cannot tell how big is, and above all you have no idea of the geography of the center. We had to follow narrow donkey paths, cross a wooden bridge, and make our way around rocky ridges.

Now we are in our shepherd's hut. It is much less comfortable than Elvira's house. But given the level of poverty to which I have fallen, and if I judge it from the palaces I have known, it's all the same.

The house, as we hoped, has the advantage of being very safe. To reach it, one must climb a winding footpath. It is protected all around by steep slopes covered with thick, thorny bushes. Even if someone were to find me here, they could not approach without making noise, and the hairless dog chained outside will notify us well in advance of any arrivals. There is a cellar where I can hide, and its entrance is hidden by boxwood. This will be a good place to wait for Campofregoso's reply. Elvira sent one of her friends to the port to keep her informed of any ships arriving from Genoa.

Elvira is more loyal and loving than ever. I am ashamed I ever suspected her. Whatever I do, deep down I still find it difficult to trust women: for a long time I believed this was the fruit of experience, but now I know it is, rather, a sign of pride and stupidity. This blindness exempts me from having to show greater nuance in judging them and above all from being more attentive to what differentiates them all. I have been very tender and thoughtful with Elvira of late, to make up for my suspicions. I don't know quite what she thinks of all my shifting moods. In any case, she accepts them with equanimity and changes nothing in her attitude.