Judith Rock: The Rhetoric of Death

“Oh, I am not impugning your maturity, Maitre du Luc,” Jouvancy said earnestly. “Far from it.” He considered Charles gravely. “I suppose it is your-enthusiasm, I must call it-the impression you give of throwing yourself into things, that makes one think of you as younger than you are.” He eyed Charles for a moment. “As I watched you last night at your supper, I found myself thinking what a bad courtier you would make.”

Panic lurched in Charles’s stomach. Jouvancy was all too shrewd, and Charles could ill afford to be as transparent as the rhetoric master seemed to find him.

“Or what a good actor, perhaps?” he suggested lightly.

Jouvancy blinked. “Well, yes, that, too, I suppose. But I hope you were not acting and that you are indeed glad to be with us.”

“Assuredly I am glad, mon pere! Glad and grateful. I was merely pointing out another way to read the evidence-always a danger of being devoted to rhetorical logic, don’t you find?”

“Yes, true, there is that.”

He tried the hat on the brunette wig and Charles watched in silence, giving the tension he had created a moment to settle. Then he asked what tragedy they were playing with the ballet.

“Clovis-the Frankish king, you know. Though the tragedy seems hardly to matter these days, now that men use their Latin so little, once they leave school. And most women, of course, never learn any.” Jouvancy’s jaw set stubbornly. “But our syllabus requires Latin drama. And-” He stabbed the air with his wig-draped fist and the hat cocked itself at a rakish angle. “-the audience must sit through the Latin if they want to see the ballet, since we have the good sense to alternate the tragedy acts with the ballet parts. And, of course, Clovis has some good swordplay. That always helps hold their interest.”

“Is this Clovis one of yours?”

Jouvancy nodded proudly.

“I look forward to it,” Charles said sincerely. Europe’s vernacular languages might be shouldering Latin aside in many areas of modern life, but Jouvancy’s elegant tragedies were still in demand by rhetoric masters throughout the Jesuit college system. Which pleased Charles deeply, since he loved Latin for itself and the rhetoric master’s Latin was exquisite.

“You’ll be sick of play and ballet both before August the seventh,” Jouvancy said, but his brown eyes danced. “To work, then, while your enthusiasm lasts, Maitre du Luc!” He draped the wig over the sugar cone and opened the ballet livre.

Abell clanged, and Charles looked up hopefully from the livret in his lap. He’d had more than enough of Hercules-Louis’s anti-Huguenot labors.

“… And then,” Pere Jouvancy prattled on happily, “the ballet’s fourth and final part.” Ballets had parts and entrees where plays had acts and scenes. “The crown of everything that has gone before! This part’s first entree has Hercules throwing down the giants trying to scale heaven-a compliment to Louis’s piety in destroying the Huguenots, of course. In the second entree, Hercules razes Troy-that is Louis destroying the nests of heresy. Huguenot churches,” he added helpfully, as though Charles might not get it.

Charles kept his eyes on the livret and said nothing.

“And the third entree-Hercules helping Atlas hold up heaven-that is Louis defending true religion. And then the last entree and the best!” Jouvancy’s face was as gleeful as a rule-breaking boy’s. “We have a new machine for that one. It’s a seven-headed Hydra representing the Huguenots’ false religion, and the Opera workmen have made it wonderfully dragonish and horrible! Hercules defeats the monster and sends it back to hell, as our crowning compliment to the king and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes!” Fortunately for Charles, Jouvancy rushed on without waiting for a reaction. “Then comes the tragedy’s last act and the ballet’s grand finale-with both casts onstage, of course. And after that, we have the dear old philosopher Diogenes-that’s Pere Montville-descending from the heavens with his lantern. If that cloud machine can be stopped from creaking like the gates of hell! Diogenes brings the boys receiving the laurel crowns and the rest of the prizes onto the stage. And then, grace au bon Dieu, we can all breathe!” He threw himself back in his chair and beamed at Charles. “But we cannot breathe yet, because that was the warning bell for afternoon classes. We must hurry.”

He started for the door and Charles got slowly to his feet, staring at the livret in his hand.

“Maitre du Luc? Is something wrong?”

“No. That is-I beg your pardon, mon pere, I was just thinking.” He put the livret on the desk and joined Jouvancy at the door.

“Of what?”

Charles dredged up a smile. “Of what we are readying for the stage.”

“I am glad to see you take it so seriously! Avaunt, then, into the lists!”

He plunged down the stairs. Charles followed, thinking that, in spite of his distaste for the strident allegory of both ballet and tragedy, he couldn’t hold the little priest’s enthusiasm against him. He suspected that, for Jouvancy, the stage and the doings of heroes were often more real than the world beyond the college walls. The rhetoric master seemed to see the Edict of Nantes’s revocation the same way he saw Hercules’s labors: as a heroic story ripe for stage effects.

Outside in the courtyard, the students had put away their games and were scattering to classes. Jouvancy caught up with a group of older boys and shepherded them briskly toward the rhetoric classroom Montville had pointed out earlier. Feeling his mouth go dry, as though he were once more a student dancer about to step onstage, Charles followed in their wake.

“Your new realm, Maitre du Luc,” Jouvancy said over his shoulder, as they went into the weathered stone building and turned left into the classroom. The big room had the usual beamed ceiling and plain plastered walls, but its tall, small-paned windows flooded it with the day’s sunless light. The students were taking battered plumed hats from pegs along one wall and hanging up their black gowns. In shirts and breeches, and wearing the oddly shabby hats, they took their places on rows of benches. Charles followed Jouvancy to the small dais, eyeing the dusty tapestry in somber browns and greens that hung behind it. The tapestry showed Socrates forced to drink hemlock by his enemies. Feeling the thirty or so pairs of assessing eyes on his back, Charles wondered if drinking hemlock might be easier than facing new students. His heart was thumping and his mouth was still as dry as the morning’s bread. But this happened every time he faced a new class, and he concentrated on gathering spit in his mouth, so he could talk when the moment came.

“Bon courage,” Jouvancy murmured to Charles with a knowing grin and took his place behind the oak lectern.

Charles sat down in one of the platform’s two carved oak chairs, but before Jouvancy could begin speaking, a boy of sixteen or so raced in. As he peeled off his gown, Charles recognized him as the boy who’d stopped to watch the lay brother’s juggling before dinner. Tall and slim in his black breeches and a bright yellow silk shirt, the boy grabbed a hat and slid onto a bench, seemingly impervious to the tense silence. His fellows looked studiously straight ahead. Jouvancy fixed the boy with a long, quelling stare but, to Charles’s surprise, no interrogation followed.

“Let us stand and pray, messieurs,” Jouvancy said, releasing Yellow Shirt from his scrutiny.

Jouvancy commended their enterprise to God and the boys crossed themselves, put their hats back on, and sat down. The rhetoric master beamed at them.

“I have now the very great pleasure of presenting my new assistant and your new professor,” he said. “The learned young chevalier of rhetoric, and sometime chevalier of arms, just like our dear St. Ignatius: Maitre Charles du Luc.”