Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

“And what service, exactly, would be required of me?”

The cardinal smiled. “Nothing.”

The count smiled back for the first time. “No countess or cardinal is ever so generous for nothing.”

“A word then. I believe you have in your service a man who is currently seneschal of Aigues-Mortes?”

“That is true.”

“Bring him to Avignon. And make sure he does as he is told. His obedience will pay your ransom.”

BISHOP FAUSTUS of Riez himself conducted the baptism of Manlius, performed the ordination two days later, and also took charge of the meeting of the faithful that was to elect the new Bishop of Vaison. His advocacy was an important factor, for his holiness was already well known, and it was assumed that in the fullness of time, miracles would affirm his presence among the saints. Already stories attested to the cures that resulted wherever he went, and he was a man whose desires were not easily denied. He made a forceful case; humbly refusing to give his opinion as members of the congregation bandied name after unsuitable name, intervening solely to make sure that no decision was taken, and the meeting eventually became bogged down with too many names of the mediocre and unfit. Then a leading member of the congregation walked up to him and went down on his knees.

“Gracious sir,” this man cried, “God is not with us. We see it all around us, and we see it here today. We are without guidance, and we need a shepherd to show us the way. Help us, sir. Tell us your opinion. Help us make a choice.”

Still Faustus dissented. “I would not presume to interfere,” he said. “I have no right to do so. The choice of bishop is your own, and must be taken by you. But I must disagree when you say God is not with you; you must learn to see. For His ways are often hidden from man’s sight, and are not easily discerned. Rather than interfere, then, I wish only to give you succor by showing how what I say is true. For I have recently witnessed a miracle, a great sign of the Lord’s care for all his sheep.”

The crowd rumbled with excitement at this, as all were in awe of miracles.

“There is a man among you known as a great sinner, careless of God. Throughout his life he had given himself up to the things of this world only, and turned his face from the faithful. And yet the Lord cared for him and gathered him in. He had a dream in which he saw a man weeping, and asked, ‘Why do you cry so? What can I do to stop your sadness?’ And the other said,

“ ‘Save your soul, for I weep for you.’

“And he looked up, and this sinner saw the marks of the crown of thorns on his head, and saw the wounds in his hands, and, in his dream, fell down before him and said, ‘Lord, I believe.’

“The next day this man came to me on hands and knees, begging to be baptized, and so I did. And here he sits with us now. His name is Manlius, servant of God.”

The tale caused all except Manlius to rise from their seats and rejoice, and when they quieted once more, one man stood up and said, “Sir, surely this is a sign that the Lord has work for this man, that He should appear to him now? What is your opinion?”

“I do not know,” said the bishop. “I simply rejoice at a sinner saved, a man of such skill and birth and wealth and learning now adds faith to all his other qualities. It may be indeed that the Lord needs him, or that He sees our needs more clearly than we do ourselves.”

“He must be our leader,” shouted another man. “This must be the meaning of this vision. Manlius must be our bishop.”

Even then, after such careful preparation and such an allegorical interpretation of Manlius’s embracing of the faith, there were doubts among many in the meeting, whose prevarications had been stoked well in advance by Felix’s family, and particularly Caius Valerius, who saw what he considered his bishopric being stolen from under his very nose. There was no split in the meeting, but even Faustus’s great authority had to be deployed in full to achieve the result he desired. And he, afterward, had a sense of foreboding. He knew, of course, that raising Manlius would not be easy; he had not realized that the Adenii clan would object so much. He was a bishop. But a politician enough to realize that if Manlius was to be effective, he would have to deal with what threatened to be a constant thorn in his side.

He could have retreated, of course. Announced that the will of God was not with the meeting, called an end to it all in order to reconsider. But this man of great qualities and high ability had one fault: His belief in his judgment, and belief that his judgment and the will of God were one and the same, was all but complete. For his recommendation to be rejected was the same as the entire congregation throwing off the word of the Lord; it could not be allowed. He pressed, and insisted, used all his skills, and finally prevailed. Manlius, weeping with dismay, was dragged from his chair and brought to the front of the meeting.

All his plaintive cries about his unworthiness were brushed aside in the enthusiasm for what was now accepted as God’s will. He cried with humility, threw himself at Faustus’s feet, and begged to be relieved of this terrible burden for which he was entirely unfitted, and by his behavior began to confirm his suitability for the position.

At the end, only Manlius himself was unhappy, disgusted by his own actions and even more contemptuous of the vessel he had chosen to save everything he held dear. It was necessary; that he saw all too well. But the utter vulgarity of it, the stink of the congregation in their enthusiasm, the incoherent babble of their voices, the way they had been so easily led, left him in a misery so profound it endured for days afterward.

ON THE OCCASION of his thirty-first birthday, Julien gave a dinner party at a small restaurant near Les Halles, for he was leaving the life of the Lycée and had won a position teaching at the University of Montpellier. It would be a new life, far from Paris, and deserved to be marked with some style. As he did not care for large gatherings, he invited three friends only: Bernard Marchand, Marcel Laplace, and Julia Bronsen. The friendship between the three men was a strange one, for neither of his two friends liked the other, and endured each other’s company only for his sake. Both knew the moment they saw Julia that she was different to Julien’s usual women friends, with the result that the evening, inevitably, turned into a hunt to discover why.

The times had strained even old friendships that would have endured easily had no pressure been exerted on them. The Great Depression had arrived, and with it had come hardship for many and worry for most. It had not greatly affected Julien; the modest fortune left to him by his father he had guarded with the utmost conservatism, and the residual provincialism that showed up in a profound suspicion of anything to do with high finance meant he had still had a comfortable addition to his salary every month to provide those luxuries that he now considered mere necessities.

Others had fared less well. Claude Bronsen’s business empire, he gathered from Julia, had been devastated; factories had closed, businesses dwindled, thousands he had employed had been dismissed forever. He was still rich, certainly, but not nearly as wealthy as when Julien first met him, and the reverses he had suffered galvanized him into a second youth. No sooner had a plant closed down in one place than he was laying plans to make the rest more efficient and profitable. Julien could imagine the fanaticism he brought to the task, for being more successful than others was part of his being, and he would labor at it until it was reestablished, no matter how difficult the bleak economic climate made his task.