Hella Haasse - In a Dark Wood Wandering

He sighed, gave a slight cough and put on his spectacles. Villon, who had sat quietly watching him, said suddenly, “A person can carry his own persecutor, his own prison, about with him, Monseigneur. He can — as you know — die of thirst even when he has the clearest water within his reach. To be free … not to be free … it is all relative. No one has to drag along more ballast than he wants to and he who allows himself to be bound is a fool. The biggest fools are those who wear shackles of cobwebs and believe themselves to be helpless.”

Charles did not reply at once. With his head propped upon his hand he looked at his visitor — that thin, sharply delineated face with the shadowed eyes and the wide, bitter mouth, the face of a man who had lived fiercely and violently. Charles recalled the nervous vigilance, the disillusioned look of the youth who had been caught cutting a purse in front of the Celestine cloister; the face of the man who sat across from him in the quiet library at Blois bore no trace of youth, although Villon was not yet thirty years old. In that mask, only the eyes appeared sometimes to be vulnerable as they blazed for a brief moment with affection or enthusiasm. Charles, who was usually quick to strike a note of friendship with his visitors, found himself almost uneasy in Villon’s company. More than the width of the table divided them: there was a whole world between them.

The setting sun gleamed red against the tapestries on the wall; from the leafy thickets at the base of the precipice a cuckoo called incessantly with a high, clear sound, and the poplars along the river rustled in the evening breeze.

“Someone has challenged me to a game of cards,” said Villon suddenly. His voice sounded rough and indifferent once more as it had when the meal commenced. “Somebody in black and green with a bald head and a chin like a turkey cock.”

Charles, startled from his thoughts, could not suppress a smile. “Messire Jean des Saveuses, probably.”

“I shall have to hide from him; I cannot afford to lose.” Villon shrugged. Charles groped in his sleeve and produced a purse of black plaited silk.

“I find it a very disagreeable thought that a guest of mine should walk through my house with empty hands. Take my purse, but don’t make the stakes too high, Messire.”

For a moment Villon looked at the purse with a grimace which was half challenging and half embarrassed. His hesitation was quickly overcome, however. He put out his hand and drew the small weighty pouch toward him over the table. At the same time he stood up.

“You are extraordinarily generous, Monseigneur,” he said. He made a gesture as if he were going to bend the knee before his host, but Charles forestalled this mark of homage with a curt wave of his hand.

“Leave that, Villon,” he said dryly. “Go now; perhaps des Saveuses is looking for you. Write a poem and win the match tomorrow. Good evening, Messire.”

Villon, who noticed the change in the Duke’s manner and in his voice, raised his brows, bowed swiftly and left the room. Charles sat quietly in the red-gold glow of the evening sun which now poured through the arched window.

“Here I sit imprisoned,” he said, half-aloud, “in my old skin. A man in the declining years of his life — grey, fat and so exhausted and indifferent to the very core of my being that I create the impression of generosity.” He shook his head and sighed; the sun disturbed him; he closed his eyes and turned his face away a little.

He had lived for ten long years in carefree, sunny domestic Blois, a world which he had created himself. Study, easy intercourse with friends and acquaintances, the secret bliss he derived from poetry — had satisfied him so fully that no room remained in his heart for other desires. The pleasures which had been denied him as a youth and as a man in the prime of life he now possessed in abundance. He was surrounded by devoted, affectionate members of his household. Yes, he could allow himself his small whims, his distinct peculiarities. He basked in the respectful, indulgent warmth of his surroundings. The outside world no longer mattered to him; he did not even want to know what was happening in the cities and territories through which he had once travelled, filled with a desire to serve King and Kingdom, or even to serve that distant vision: peace. That peace was indeed only a vision, a chimaera, he had been compelled to believe when, to his great shock and profound disappointment, the English, despite all treaties, all diplomatic protests, had proceeded anew to attack Normandy and Brittany. Since then the battle had raged incessantly in the coastal regions — sometimes to the advantage of France, sometimes not.

Charles had ceased to be engrossed in the results of the struggle, in the shifting fortunes of war; he turned a deaf ear when his courtiers discussed the tidings which messengers continued to bring to Blois. Yes, he did know something — he knew from his noble guests that de Brezé and Coeur had fallen in turn into disfavor and had been repudiated; that Agnes Sorel had died a terrible death; he knew that the people of Gascony, encouraged by the English, had risen in rebellion just when the King seemed to be shattered by grief and reverses. He knew that the Dauphin, after a fierce quarrel with his father which had lasted for many years, had been banished from court for life; he knew too that Burgundy, plagued by illness, was barely able to remain master in his own domains. The greatest cities of Flanders and Hainault, embittered by the way in which the Duke attempted to impose his authority, made known their opposition sometimes passively, often by force of arms.

All this Charles knew well. But it did not affect him.

He felt himself comfortably hidden, securely stowed away in the silence of Nonchaloir. The only disturbance he had to endure was the restlessness which poetic inspiration brought with it. All the conditions seemed fulfilled for a carefree, peaceful life. That in spite of all this he was not really happy astonished Charles anew each day.

A rustling noise at the door startled him; he raised himself, not without difficulty, and bent sideways so that he could look over the back of his chair. Marie had entered; carefully she pushed aside the tapestry which hung before the door and then moved it back again. She sat down opposite him on the footstool on which his aching leg had been propped.

“I hear you have cancelled today’s contest, Monseigneur,” she said softly. She always addressed Charles with formality. “Am I to blame?”

“It seemed to me that the subjects had aroused your displeasure,” replied Charles. “It would make no sense to compete with one another in poetry when not everyone is in a contented and happy frame of mind. You know that I put a good relationship among my household above everything.”

Marie nodded calmly, but her eyes did not lose their expression of mournful resignation. “I find both themes completely attractive. I considered earnestly the question of why you chose precisely these subjects which, each in different words, express the same feeling of helplessness, discontent. I thought that you were contented, Monseigneur.”

“It is a question whether one ever finds the peace which gratifies the spirit.” Charles removed his spectacles and, for a moment, pressed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand against his eyes.

“We can seek our consolation in God,” Marie said quietly.

“Do you do that, ma mie?”

“I did not know that you were troubled, Monseigneur. I did not know that no fountain exists which can quench your thirst.”

Charles raised his head and looked at his wife with surprise. He had never heard her speak that way before; it seemed to him that she was expressing what he had so often thought in secret bitterness. He leaned forward and took Marie’s hand.