The Dream of Scipio

PART ONE

JULIEN BARNEUVE died at 3:28 on the afternoon of August 18, 1943. It had taken him twenty-three minutes exactly to die, the time between the fire starting and his last breath being sucked into his scorched lungs. He had not known his life was going to end that day, although he suspected it might happen.

It was a brutal fire, which took hold swiftly and spread rapidly. From the moment it started Julien knew it would never be brought under control, that he would be consumed along with everything around. He didn’t struggle, didn’t try to escape; it could not be done.

The fire ravaged the house—his mother’s old house, where he had always felt most at ease, and where he always thought he had done his best work. He couldn’t blame those nearby; any sort of rescue would have been foolhardy. Besides, he wanted no assistance and was content with the privacy they had granted him. Eight minutes between the fire starting and his collapsing into unconsciousness from the smoke. Another three minutes before the fire reached him and began to make his clothes smoke and skin bubble. Twenty-three minutes in all until his heart gave out, his breath stopped. Another hour until the fire finally burned itself out and the last charred rafters crashed to the floor over his body. But to Barneuve, as his thoughts broke into pieces and he stopped trying to hold them together, it seemed to have taken very much longer than that.

IN SOME WAYS, his fate was sealed the moment Olivier de Noyen first cast eyes on the woman he was to immortalize in his poems by the church of Saint Agricole a few hundred meters from the Pope’s new palace in Avignon. Olivier was twenty-six, having been fated to live and die in what was possibly the darkest century in European history, an age men called cursed, and which drove many all but insane with despair at God’s vengeance for their sins. Olivier, it was said, was one such.

Isabelle de Fréjus had just turned sixteen and had been a wife for seven months, but was not yet pregnant, a fact that was already causing old women to gossip knowingly, and to make her husband angry. For her own part she was not displeased, as she was in no great rush to embark on the great gamble that left so many women dead or permanently afflicted. She had seen in her mother the terrible damage caused by her own birth, so swiftly followed by another and another, and was afraid. She did her duty by her husband, and prayed every night (after she had taken such precautionary measures as she knew) that her husband’s assaults would prove fruitless for a while longer. Every second day she went to church to beg forgiveness for her unruly, rebellious wishes, and at the same time to place herself at the disposition of the Virgin in the hope that Her mercy and forbearance would endure a while longer.

The effort involved in this celestial balancing act required such concentration that she left the church in a haze of thought, her brow furrowed and showing off a little wrinkle just above her nose. Her veil was ever so slightly disarranged, as she had pushed it back a little when she knelt down to pray. Her maid, Marie, would ordinarily have reminded her of this small lapse, but knew her mistress well, and knew too what was going through her mind. It had been Marie, in fact, who had taught her those little tricks that were helping to make Isabelle’s husband so increasingly concerned.

A small wrinkle and a veil askew were perhaps enough to inspire a painter, but not in themselves sufficient to have such a devastating effect on a man’s soul, so some other explanation must be sought. For Olivier, standing nearby, felt as though some immensely powerful beast had torn at his breast, sucking the very life from him. He gasped in shock, but fortunately no one heard him. So intense was the sentiment, that he had to sit down on the steps and remain there, staring long after the receding form had disappeared from view. And when he stood up, his legs shaking, his brow damp with sweat even though it was still morning and not yet hot, he knew that his life had changed forever. He did no work for days.

Thus began a tale of the doomed love between a poet and a young girl that was to lead to such a calamitous and cruel ending.

PERHAPS IT was her youthful beauty? Julien Barneuve thought so, at least when he first read the account of this fateful encounter, elaborated through the years and finally set down with all the romance that hindsight can offer around 1480, nearly a century and a half later. The pedigree of the anecdote was always suspect, seeming too close to Petrarch’s encounter with his Laura to be comfortable. But it had tradition behind it, as well as one of Olivier’s finest verses, the ten-line poem that begins (in the wholly inadequate 1865 translation of Frédéric Mistral), “My eyes have stabbed my soul . . .” And the essence was surely true, for Olivier’s dreadful fate a few years later when he fell into the hands of Isabelle’s husband could not be contradicted. If he had not loved her, why would he have killed her and been attacked himself in such a way?

For Olivier was tainted with madness, it seemed; the story recounted how the girl had wished to go with her husband to flee the plague and the poet begged her to stay in Avignon, that they might die in each other’s arms. And when she refused, he killed her, unable to let her go. The deed revealed his secret, and he was set upon by the Comte de Fréjus’s hirelings in revenge, beaten, and his tongue and hands cut off. Olivier was, quite literally, silenced, his voice forever quieted. He could no longer talk, write, or even make signs so that others could understand him well. More still, the outraged and humiliated husband had destroyed all but a few of his poems. No one could now tell whether his poetry, for which he was beginning to become known, was indeed the first flowering of a literary Renaissance, the model beside which Petrarch ranked a lowly second, or merely appeared so to those few who had read his work during his life. Only a dozen or so remained, not enough to captivate a man like Barneuve until he came across some documents in the Vatican library on a cold day in February 1926 while going through the papers of Cardinal Annibaldus di Ceccani, a collector of manuscripts and the poet’s first—and only—patron.

It was the first section of a twenty-page manuscript in Olivier’s hand that kept Julien awake at night in excitement, when he finally made the connection and understood its importance. “According to Manlius.” A brief sentence that meant nothing to most people, but all the world to him. In a moment of jest he said it was worth selling his soul for.

THE WRITINGS that Olivier passed down were begun by Manlius Hippomanes over a series of months at his villa a dozen leagues outside Vaison, some sixty kilometers to the northeast of Avignon. “Writings” is the wrong word, perhaps, for like many men in his position, Manlius rarely wrote himself, although he could do so quite easily if he chose. He dictated, rather, and his words were taken down by an amanuensis, his adopted son, whose life was made unreasonably difficult because of the speed at which his master spoke. Syagrius—an amiable young man of some twenty-three years who worked hard to make the best of his good fortune—had to scribble to keep up, then work long into the night to decipher his markings when preparing the fine copy. And no mistakes were tolerated; his master had a good memory and the highest opinion possible of his own prose, and could be punitive if so much as a word was changed. Besides, Syagrius desired nothing so much as to please, and attract a word or two of praise.

What he dictated, what so excited Barneuve, was a digest of philosophy, cut down and reduced to its essentials for dissemination among his circle and perhaps, should opinion be favorable, beyond that. Few now had any familiarity with such matters and must drink their wine watered to make it palatable. After it had been read, and if it was found suitable, he might pay a copyist for up to a hundred versions—perhaps fifty would now be more than sufficient—which he would send throughout Gaul, to his friends.

Manlius was a host that evening; as he worked, the sun set so gently, leaving a rosy hue in the sky, and the first hints of cooling air began to blow through the open courtyard that was used as a dining room in summer. A few of the party outside began composing verses to amuse themselves and show off their learning. It used to be a regular occurrence amongst them; for Manlius had always surrounded himself with the cultivated, the men of learning whom he understood and who understood him. He had done so all his life; it was his duty and often his pleasure, especially when he could patronize the worthy, or give entertainment to friends of equal rank.

Courtesy required that he play the part of the charming host at dinner as he had done countless times in his past, and he did his duty, even though he had little taste for it that evening. He conformed, as always, to the wisdom of Varro, that the number of guests should be more than the Graces and less than the Muses; he took trouble to ensure they were neither too eloquent, nor yet too silent; discreetly directed the conversation so that, although not trivial, it was not too ponderous, with readings to match. And he accomplished with ease that most delicate task of being free from meanness in his provision of food, without trying to impress his guests with its expense.

Despite his efforts, though, it was not a happy occasion, as it was becoming increasingly hard to assemble even a small group of like-minded spirits. Half the guests were clients, dependent on his favor and keen to eat the dishes of larks and partridges, carp and trout he had ordered, but too ill at ease in such illustrious surroundings to make easy conversation. His adopted son, Syagrius, watching carefully, fearful of making a mistake or saying the wrong thing, ate clumsily, blushing with embarrassment, and said nothing. There were two true friends, Lucontius and Felix, who tried to make things easier, but instead ended up dominating the conversation, interrupting when others tried to speak, being unnecessarily contemptuous of the clients and overly familiar with Manlius himself. And then there was Caius Valerius, a cousin of Felix’s whom Manlius tolerated only because of his friend; he was a coarse man who wrapped himself in piety like a suffocating blanket, which only partly concealed his ill humor and vulgarity.

The three friends set the tone, swapping verse and epigram in the manner of the golden age, bathing themselves in the meters and resonances of the great authors they had revered since they had been schoolboys. It was Lucontius who introduced the lapse in taste—rare for him—that made the evening so much less than agreeable.

Elegant, witty, refined. Felix smiled briefly and even Manlius barely managed to suppress a nod of approval.

But Caius Valerius turned dark with anger. “I consider there are some things at least which should be above jest.”

“Was I jesting?” responded Lucontius in mock surprise, for he realized that Caius was slow-witted enough to be unable to distinguish between respect and mockery. “Surely I speak only the truth? Surely we see the Revelations of Our Lord solely through Greek eyes? Even Saint Paul was a Platonist.”

“I do not know what you mean,” Caius replied. “The truth is told to me in the Bible. I need no Greek words to tell me what I see there.”

Should Manlius intervene, explain how there are many ways of understanding even a simple passage? Teach him how such mysteries as the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit were given shape in our minds through the teaching of the Academies? Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed. Once, and not so long ago, he would have fallen silent in embarrassment at his lack of knowledge; now it was the knowledgeable who had to mind their tongues.

“And you must remember, dear Lucontius,” Manlius interrupted, “that there are many who consider that Plato had access to the wisdom of Moses, that he merely translated Our Lord’s wisdom into Greek, not the other way around.” He looked anxiously, and saw that Lucontius, dear sensitive soul, took the warning, flashing a brief apology with his eyes. The moment of difficulty was over; the dinner continued, harmlessly and without point.

Except that Manlius was discomfited. He took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

Manlius thought greatly of such matters after most of the guests had gone to their beds, escorted by servants with torches. He stared out of the great doors at the landscape beyond, once a park of perfection, now disfigured by the rough cottages of farmers whose dwellings were coming ever closer, huddling nearer his huge villa for protection like piglets around a sow. He could have razed them, but feared their inhabitants might take themselves off, go and find a new lord to protect them—one who would not honor the law if he demanded them back. Then he looked the other way, to the bathhouse now abandoned and turned into a barracks for the soldiers permanently needed to protect the estate.

All they wanted was to live in security, and all the harm they did was to spoil his view. A man like Caius Valerius was very much more dangerous.

“None of us truly chooses our family, I’m afraid.” It was Felix who had walked up quietly behind him. “People like my dear cousin have always existed; even Vergil, I believe, had a brother-in-law who despised his poetry.”

Manlius put his arm around him, and they walked slowly in the fading light. Of all the creatures in the world, Felix was the one he truly loved, whose company made him relax and forget his cares. For years now, decades even, he had relied on this short, powerful man, whose mind was as quick as his frame was bulky. A deceptive man, for he looked as he was—a soldier, used to the hardships of fighting and the simplicities of armies. Yet at the same time, he was supple in argument, quick in understanding, and the most honorable, loyal friend Manlius had ever encountered. Nor did he ever condemn; while Manlius frequently heard himself making waspish comments about others, Felix never judged, always sought to see the good even in those who had so little virtue in them.

“I know,” Manlius replied. “And I tolerate him for your sake. But, truly it is a hard job.”

“Rude, vulgar, and scarcely lettered. I know. But a great donor to the church and someone who has dispatched men from his own estates to help defend Clermont from the Goths. As have I.”

“But I haven’t, even though Sidonius is one of my oldest friends? Is that how you wish to end your sentence?” Manlius added.

It had been preying on his mind greatly in the past few months. The city of Clermont, far to the west, was under siege from King Euric, blocking his desire to grab a stranglehold on the whole of Provence. If it fell, they would all soon follow, and it could not last long without reinforcements; indeed it might already have fallen had it not been for Sidonius, who had put himself at the head of the defenses and was refusing to accept the inevitable.

For inevitable it was, in Manlius’s view. For years now, the barbarians had been moving into Gaul; sometimes they were encouraged, sometimes resisted. Sometimes they were treated as enemies, sometimes as allies against a still worse danger. But every time they took a little bit more, and every time the power of Rome to stop them proved a mirage. Not many years ago, an army of thirty thousand had been sent against Euric’s father: none had come back. His own father had conceived the great strategy of the emperor Majorian to beat back the threat; but was undermined and killed by his enemies among the Roman aristocracy of Gaul even before any army could move. Now here was Sidonius, brave, foppish, foolish Sidonius, who had decided to take a stand where emperors had failed. He had always had a weakness for lost causes, for grand, heroic but empty gestures.

“I had another letter from him begging our help,” Felix continued. “He says that a few thousand troops now could make all the difference.”

“He said that six months ago as well. It made no difference at all. Has something now changed?”

Felix shrugged his shoulders wearily. “We must try, surely? The whole of the civilized world is at stake.”

Manlius smiled. “We are the civilized world, you and I,” he said. “A few dozen people, with our learning. As long as we continue to stroll through my garden arm in arm, civilization will continue. Euric or no Euric. And I fear that you may provoke worse anger than you imagine.”

Felix shook his head. “You would not have spoken so cravenly a few years ago.”

“A few years ago everything was different. When I was young we could travel without fear along well-maintained roads, through well-administered cities, and stay at the villas of friends stocked with labor. There was an emperor who wielded real power rather than being a plaything of warlords. Those days are as distant now as the age of Augustus.”

“It is peaceful enough here.”

“All illusion, my friend. We have been attacked by marauders at this villa three times in the last six weeks. It nearly fell to looters on the last occasion. Two of my other villas have been destroyed and now produce nothing. This tranquil scene you see here this evening depends on six hundred troops hidden in the background. They consume near a third of everything we produce and could turn on us one day. There are fewer people to tend the fields, fewer still to buy our diminishing surplus. In a way, we are under siege here as well, and slowly losing the battle, just as friend Sidonius is losing his. You must know all this from your own experience.”

“I do, of course.” Felix paused, and they walked some more before sitting at the edge of the pond. “And I am grateful to you for inviting me, as ever. I, too, grow lonely for company, even though I am surrounded by people.”

Manlius leaned over and kissed his friend on the cheek. “It is good to see you once more. But however restorative, that is not the sole reason I invited you, of all people. I need to tell you something. Something important.”

It was the moment when he had to test a friendship that had endured for nearly twenty years without argument, without dispute, with perfect amity. Manlius was aware that he was trespassing on something sacred.

Felix turned toward him, drew his arm away. “Such gravity and seriousness! Whatever can it be? You are publishing your letters at last?”

“This is not for laughing. I have been thinking as you have for some time. That we must try. That all we value may indeed be destroyed but it should not be given up so easily. I have received a letter from Bishop Faustus of Riez.”

“Good heavens! You are going to pray! You are going to start going to church! Truly, this man is a saint and a miracle worker. All that I hear about him must be true.”

Manlius grunted, and for a while they talked about the pond they were sitting beside, clogged now with weeds. They swapped aphorisms about water, played with quotations from Pliny about his garden, inverting grammatical constructions so that the neatness and order of the original became the clogged and unkempt reality of the present. Then, as old friends do, they said nothing, but looked at the lilies still growing and the insects hopping across them in the evening light.

“Faustus wrote to ask me to become Bishop of Vaison,” Manlius said eventually.

Felix knew immediately the importance of what he said, but still tried to cover it over with a joke. “Not Bishop of Rome? How about emperor, too? You’d look handsome in the purple. Truly, the man doesn’t know you very well, or he wouldn’t have wasted his ink.”

Manlius threw some dust into the water and watched as the perch swam toward it in the hope of food.

“I have decided to accept,” he said quietly.

TO A SCHOLAR of Julien’s generation, it almost seemed as though there were two Manlius Hippomaneses. On the one hand there was the bishop mentioned occasionally by the chroniclers, the miracle worker whose cult was still vaguely remembered; the man who converted the Jews of Vaison, whose shrine produced miracles long after his death and who protected his people from the depradations of the barbarian invaders. On the other hand, there was the man of letters who existed in the correspondence of his aristocratic friends and in the manuscript of the Dream. One was admired for his piety, the other known for his sophistication and learning, his disdain for the vulgarity of the world, his aloof contempt for the age in which he lived. Julien’s article, the one that brought him to the attention of the authorities in late 1940, sought to reconcile these two.

This he did by arguing, in an essay published as Europe collapsed into war once more, that there was nothing to reconcile. That Manlius’s two reputations were reflections of the same man seen through different perspectives. The bishop who looked after his flock was the same as the aristocrat who wrote dilettante poetry while the rule of Rome in Gaul crumbled into dust. The activist bishop, loved by his people for his good works, was identical to the languid man of literature, so consumed with degenerate idleness that he failed to block the advance of the Gothic Burgundian tribes down the Rhône in the year 475.

For, in Julien’s daringly revisionist view, Manlius’s hidden achievement was titanic, driven by a vision of breathtaking clarity. Because, he explained, Manlius did not fail to block the Burgundians, he deliberately handed over a portion of Provence to them, swapping the nonexistent protection of Rome for the coarser but more effective shield of a barbarian king. Roman Gaul did not fall; it was put out of its misery by the last embodiment of its cultural glory. And because Manlius did this, King Euric’s Visigoths were blocked in their expansion up the river, which would have given them command of the heart of Europe. Manlius, he insisted, saw that the Burgundians would be a powerful protector for the church and ensure its continued communication with Rome long after the last emperor of the West had been deposed. Christendom could not have survived without him; the West would have split between Romans and Arians in religion. The power of the papacy could never have grown. And he ensured that the new rulers governed by law, Roman law transferred into a Burgundian code.

All because Manlius was able to take the imaginative leap to see that Roman civilization was more than Roman rule; he protected the essential while being ready to jettison the appearance. He possessed an intelligence lacking in his peers, for he grasped that the days of the emperors had drawn to a close, but that what it meant could survive, if the ground was well prepared, if the newcomers were taught carefully to guard their inheritance.

Thus an argument that even Julien realized was colored by the somber hues of his own times. He wrote his article and moved on to a more hopeful theme, choosing the literary aspect of Manlius for further investigation, looking at his later influence and slowly focusing on Olivier de Noyen as a key figure in transmitting Manlius’s heritage to the modern age. For the extraordinary clarity of Manlius’s vision had to come from somewhere; something had to make him stand so much higher, think so much more dispassionately, than the others of his generation who, it seemed, scarcely even noticed the end of Rome until fifty years after it had happened.

The crucial document in this later argument was the one he found in the Vatican, The Dream of Scipio, showing the bishop’s grasp of Neoplatonism, that most sophisticated of philosophies. Of all those still capable of action, it was a philosopher who combined deeds and insight into a decisive intervention. Could someone like Julien have resisted such an interpretation? The secular Julien, concerned with literature and thought and history, did not consider the other part of Manlius’s reputation, the part that spoke of him as a miracle worker. This he didn’t even bother to dismiss as the superstitious nonsense of the credulous. He merely ignored it entirely.

WITHIN AN hour of his death around the year 486, Manlius’s body was torn to pieces by those who had gathered in the far courtyard to await the event. When it became known he had breathed his last, the crowd—which numbered perhaps two hundred people—surged into the building, demanding to see the corpse. As there were no longer any guards, nor any people capable of resisting such a force, the chamber was soon filled with mourners, singing, praying, and leaning forward to touch the human remains of a man who, everyone knew, was already a saint. It might, perhaps, have been a relic hunter, a type of creature already in existence, who first leaned through the throng to cut off a piece of Manlius’s shroud and take possession of the sanctity residing in a cloth that had touched his mortal flesh. Perhaps it was a townsperson or a neighboring deacon who wanted to possess some part of him to bring glory to his church. Certainly it was not one of his family or friends, all of whom were pushed out of the room by the weight of numbers, or retired in disgust.

The action spread panic and prompted a second, then a third person to pull at the cloth. Within a few minutes the body was naked, but even that was not enough, as men and women alike began tearing at his hair, then his hands. A scuffle, then a fight broke out, and a sort of holy blood-lust developed in the room, with men screaming in rage, and sobbing in ecstasy, departing only when they had a part of him, bloody and jagged, wrapped in their cloaks, or held—still seeping warm, red liquid—in their hands.

What remained when the storm had passed was bathed, redressed, and anointed before being borne on a bier to its last resting place in the church he had so finely decorated in Vaison. Already a mason of the town was planning a shrine, for Manlius’s family was still rich, and would dig deep in their pockets to have the honor of one of its number shown to the world. The deacon (now head of the church until Manlius’s successor could be found) placed the strongest men he could find on guard, then thought more deeply.

Might not the relic hunters come back? They had been known to strip a saint’s house in their ravening hunger for the holy. Besides, Manlius (despite his past) had given himself to the church, yet he was a rich man. Mindful of Our Lord’s injunctions, the deacon did not want his bishop to have died wealthy. Had his death (an apoplectic fit, which came on him suddenly at the age of sixty-two, shortly after he had risen that morning) been more foreseeable, he was sure Manlius would have given instructions that all his wealth be transferred to the church, for its greater glory, and so he might die in proper poverty.

Once the body was secure inside the church, therefore, he gave the orders. By evening the next day, Manlius’s great villa was empty; the gold and silver plate (remarkably little of it, in fact, for the deacon did not realize how often his bishop had paid from his own funds to repair roads and walls and waterways) were locked in the church, the furniture also, the lead and tiles stripped from the roofs to be transferred later. Four of the great stone columns from the colonnade were marked for reuse, when a team of bullocks and cart could be found strong enough to pull the load. The statues were left, but the workers, simple townsmen all, were shocked to see that nearly all were pagan imagery, foul and disgusting displays of impiety. These they toppled from their stands and broke with mallets, lest anyone see and scorn their patron. They were determined to guard his reputation in death as well as he had guarded them in life. It was the very least they could do, for they relied on him to guard them in the after-life as well, and did not wish to risk his anger by neglecting to protect his good name.

Most of Manlius’s great library was burned as well; the old rolls, the newly copied codices alike, were taken into the courtyard and destroyed; an extravagant gesture brought on by haste, for many were on vellum and could have been scraped and used again. The bonfire burned brightly for more than three hours as his precious Ammianus, Tacitus, Ovid, Terence, Plautus went up in the flames so their owner’s purity would burn more brightly to posterity. Also consumed were his treasured Greek texts, his Plato and Aristotle, his two copies of Sophocles, his Xenophon. None were needed, many were scandalous, all should go. Only Christian texts were preserved, winnowed out like wheat from the chaff, lovingly wrapped in cloth and taken back to the church in Vaison, where they rested on a small shelf until, a hundred years later, they were transferred to a monastery outside Marseille.

Here they remained for two centuries until they, in turn, were consumed by fire. By then, however, some had been copied and, just as Manlius’s commentary was preserved by mere chance after his death, mistaken for a Christian text, so it was by accident that, when a copyist came from a new foundation near Montpellier in 723 to acquire sacred works, one of his team of scribes transcribed it as well, writing so fast that he barely noticed what he was jotting down.

There were mistakes, bad mistakes, in this version, but the delicate thread that began before Manlius and stretched across the centuries held still. For though this version was, in its turn, destroyed by Protestants during the wars of religion, by then Olivier de Noyen had seen it and copied down most of it, errors and all. The voice that Julien Barneuve heard, when he picked up the manuscript in the Vatican library, was by then weak and feeble but in the echoing sound, and the chatter of other men’s words and opinions, it was still just recognizable, and through it the words of Sophia, half understood or not understood at all, passed down the centuries into his mind.

WHEN OLIVIER de Noyen found the manuscript in the library of a monastery near Montpellier, he suspected it might be of importance, but failed to understand anything of its arguments until he came under the painstaking tutelage of Rabbi Levi ben Gerson. He did not even realize that it was not original. He knew little of philosophy except for the poor versions of Aristotle that were so much a part of the church that many men were virtually unaware that he had been a pagan. Plato was to him but a name, a mysterious, half-legendary creature all but forgotten. Olivier was a clerical courtier and something of a poet, and had as his private goal the purification of letters, the casting out of the corruption of his times; in this he had more similarities with Manlius than he ever realized. By Julien’s standards, however, his knowledge was limited, his understanding meager.

The love of letters was an affliction that had seized him when he was young. His father, it is said, was a vain man, made bitter by his own lack of success in the world, for he was a notary in such a small, bedraggled, insignificant town that he knew no fortune would ever come his way. Vaison, so people said, had once been a great city, but so long ago no one really knew whether this was true or not. Certainly, farmers ploughing their fields often turned up huge lumps of stone, carvings, and even metalwork, but far from being interested, they cursed these lumps for the trouble they caused. Only occasionally were some of these salvaged, to be used to build a barn or a house high up on the hill where the inhabitants had retreated a century or so before for safety’s sake.

In this little rabbit warren of dingy, dirty streets, looking out across the river and the fields that covered Manlius’s city, Olivier de Noyen was born in 1322, to the delight of his father, who transferred onto him all his ambitions. Olivier (he believed) was destined for great things. He would become a true lawyer, go to Paris and rise to a position at the court of France itself, that foreign barbaric land to the north where men could become vastly rich and powerful. He conceived this idea almost at the moment he conceived Olivier in a hurried, dispassionate bedding of his wife, and the simultaneous creation of idea and subject struck him so forcibly (when his wife told him the news some fifteen weeks later) that he decided it must be guidance from the saint on the hill, a lady known for the goodness of her advice.

Such heavenly sanction was not to be cast aside, and Olivier was informed of his future career so early in his life that “lawyer” may well have been one of the first words he comprehended. He was sent to the school close by the cathedral, learned his letters and was beaten for his mistakes, then, at night and even on Sundays he was coached by his father for the great career that lay ahead of him after he had been to university in Montpellier. His father had few contacts, but assiduously cultivated those he did have in search of both bride and patron for his son. Through a distant cousin, he felt he had the right to correspond with Annibaldus di Ceccani, a monsignor at the papal court in Avignon with a great future before him, for his connections were as powerful as the elder de Noyen’s were weak. By that stage, indeed, his father was beginning to grow alarmed at his son’s demeanor, for the child seemed bent on obstructing his father’s wishes in countless little ways. He would disappear for days, even though he knew the scale of the thrashing he would receive on his return; he deliberately refused to learn; was noisy, constantly asking questions his father—a good, but uneducated man—could not answer. He stole birds, mushrooms, fruit from other men’s land, so much so that complaints were made. More beatings followed, with no result. The letter to Monsignor Ceccani, soon to be cardinal, was an act of desperation as much as anything else, a desire to hand the boy over to a greater authority who might bend, and if necessary break, a spirit too resilient for a father’s will alone.

Why Ceccani agreed in 1336 to take on the fourteen-year-old Olivier that he might work and be surrounded with the sophistication of court life and ecclesiastical learning is not known. Perhaps he simply needed a servant; perhaps, when he met Olivier, he saw a spark in the young boy’s eye that intrigued him; perhaps fortune took a hand, for if Ceccani had not agreed to the request then he would certainly have triumphed in his struggle with Cardinal de Deaux and changed the course of Christendom. Whatever the reason, Olivier shortly afterward packed a small bag, bade farewell to his beloved mother, left Vaison, and went to Avignon, where he remained for the rest of his life, a period in which his father’s aspirations were destroyed.

For Ceccani was a man of some cultivation, and though he never became one of those fascinating, erudite philosopher-cardinals who redeemed the otherwise corrupt church of the next century, he read as widely as was possible in those days and had the beginnings of a library. To this collection of some one hundred fifty manuscripts Olivier was eventually given access. Not that Ceccani initially took a great deal of interest in the boy; he was no teacher and had little human warmth about him. But neglect was exactly what Olivier needed, and he flourished under the new regime. And he fell in love for the first time, the most enduring and consuming passion of his life. He began to read. He arose at four in the morning and read until his duties began; ate his meals quickly so he could run back to the library and read some more, if only for ten minutes at a time; read in the evening with candles stolen from the kitchens until he fell asleep.

There was not such a wide range of books available; some Aristotle, in a Latin translation of an Arabic version of the Greek; the church fathers; Boethius, whom he loved for his wisdom; Augustine, whom he admired for his humanity. But it was the day he discovered Cicero that changed everything. The beauty of the prose, the noble elegance of the ideas, the lofty majesty of the conceptions were like draughts of strong wine, and when he first discovered, then read, the one manuscript Ceccani possessed, he wept with joy for a full twenty minutes before immediately starting again.

Some six months later, he began his new career as a collector when he was in a shop to buy some sweetmeats for the household. This was not his task; rather it was something he often asked to be allowed to do, as the errand gave him the opportunity of leaving the dark, forboding palace where he now had quarters in the garret, and wander the streets of Avignon at will. Every time he went out he was transfixed by wonder, overwhelmed by the bustle of humanity, the noise, the smells, the excitement. For Avignon had transformed itself in a matter of a few years from a minor city into one of the wonders of the world. The arrival of the papal court, forced to leave Rome by civil strife and now showing every sign of staying forever, had sucked in merchants and bankers, priests and painters, goldsmiths, petitioners, lawyers, cooks, costume makers, furniture makers and masons, woodworkers and silversmiths, robbers and whores and charlatans who came from all over Christendom to jostle in the streets and compete for favor, influence, and fortune.

The city was not big enough for them all; it was bursting at the seams and men had to put up with being squashed, exploited, and robbed, but few found they were unprepared to pay the price. Bees around a honey pot, flies around dung; those were the common verdicts. Olivier had no opinion on the morality of it; all he knew was that a simple walk in the morning during the market, in the afternoon when the big religious processions took place, or in the evening when the city was taken over by drinkers and diners, singing and dancing, left his mind dizzy with excitement and all his senses tingling with joy.

And there were buildings as well; hundreds of houses, churches, palaces all being thrown up as quickly as possible, new land being leveled, old dwellings razed to make space for bigger ones. The first time he went into the papal palace he could not believe his eyes; he felt sure he was walking into an immense cave in a mountain; no man, surely, could dream of a building so vast. And yet even that was not big enough; the new pope, Clement, had deemed it all too small and was beginning again, doubling the size of the original, with decorations so sumptuous and so costly they would have no equal in the world. Sometimes, late at night when he lay on his bed wondering at all he had seen and smelled that day, Olivier could hardly stop himself laughing at the thought of his little Vaison, its few hundred inhabitants tucked up on a hill, which, until he came to Avignon, had seemed so grand.

The shop he went to was his favorite; shelves groaned with all manner of delicacies, some still hot and steaming from the oven, some cool and flaky with fresh pastry, stuffed with spices he had never heard of, and sold at prices that made him incredulous. He picked up what he had been told to collect, and as there was a risk his fingers might make dents in them, the shopkeeper took some pieces of paper to wrap them more firmly.

There was writing on them. Olivier read it and gasped; there was no possibility of mistaking that limpid, fluent voice that, once truly heard, could never be forgotten. In his excitement and eagerness to unwrap the paper, he let all the expensive foods drop to the floor, where they broke into crumbly pieces. He scarcely even noticed, although the shopkeeper was shocked.

“You’ll get a beating for that,” he began.

Olivier ignored him and waved the piece of paper in his face instead. “Where did you get this?”

His reddened, earnest, young face had such a look of intensity that the shopkeeper forgot his anger. “There’s a little pile. I found them on a rubbish heap outside the church of Saint-Jean,” he said.

“Give me them. I’ll buy them.”

A shake of the head. “That’s the last one, young man. I’ve been using them for days.”

The realization made Olivier almost choke, but he retained enough self-possession to get the names of the last dozen or so customers the shopkeeper had served. Then he spent the rest of the day trailing around the town, knocking on kitchen doors, suffering cuffs to the ears and insults, and the occasional pinch on the cheek in his quest. When he got back home in the evening—having spent an entire day in truancy—he was, as the shopkeeper had predicted, soundly beaten.

But it was well worth it, for carefully tucked away in his tunic he had most of a letter by Cicero, now known to be one of the letters to Atticus.

By the time his father came and paid a visit two months later, he had read his discovery so often he knew it by heart. Still, merely touching it—for he mistakenly thought it must be original and written down by Cicero himself, so little learning did he have at this stage—gave him the greatest possible pleasure. He even slept with it by his side at night. Nor could he comprehend that anyone would not be as excited as he; so, when he presented himself to his father and was asked to account for the past six months, he pulled the sheets of old paper out of his tunic to show them off.

As his story continued his father’s countenance darkened. “And you have spent your time on this, to the neglect of your studies?”

Olivier hastened to tell him that he had studied hard and well, omitting that he detested the work and did it out of duty alone.

“But you could have studied harder, spent more time with your proper duties, had you not wasted so much energy on this.”

Olivier hung his head. “But Cicero was a lawyer, sir . . .” he began. His father was not impressed.

“Do not try and trick me. That is not why you read this. Give it to me.”

He held out his hand, and Olivier, after a moment’s hesitation that his father noted all too well, gave the precious manuscript into his hands. Already he felt the tears welling up in his eyes.

His father stood up. “I will overlook your disobedience, but I must teach you a lesson. You must resist such foolishness. Your job is to become a lawyer, and fulfill all the hopes I have of you. Do you understand me?”

Olivier nodded mutely.

“Good. So you will see the wisdom of what I do now.” And his father turned around and put the manuscript onto the fire, standing back to watch it burst into bright flames, then turn black as it curled up and disintegrated.

Olivier was shaking so much, concentrating so hard on making sure that no tears fell down his cheeks, that he didn’t even flinch when his father gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder and delivered another homily about his obligations. He even managed to bid him farewell in a dignified fashion, received his blessing with humility, before rushing back to his home, climbing the stairs to the little attic room he shared with six others, and bawling his eyes out.

He had learned his lesson, although not the one his father hoped to inculcate. From that moment Olivier de Noyen determined that never would he become a lawyer.

A TOUCHING TALE, attributed in different forms to many different people. It was Julien Barneuve who realized that it had originated with Olivier, then had been transferred to Petrarch when Olivier’s reputation collapsed in disgrace and scandal later on. The anecdote then took on a life of its own and became part of the legend of the early Bach. Either early genius is encouraged, with elders astounded and amazed by such infantile virtuosity, as is said to be the case with Giotto or Mozart, or it causes alarm, and the parents try in vain to block the torrent. None of the tales may be true, in fact; the stories are perhaps no more than a conventional way of signaling the birth of greatness, of the solitary purpose pursued throughout life.

Barneuve himself was not touched by the gods in this way, but merely studied those who were. The world needs only a few geniuses; civilization is maintained and extended by those lesser souls who corral the men of greatness, tie them down with explanations and footnotes and annotated editions, explain what they meant when they didn’t know themselves, show their true place in the awesome progression of mankind.

For this task he was perfectly trained, and had been so for twenty years or more, decades of work that he had spent patiently and meticulously accumulating the resources required for his chosen task. His, too, was a labor of passion and of love, for he was no pedant, no dry scholar cut off from the world. Far from it; he considered himself in a small way a crusader for the true values of civilization, burning with the love of life and of learning in an age that valued neither.

In his youth he had attempted some poetry, but was too stern a critic of others to fool himself. He was happy to abandon any such pretensions, and prided himself on a maturity that enabled him to stop wasting time while others of his generation frittered away their hours in artistic dreams. Or died; for Julien was fifteen when German troops swept across Belgium and into northern France; twenty when the carnage that all but eliminated an entire generation came to its end. It was not the time for romantic verse, or psychologically acute expressions of decadence. He rarely talked about this period of his life; he had no wish to revive memories of events that had so shaken him. He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that not only fighting, but also being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. He was injured twice, decorated twice, and took part in the terrible conflict around Verdun; that in itself is enough to indicate something of what he endured. His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage.

Millions died; Barneuve survived. When he was finally discharged in early 1918—his injuries rendering him unfit for further military service—he came home to the house in Vaison, a solid house of substance in what is now the rue Jean Jaurès, and resumed his former life. His father never discussed the experience, and Julien felt no desire to mention it either; he might have done so had his mother still been alive. The only slight hint of his feelings was that, one morning, just after the armistice, he was to be seen in the garden slowly taking the decorations and campaign medals he had been awarded and throwing them all on a bonfire. They had been earned by someone he no longer knew, indeed by someone he considered already dead, full of dreams and aspirations he could scarcely understand. From then on, Julien conceived of his duty in a different fashion. The medals themselves were hardly damaged by the heat, but they were dirtied and covered in ash, so much so that later the gardener unknowingly dug them into the ground where, presumably, they still remain. As for his father, Docteur Barneuve threw himself into organizing the public subscription for the huge monument to the dead that was cut into the mountain supporting the old town; it was the closest he ever came to telling his son of his relief that his name was not also inscribed on its panels, that he was not the dying soldier carved so vividly onto its white marble.

Three months to the day after he came home—a period mainly spent sitting in the garden of his maternal grandmother’s house at Roaix a few kilometers to the west, for after a short while he found living in his family home irksome—Julien got up at five in the morning, took down the books he had been reading the day he left for the army, and began once more, picking up at exactly the page where he had inserted his bookmark three years previously. He worked silently, efficiently, and hard, showing the powers of concentration that he had always been able to summon. After he had drunk a coffee with a piece of bread from the previous day dipped in it, he sat and read and annotated until twelve, when he would put on a hat and walk into the village and eat some soup at the café. Then he worked again until six, ate, then worked again until midnight. This pattern of study he kept up, year after year, until he was ready: he sat, and passed with ease, the agrégation in history and geography, an intellectual marathon and obstacle race that, until it was reformed in 1941, was perhaps the most fiendishly demanding examination the mind of man has ever devised.

It says much of Barneuve’s character, and of his intellect, that he emerged near the head of his year. His career in a sense was already made; he had now merely to collect the fruits of his labors. After doing his time in a provincial lycée in Rennes, sent there by the French state to teach him humility, he could reasonably look forward to spending the rest of his working life in Paris. A model academic career was already laid out, one of steady accomplishment, a continual drip of honors and rewards, and the quiet respect of colleagues and pupils. He was, by this stage, already working on his thèse, a vast work on late Neoplatonism in the West, which took him much of the next two decades to complete.

It was not to be so perfectly smooth, nor so easy; he had embraced self-satisfied complacency too young. The simple life of predictable, safe accomplishment was not, it seemed, what he truly craved. For in 1924 he won a greatly sought-after scholarship to spend two years at the École de Rome, and as a preliminary took a cruise around the Mediterranean to celebrate, paid for by his father. On it he reacquainted himself with Olivier de Noyen, and he, in turn, eventually introduced him to Manlius Hippomanes.

IN SOME WAYS, though, Manlius had already reached out and touched him before his Mediterranean cruise. Even though the name had changed, Julien was a native of the same town and showed a precocious intellectual interest in his region, his pays, and it was this curiosity that attracted the attention of Canon Joseph Sautel.

Père Sautel has only an incidental role in this story; he is, in some ways, no more important than the plague bacillus that ultimately killed much of Olivier de Noyen’s generation; an agent acting unknowingly for his own reasons and unaware of any of the consequences. But the effect he had on the young Julien was of such magnitude that he deserves to be considered, lest his brief intersection with him be misunderstood as either trivial or coincidental. There was, in fact, an inevitability about their encounter; it had been likely since Julien’s parents married in 1892, his wife contributing to the family the peaceful little house in Roaix, which she adored so much that she went there every summer to avoid the oppressive heat of the town. It became probable when the youthful Sautel developed a passion for archaeology and won permission from his bishop to indulge it. It became certain when Julien, to escape the solicitudes of his mother, took to long walks during the otherwise empty afternoons when he was alone with her during the summer months.

He was ten in that summer, the age when children are the most impressionable, and Sautel was an impressive man. They met late in the afternoon, when the boy was tired and thirsty. He had gone a long way, along lanes and tracks, crossing the nearly dried-up Ouvèze, then walking in the direction of the bois de Darbaux on the other side toward the hills that rose from the river valley, dark and threateningly against the brilliant blue sky. Then he got lost, and turned back, cutting across fields to save time while also thinking of his anxious mother—who had told him not to go for more than half an hour—to give form to his mounting panic.

The freshly dug mounds of earth, dark in parts, sandy in others, mottled where the sun had partially dried them, attracted his attention first of all, and made him hope that there were some workmen in the field beyond, perhaps building a barn. He clambered through the ditch, scratching his leg on the brambles as he climbed up, then walked past the huge earthworks to see what he could find.

There was no one there, or no one he could see. Signs of recent activity were all around—wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, black circles of ash where trees had been cut and burned. But no people, just the swallows wheeling in the air. Julien stood uncertainly, then walked to what looked like a ruined building in the hope that someone was about.

There he entered a world of magic. The walls were only a few feet high, of rough stone and pebbles and crumbling mortar, nothing to look at, but as he walked past one, then another, he saw a sight that made him catch his breath. Before him, laid out on the floor, was an enormous, beautiful bird, picked out in tiny stones, its blues and golds and reds glittering as the fierce afternoon sun reflected off the water that had been used to clean it. Almost as though it was alive. Better than if it had been alive; no real bird could ever attract the eye like that, or nestle so beautifully in the stone foliage as this one did.

Utterly transfixed with wonder, and scarcely daring to breathe lest it hear him and fly away, he took a step closer, then bent down to run his hands over the irregular, almost sharp surface.

“Get off!” An angry, urgent voice broke the peace and the spell. The bird did not move. Julien stood up sharply and looked around him.

“I said get off, you little wretch! Hurry. Do as you’re told.”

Julien took a step backward, caught his foot on a loose boulder, and fell heavily, sprawling over the pavement.

“Dear heaven! Stay there. Don’t move.”

Then the owner of the exasperated voice appeared from behind one of the walls. A big man, only in his twenties but seeming much older to Julien, with a bushy beard and wearing a white shirt and loose, baggy trousers. In his hand he carried a notebook, which he put carefully on top of the wall before stepping over the bird to help Julien up.

“Are you all right? You didn’t hurt yourself?”

Julien said he hadn’t. The man smelled of sweat. A nice, comforting smell, Julien thought.

“Can’t you read? Didn’t you see the sign on the road? ‘Private. Keep out.’ I suppose that just made you even nosier.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Julien said timidly. “I didn’t come by the road. I came across the fields. I’m lost and my mother will be worrying about me. I hoped someone could tell me where I was.”

The big man studied his face carefully, saw no signs of impudence or deceit, then grunted. “Very well. I’ll take you to the road and show you.”

“No!” Julien cried desperately, though he didn’t know why he was suddenly so afraid. The man raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” Julien continued. “But please tell me, what is this place? I must know. Why’s that bird there?”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Julien said reverently. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

The man smiled. “Yes,” he said gently. “I might well agree with you.”

And he told Julien that it was a mosaic, which had lain unseen for many hundreds of years, until he had come along and uncovered it. Then as the boy evidently hung on his every word, he led him through the rooms of Manlius’s villa, pointing out what he knew, or could guess, about each one, showing him the fragments of broken statues his workmen had discovered, the few roof tiles that had fallen to the floor when the timbers gave out, the remains of the colonnade by the great entranceway, gap-toothed with four of its columns completely vanished.

Julien listened wide-eyed, completely captivated, for Sautel was a good storyteller and a natural teacher. He told Julien of the legend of the phoenix, its death and rebirth. Julien understood little of it, but was rapt with attention. In his imagination, he saw the men walking through the rooms, the vanished paintings on the walls mysterious in the candlelight, heard the waterfalls in the gardens as they moistened the air on afternoons such as this. He almost heard the conversations, and thought how wonderful it must have all been. Better than any fairy tale, like the bird was better than any real bird.

“You see,” Sautel continued, “an example of how an archaeologist works. That mosaic you like so much. Look near its beak. What do you see?”

“A patch,” Julien replied promptly.

“Quite right,” he said. “Now, this was a rich man’s villa. A very rich man, I’d guess. The mosaic is Italian work, third century. All the different stones brought from the corners of the empire. The villa was destroyed suddenly in the fifth century, I reckon. And in the middle of the centerpiece of the entrance hall, there is an ugly patch. Where a worn spot was filled with concrete. What are your conclusions?”

Julien stared at the mosaic, momentarily angry that the bird should be discussed in such a dry way, that he should be robbed of its perfection by having its faults so clinically pointed out. He shook his head.

“The owner was short of money, couldn’t pay to import new stones for a proper repair, couldn’t afford the workmen, if there were any left to hire,” Sautel continued. “The whole place was crumbling. The fields were overgrown as there were no workers. The great estates were breaking up. Trade collapsed, the cities, too. In that little patch you can see the decline of an entire civilization, the greatest the world has ever known. I see you were cross when I pointed that hole out to you. It makes me angry, too.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark. These people gave in. They stopped caring. And because they did, this land fell under the darkness of a barbarism which lasted for hundreds of years.”

He shook his head, then glanced at Julien to remind himself he was talking so intently to a mere ten-year-old.

“Anyway,” he said. “You’re lost. And I am meant to be showing you the way home. If you’ll wait a few moments while I pack my satchel, I’ll take you to the road.”

It wasn’t far. His newfound friend was walking in the same direction, and Julien padded alongside him, taking two steps for the big man’s one, trying to think of ways to make him keep talking. Sautel needed little encouragement; to every question, he gave a thoughtful, considered, serious reply. He talked to Julien as if to someone his own age, and listened to his responses in a way his brusque, unapproachable father never did.

When they reached the house, Sautel spoke to his mother, saying the delay was his fault, not Julien’s, and asking if he might be allowed to come to the dig once again.

“Surely you don’t want him, Father,” Antoinette Barneuve replied. “He would be so much trouble.”

“On the contrary; he is a lad of sense, and I have a high opinion of his views. He also has a pair of strong arms, and I could do with all the help I can get. I have little money to pay laborers, and if he is prepared to work for free, I will be happy to make use of him.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Please, Maman,” Julien said desperately, scarcely believing that she could even consider rejecting such an offer.

“I’ll think about it,” she said eventually. “We’ll see.”

Sautel knew he had won; as he turned to go, he gave the boy a wink. Secretly. Between friends.

Julien watched as the big priest disappeared down the road, whistling to himself, then until he disappeared out of sight around a corner. He thought of nothing else for the rest of the evening, and went to sleep dreaming of him.

THAT SAUTEL was a priest caused little concern to Julien, who was at the age when it is still possible to judge people according to how they behave, nor to his mother, whose faith was strong though hidden from view. It enraged his father, however, and when he heard of Julien’s summer occupation, he wrote from Vaison demanding that the connection be severed instantly. For he—a doctor and a freethinker—prided himself on his liberation from superstition and his rigorous attachment to the modern. He detested priestcraft, and one of the major causes of his distance from his wife was his contempt for her weakness in this regard. The Barneuve family, indeed, was defined by this difference between husband and wife for, although it was never mentioned, both were at war, and the object of the conflict was Julien’s soul.

At any other time, the elder Barneuve might have agreed; the scientific excavation of the past was something that, ordinarily, would have appealed to him. But that summer was not ordinary; he was in no mood to brook the slightest opposition. Merely because his wife wished it was enough reason for him to say no.

It was not cruelty that led to this decision; rather, he was looking after the welfare of his family, that of his wife as well as that of his only son. For that Easter, while his wife and child were once more staying in the little farmhouse, he had arrived to pay a surprise visit, clattering out on the horse that took him around the large area containing his patients. One was nearing death, and the good doctor—for he was such—came to give such comfort and ease as he could. The patient lived in the same village, so he turned out his horse and set off. As he trotted past the village church on his way to his patient’s bedside, the door into the sacristy opened and out came some children from their catechism lesson. He looked, and saw Julien amongst them.

Julien only faintly discerned what followed; he was sent out of the room, out of the house even, and did not witness his father’s cold rage, his fury not only at the lessons but also at the disobedience. He heard his mother crying, and tried to comfort her, but she turned away from him. He did not understand what had happened; for him the lessons were a way of playing with the other children in the village; only rarely did the solemnity of the exercise descend on him. For the most part, he remembered the way he giggled with Elizabeth, the grocer’s daughter, then his particular companion, and the way they would go afterward back to her house and be given a cake by her mother. But his father stopped all that; no more lessons, no more sunny, careless afternoons. Julien was never received into the church and for much of his life was inclined to attribute to this lack his slight aching sense of something missing.

His father had no regrets about his action; he would not tolerate disobedience in his own household. Circumstance, a certain fear of ambition, had brought him to be a country doctor in an isolated town, but in this small universe he was determined to rule. And for him, saintliness was hysteria, miracles naturally occurring phenomena misunderstood by the simple, belief mere self-delusion. A rigorous education in science was the antidote to all such afflictions, and to strengthen this medicine, he added a healthy dose of derision, sarcasm, and contempt.

Had anyone suggested that the violence of his dislike seemed excessive, that it suggested fear rather than confidence, he would have reacted with disdain. Few educated people in that region, after all, disagreed with him, and Vaison was in an area that had thrown off the shackles of the church long ago. Even his wife submitted quietly and humbly, never questioning his decisions, never answering back to his barbed remarks even though the hurt they caused was obvious on her face.

Yet there was fear in Pierre Barneuve’s mind, a deep knowledge of the power of the beliefs he so detested, a fear that one day the tentacles of superstition would reach out and ensnare his son. His wife’s passivity, her refusal to argue, made her all the more dangerous. He knew that one day Julien would have to decide between them. Was he to be his mother’s or his father’s child? He knew he had manliness and rationality on his side. But he was also dimly aware in a corner of his mind that Julien loved his mother. The idea that he was afraid of his son and had been ever since he was born was absurd, of course, but it was true nonetheless. He had, with his customary incision and lack of sentiment, dismissed all possibility of eternity for himself. The decisions the child took would confer or deny his immortality.

When he heard of Sautel, the fear within him awoke, and he moved swiftly. Julien was not to go to the excavations. He was not to associate with a priest. If there was any deviation from his wishes, the boy was to be sent back to pass the summer under his father’s watchful eye. It never occurred to him that his wife would disobey him, nor yet that the child would disobey his mother. Nor did either do so, nor did they need to: the damage was already done. Our lives can change direction in an instant, and it is possible that an entire adult can be determined by only a few such moments, sparkling like gold in the dross of everyday experience.

Lodged forever in Julien’s mind was the memory of that bird, brilliant in the summer sunlight, and the magic of the moment of discovery was linked completely to the kindness of the young priest. Set against both was the brooding authority of his father, never questioned but now suspected to be dark and lifeless in contrast to the brightness of what it forbade.

It would not be too much of an exaggeration, indeed, to claim that Julien’s entire life was spent seeking to recapture that sensation, that his progression and thoughts and decisions constantly had this unknown goal in mind. It was the phoenix that led him, at school, to concentrate on the classics, so that by fourteen he had a knowledge of Latin and Greek that surpassed that of many a university student. The words of Père Sautel led him to volunteer for the trenches in 1916, and it was the phoenix again that gave him the quiet determination necessary for the agrégation, and sustained him in his career thereafter.

His father, who tried to be as kindly as duty allowed, encouraged and supported his son throughout, little knowing how much of the child’s drive came from resentment of him. He got a quiet pleasure from every examination his son passed, every glowing report that came from school, every time someone mentioned the boy’s undoubted talents. Certainly, he would have preferred that Julien had wished to become a physician like himself, or pursued a career in law—for he dreamed of his son as a deputy, even perhaps a minister in the government—but he contented himself with excellence in any field, and the prospect of a son one day as an eminent professor—the Sorbonne? The Collège de France?—was more than sufficient to satisfy his desires.

And when Julien excelled, he was rewarded, each gift bestowed with care, and received dismissively. His father was hurt, doubtless, by this coldness and could not understand why, as Julien grew into manhood, the closeness he had so often dreamed of seemed further away than ever. But each time Julien accepted a present with only perfunctory thanks, his father persuaded himself that this was manly restraint in a youth commendably reluctant to show emotion.

The grand cruise around the Mediterranean—the presents ever more generous, but no more effective—was the reward for success in examinations. Had his father called him in and said, “I know your mother would have been as proud of you as I am” or, “I wish your mother had been here to see you now,” then his heart would have softened so easily. But he wished to claim Julien for his own and said nothing of his wife. And all Julien could say in reply was:

“Thank you, Father. That is very kind.”

WHAT WAS Olivier’s influence, his reputation, when Julien first began to study him seriously in the 1930s? Not that of a great poet, by any means; he was hardly mentioned in the same breath as Dante, Boccaccio, or Petrarch. He was known to only a few interested in Provençal literature, and although those who had read him knew his importance, his little piece of eternity was guaranteed mainly by the horrors of his crime and punishment. Only when Julien came across Olivier as a bibliophile and collector, an early pioneer of the renaissance in learning, did he reconsider the man and the poetry. Julien was drawn to him for obvious reasons: he, too, was struggling to ensure that, in the madness that afflicted all humanity, some little spark of purity would continue. He, too, had a debt to honor, one owed to both Manlius and Olivier, to continue the great task they had begun. In his own mind, Julien’s life as teacher, and later as censor, complemented his labors in the library and archives, each an aspect of the greater project to allow thought itself to survive, even if it was a guttering candle rather than a ferocious blaze. From 1940 onward his study became an obsession in the same way that women became obsessed with ensuring that clothes continued to be washed on a Tuesday, that men became enraged if their game of boules was disrupted on a Saturday or if they could no longer sharpen their razor. The continuation of normal, civilized existence became the goal of daily life, to be attained through struggle.

Understanding the poetry came later; he initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion—held almost to the last—was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terrible weakness.

He took the lesson but could not help himself. Julien was still attracted to the Provençal’s poetry precisely because of the incandescent passion he considered so dangerous. Olivier’s words stirred his blood, created in him images of a different history. It was an effort to subjugate the lyrical, magnificent poems of love to the full force of critical reason, to disregard the expressions of desire and seek out the meanings that surely must lie underneath, to see longing as allegory, the beloved as metaphor, the love as a reflection of faith in the divine.

At least, the pure physicality of the poetry proved one thing beyond doubt. However much he may have collected the classics of philosophy and joined them to the theological masterpieces he must have read as well, Olivier de Noyen perfectly failed to understand them. While Manlius argued about the need to maintain the supremacy of reason in the face of the irrational that was eradicating all he held dear, Olivier embraced the opposite, unable to subdue his passions and falling victim to his weakness.

MANLIUS DID not lie to his friend; Bishop Faustus did indeed write to him, asking if he would consent to become Bishop of Vaison. But he did so only after Manlius had spent several months courting the saintly man, slowly convincing him of both the need and the appropriateness of such an appointment. He had acted because of the discomfort that came over him as he saw others, of lower origin, less education, and smaller ability, lording over the region with so little skill and foresight. For many years he stuck to his determination to turn his back forever on public life and live quietly on his estates. He was, after all, one of the richest and most powerful men in the province even when he did nothing but write poetry.

He had been destined for great things at one stage, but the fate that overtook his father filled him with contempt for a world he considered no longer worth saving; when the body was returned, he swore he would never succumb to such an end, remembered the look on the older man’s face as Manlius cleaned away the blood, washed the caked mud from his hair. Women’s work, usually, but far too precious to be left to them. He would take no obvious revenge; rather, he would stand by, cultivate those things that really mattered, and watch as the consequences of their deeds became clear.

For his father had attached himself to Majorian, a good and virtuous man, only to see the last competent emperor the West produced abandoned by those who most needed his help, then cut down by the warlord Ricimer, the man who had built him up in the first place. And his father had fallen victim to the purge that followed, set upon in the streets of Arles, butchered and left to die in a gutter. Manlius never discovered who was responsible; there were too many people who might have ordered such a thing. His father had been foolish, too trusting, too merciful. He had not moved fast enough to eradicate those who disagreed with him. “It is what is different about us,” he had said. “We argue, and convince. We allow disagreement. If we no longer allow that, we might as well be Goths ourselves. What do we have a senate for in this poor little region of ours? It is to hear the opinions of those who disagree with us. What is the point of holding council, if we do not hear different opinions? It is our strength, not our weakness.”

He paid heavily for his faith. Majorian had been the last hope for Gaul. He had a chance of putting together an army that might push the Goths back, rebind Gaul to Rome, and strengthen the frontiers. And he had sacrificed it, thrown it away through his delicacy. The constant bickering and disagreement had so weakened this brave, good man that he doomed himself. Manlius’s father, charged with governing Provence and keeping it sound, had been part of that failure. Manlius knew that he would not show that same weakness; his retreat to his estates stemmed in part from the fear that realization caused in him. He did not wish to know what he was capable of doing.

Even so, the discomfort remained; the distaste clouded his idyll and drove him, eventually, back to Sophia to see if she could restore his tranquillity with her wisdom. He might have expected that she would do no such thing.

“So tell me. Why do you continue to live in idleness?” she asked once his salutations were presented. “What is your justification beyond that of natural lassitude?”

What was it about this woman that made him feel so confident and content? How was it that her mere look, the way she smiled, could banish all his fears and persuade him that all problems could be understood? How was it that, when faced with a difficulty, he always thought of what she would say or recommend? The first thing he had done after burying his father was to go south, to Marseille. She had comforted him, reassured him, stilled his heart. It was because of her words that he had not brought out his troops and let them loose for an indiscriminate revenge that would have convulsed the province into civil war, because of her again that he did not allow his inactivity to grow into a cancerous hatred of humanity. For twenty years now she had been his mentor, his teacher, his guide; never had she failed him. She had criticized, scorned, bullied, but never withdrawn her love. And he had risen to meet that challenge, always seeking to live up to her expectations, even though he knew he must always fall short.

Her question was a shock, even though it was put in her normal fashion, with the inquiring neutrality of a teacher probing her pupil, forcing him to consider unthought-of questions that he knew only too well once posed. They were in the house he had given her, although it was as unfurnished as the day she walked up the hill and into its door; her way of life was as ascetic as a desert anchorite’s. She never had possessions; a few clothes and her books were all that she had or wished to have. In this she remained thoroughly Greek, although almost as archaic as she was in the Attic she still sometimes spoke in homage to her masters, already dead for nearly eight hundred years.

“Are you urging me to abandon a life of contemplation and take up public affairs? After all you have told me about the virtues of the philosophic life? Which side should I take? The bad, or the worse?”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at him dreamily, in the way she always adopted when teaching. As usual, she was a mess, a disgrace. Her dark hair was cropped short and looked as though it had been shorn by a slave with a blunt knife; her dress was of coarse linen, short in the arms and not very much different to the sort of thing shopkeepers might wear. Her nails were rough-cut, and her feet bare. She wore no decoration; her eyes were her only adornment, but these so far excelled all artificial baubles in their beauty that any jewel would have seemed tawdry in comparison. And her voice, which had not changed in all the time he had known her, still dark and throaty, seductive and commanding, amused and critical by turns; once heard, impossible ever to forget. Blind men could fall in love with Sophia, just as Manlius did, despite his usual fineness of discernment in the matter of female beauty.

“An example,” she said. “You may comment on it when I am finished. According to Aristotle, one of the earliest laws of Solon, the great law-giver of Athens, said that if a society split into strife and civil war, anyone who refused to take sides should be exiled and outlawed when order was restored. Your opinion?”

“An absurdity,” said Manlius, with a sigh of contentment, for this is why he came to her, to have his mind tested and strained; it was what he lived for, almost, and what she had always unselfishly given. “It’s obvious that the more people join in, the worse the conflict. It seems designed to increase dissent, and spread the chaos of faction even to those who would ordinarily preserve something of civility in a period of violence.”

“Your beliefs are so thinly held that you think your grasp on reasoned behavior would collapse under such conditions?”

“I hope not. Not least because of the training I have received at your knee, dear lady.”

She acknowledged the compliment with a faint smile; she had banished vanity in most things, but not in this. “Then you must think that what I have taught you is so feeble that it can only be examined in the quiet of a sealed library, or with friends who are already of your opinions?”

“No; at least, I have never heard anyone refute an argument you have presented.”

“Then there is only one conclusion; you think all men are unreasoning beasts.”

“Most are; but you tell me all retain the faintest remembrance of the divine, and are able to respond to it. Even the worst of men can be persuaded.”

“Then surely, if reasoning men do not abandon the people when they are in a state of frenzy, but ally themselves with factions, then they can begin to direct through being men of more than ordinary influence? Would not that soothe the passions, and guide men back to harmony? Would that not be the wisdom behind Solon’s law?”

“Perhaps,” Manlius said. “And it was no doubt good advice for Solon’s time. But I do not see how such balm might be applied now. Which public office should a man take now? A senate seat? There is no one else to talk to. Command the military of the province? There are no soldiers. Oversee an administration and give orders which no one obeys? Perhaps become a tax collector? At least that still functions all too well. Rome will not abandon us as long as it can squeeze a few extra coins out of us. It is too late. There is only an empty shell, all the goodness sucked out and wasted. Majorian was the last chance. Now we must await King Euric’s pleasure.”

“You are making windy speeches when you know the answer,” she said impatiently. “When Socrates was accused of corrupting the young he was also accused of contempt for the gods of Athens. He replied that he honored all the city’s deities. And it was true; he sacrificed assiduously. Did he believe they were anything but stories, to comfort the unlettered and present the great ideas of the divine to the simple? Of course not, but as they were so believed, then he maintained a necessary decorum in public. And so must you do, to the gods of your time.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very much so. Worship the three gods of the Christians, the father, son, and holy ghost. Make them the sacrifices they require. The church has a power that the old offices no longer have. If you do not fill its grand positions, others will do so. Why do you live, Manlius Hippomanes? Why do you walk this earth, if not to show virtue in your deeds, and how can you do that except by exercise of public office? For generations your family, and your friends’ families, have brought honor amongst themselves with these baubles, and convinced yourselves that honor and virtue were one and the same. You have been what, in your time? Procurator, Comes, all these things. Your father had more such offices before you. What do they mean, except that you have vaunted yourself above rivals? You have been like children with toys, fighting over little bits of painted wood. Once upon a time all these places were worth something; their holders ensured good government and gave good advice. That has not been the case for generations now, and still you squabble for the outward show, thinking it distinguishes you from others. It does; it shows how much greater a fool you are.”

“I hold no such office anymore. Not since my father was killed.”

“Even worse. You give delicate dinner parties and entertain your friends, and write letters and verse which get cleverer by the day. But what when there is no one left to read those letters? No friends to invite, no food to put on the table? What then? The schools of Marseille are long gone. No teachers, no pupils. The schools of Bordeaux, even, are growing feeble. Do children care anything for philosophy, for letters, for thought? Will their children even be able to read?”

“And you think joining the church will help?” he asked, scarcely keeping the amused incredulity out of his voice.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully. “I think running the church will help. Perhaps even that will accomplish nothing, but at least learning will die with a friend by its bedside, rather than abandoned in a ditch. Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless. Who, for example, is likely to be the new bishop?”

“Caius Valerius.”

“And will he do a good job?”

“No. He is a contemptible fool.” He did not mention that he was also a cousin of his friend Felix.

“So do a better job,” she said simply. “Take that authority and use it. Defend all you hold dear. Use your skills and your intelligence, for you have both. Can Euric be stopped? If not, can his rule be moderated, or put under constraint?”

“Perhaps,” Manlius said.

“ ‘Perhaps,’ ” she repeated. “A possibility, with no guarantee of success, but said without hesitation. You have thought of this already, I see.”

“Of course. I see a possibility.”

“And yet you do nothing about it. Shame on you.”

He looked at her. “I am concerned about what would be necessary, about what I might have to do.”

“Then double the shame on you, and double it again,” she said sharply. “You are like a general who will not send his troops into battle for fear they will get their breastplates dirty. You have your mind and your soul, Manlius, trained and honed, and will not act for fear of tarnishing them. You should be afraid; you are vain and arrogant, full of error. But I never thought you were a coward as well.”

The next day Manlius summoned Syagrius and dictated a letter to Bishop Faustus; there followed a lengthy exchange of views, and a visit to the bishop a few months later. During this Manlius was perfectly honest. He could not claim to be a good Christian, but he was perhaps the most powerful man in the region. The church could have his help, or not. With heretic barbarians to the north and the west, with most of Gaul already gone and the ability of the emperor to protect what remained all but nonexistent, could the church do without him?

Eight weeks and three days later he was baptized, ordained, and elevated to the bishopric of Vaison, taking charge of a diocese that was already some two hundred years old and becoming, in effect, the sole authority in a region in which all others had crumbled into uselessness.

THE BISHOP’S manuscript came to Julien’s attention because, at the age of fifteen, Olivier de Noyen stole some money. He was working in the cardinal’s chancellery, carefully watching the money coming in, the money going out again. Counting the gold and silver pieces, marking it all down in the ledger. There were twelve of the cardinal’s people, all sitting at little desks, working from dawn to dusk to keep the great engine of the cardinal’s power running smoothly.

It was not work to which he was greatly fitted; he was sent there as a punishment, and as he was constantly offending against the rules of the cardinal’s household, he spent much time there, being bored to tears and failing to learn anything at all about the need for discipline. He ran too fast and collided with a cook carrying the cardinal’s meal; one week of tallying figures. He disappeared for several days; two weeks. He went out late one night and had his first experience of drinking to excess, leaving the evidence of his debauch on the floor of the great entrance hall of the cardinal’s palace; one month’s hard counting resulted.

It was after this last adventure—of which even Olivier was ashamed—that he noted that a remittance from one of the cardinal’s benefices in England was too great by one gold piece. At that time, he considered himself something of a dandy, delighting in the company of a band of fellows who dressed in the finest clothes they could find, and thought themselves grand indeed when they marched down the street singing, and making fun—normally good-humored—of passersby. Most bore their merriment well; only the Jews did not when they were taunted. They were not agreeable objects of tricks; they hurried by, their heads down, cloaks bundled around them, never answering back or replying with some remark. It was why comments turned to insults, insults to stones. Olivier sometimes joined in, just as he had, on occasion, tormented stray dogs and cats in his youth. He saw little difference, and stopped mainly because he found it poor sport.

His holiday outfit delighted him; it was scarlet and blue and well sewn. But he had no shoes, and the whole appearance was (he thought) spoiled by the wood and cloth sabots that he wore on his feet. What woman of elegance—what serving girl even—could ever be fooled by a man who clattered down the street, making as much noise as donkey and cart? Who could take seriously someone who had to dance barefoot, and often was forced to retire when a stamping boot crunched down on his toes?

The lack of good shoes tormented him, the gold piece tempted him. He took the money and bought a fine pair of leather-soled slippers, soft and so comfortable they scarcely seemed to have any weight at all. He sat in bed looking at them, and delayed a month before he would risk wearing them out of doors, in case they got dirty.

They were his delight, and when he turned from such pleasures they stayed, carefully wrapped in cloth, in his chest. It is shameful to admit, but his love of his shoes was so great he did not once feel in the slightest bit guilty about his wickedness. On the other hand, he knew that one day restitution would have to be made. So it was that when he found The Dream of Scipio he handed the copy he made over to Ceccani rather than keeping it for himself. The gift, he considered, more than paid for the delight he had felt for his shoes. From there, it made its way to the papal library after the cardinal’s death, and lay, waiting, for the young French scholar to come in one morning in 1925, sit down, and read.

MANLIUS HAD first met Sophia in Marseille, after the death of her father, the philosopher Anaxius from whom he had taken instruction. He had gone there to attend the schools in a city that was still functioning, although the ever more intermittent water supplies, the inability of the authorities to prevent crime, and incursions of brigands into the outlying suburbs caused much grumbling among the populace. The schools were among the best in Gaul; for a better education, an earnest student would have to travel very far indeed: to Antioch, or Alexandria. A generation ago young men did this; now no longer. Even going to Marseille produced expressions of astonishment and incomprehension amongst his family.

It was not a happy experience. The schools received little subsidy from the city anymore; that was reserved for the administration or was swallowed up by the greedy maw of the church. The teachers were old and tired, discouraged by the dwindling numbers of students and the constant abuse of those who denounced them as pagans. One day, as Manlius sat and listened with two others to the old man discoursing on the poetry of Horace in a hall capable of taking near a hundred, there was a dull cracking, rumbling sound that echoed through the room. Anaxius took no notice, but droned on in a monotone that completely contradicted the points he was making about rhythm and rhetoric.

Then, in a cloud of dust and plaster, a portion of the roof collapsed onto the podium. Manlius, then seventeen, thought it hugely amusing, the punishment of the gods for having bored him so completely, until he realized the seriousness of the event. Anaxius collapsed under the pile of plaster and heavy concrete, more than a century old and now weakened beyond salvation. The cracks had been all too obvious before; no one had paid any attention to the way they had been growing for weeks.

He was dead; a fragment of concrete as long as Manlius’s arm had pierced his body like an arrow, driving into the top of his shoulder with such force it penetrated deep down into his body. He expired with scarcely a groan as Manlius stood above him, wondering what to do.

And when he turned around, his two colleagues had left. They had packed up their books and walked out. One, Manlius learned later, threatened legal action to cover the costs of a course paid for but never completed; he threatened to sue the daughter for the funds. Manlius arranged a small demonstration that she had powerful friends, not to be trifled with. While the student was still nursing the bruises administered by Manlius’s servants, he completed the lesson by visiting the sickbed and hurling twenty times the amount claimed, in gold, onto the floor all around him. It was a gesture from which he gained far too much satisfaction.

So it was Manlius who found a janitor, arranged for the body to be removed from the wreckage and taken to be cleaned and prepared. It was he also who went to inform the household of the tragedy, and discovered that the old Greek philosopher had lived alone with his daughter, Sophia, who was, perhaps, about twenty-five at that time, and still unmarried.

He was impressed, first of all by her reaction: no tears or sorrow, no manifestations of undignified grief; she listened and thanked him, asked where the body was, then offered him a cold drink, for it was a searingly hot day. Her self-control, her nobility was striking in a period much given to lamentation and ostentation in emotion.

“He will be happy now,” was her only comment.

Later, after the funeral rites had been conducted by Sophia herself, a pagan rite ending with a cremation, he asked her about the remark. She considered, and then told him something of her philosophy, weaving an explanation that captivated him and left him slightly in awe of her. It was his first instruction in Platonic thought, pure and unadulterated by Christian admixture. The way she talked, what she said, hypnotized him and fascinated him. He once remarked that had her father spoken of such things, he would have had a throng every day, beating at his door for the honor of hearing him.

“Ah no,” she said. “My father was a much greater philosopher than I could ever be; and when we came here from Alexandria he had high hopes of teaching such things; but few wished to hear, and many were afraid of what he had to say. So he fell silent, and taught the mechanics of giving speeches empty of meaning. You have been too polite to say what we both knew too well, that he had no skill at this at all; his words reflected the dullness of his heart. But Manlius, if you had only heard him talk of true philosophy! His voice was music, his thought the purest beauty. All gone now, and all silent forever.”

“Not while you are alive, my lady,” he replied. “And you are wrong that no one wishes to hear. I know myself of half a dozen people who would fall at your feet and worship you, if they were only allowed to listen.”

Over the next few weeks he proved it, gathering together those whom he considered trustworthy and bringing them to her. All aristocrats, all young, all ready to be captivated. For the next two years, they met twice a week at Manlius’s house in Marseille, for he was by far the richest of them, and heard of marvelous things. When he was finally summoned away, to accompany his father to Rome in the entourage of the new emperor Majorian, others had joined the group, and for the next twenty years Sophia was able to live out a penurious existence in the manner he had created for her. It was unusual, of course, but there were enough precedents in the past to go by. Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. And Sophia’s father had been one of her last pupils, and when she died had fled to Marseille, a city less under the sway of religion, for fear that the same punishment would be meted out to him.

For Sophia, Manlius’s efforts were a mixed blessing, as not all he summoned to her feet were moved solely by the love of philosophy. Many dressed ostentatiously, gave dinner parties modeled on the banquets of old, sneered at the vulgarity of Christians, the coarseness of the rabble unable to appreciate the delicacies of true thought. They stood around in the street, loudly talking of the nature of the divine. Her philosophy, so jealously protected and cradled within her, became their youthful defiance, spitting in the face of the world. She even had to reprimand them on occasion.

“I do not wish to become like Socrates or Hypatia. I do not wish to be accused of corrupting the morals of youth and be murdered because of my pupils’ behavior. I do not wish my teaching to be nothing more than a costly garment, to distinguish you from others. More decorum and modesty, if you please. There is no virtue that I know of in giving offense. And today, as a punishment, we will talk of the beauties of Christianity.”

And so she did, shaming them, cowing them with her arguments, awing them with the immensity of her knowledge, for she could see good even among absurdity, and wisdom among the dross. They all loved her, it was impossible not to do so; and she knew she took far too much pleasure in their reverence and punished herself with lengthy fasts and days of meditation.

AMONG BARNEUVE’S POSSESSIONS, sorted out by a cousin after his death, was a photograph discovered in a volume where it had been used, evidently, as a bookmark. It meant nothing to the cousin, who had scarcely known his relation and performed the task out of family duty. Barneuve’s goods passed to this man, who had little need for the vast number of books and papers Barneuve had accumulated during his life and which were stored in several rooms of his capacious apartment on the rue de la Petite Fusterie in Avignon. Some were offered to his university, which took what it needed; everything else he sorted through, selling what was valuable and throwing out the rest. This photograph fell into the latter category; a few hours after it was found it was put into the refuse bins in the courtyard, then taken away the next morning.

There was no reason not to throw the photograph away; there was nothing to identify the person shown and it could never have illuminated any dark corners of history. Only Barneuve himself could have said who it was, and even the careful observer could discover little from the image alone. It was square, in black and white but faded into those sepia tones that creep over old photographs with the passage of time. The subject, a woman of about twenty, leans against the rail of a ship in a conventional holiday-cruise pose, the sort of snapshot that must have been taken tens of thousands of times. Had the photographer moved a little to the left, the name of the ship might have been known, for there was a fraction of a life buoy to be seen on the rail. Beyond, in the background, was a port and what seemed to be a minaret—enough evidence to suggest the eastern Mediterranean.

Of the woman, still less could have been said. She was dressed in a light cotton dress, down to the mid-calf, a sun hat on her head, but didn’t seem to be in a holiday mood. She had her own beauty, but it was not a conventional appeal. It was the intensity of her expression, staring determinedly and unflinchingly at the camera, which caught the eye. She stood like someone issuing a challenge. The more fanciful—filling in the gaps with imagination when firm conclusions cannot be reached—might have detected an impatience. Look, she is thinking, why are we wasting time here when there are so many fascinating things to be seen and done on the shore?

More, she was alone. On a crowded ship, brimful of people, she stood alone, waiting. Perhaps she had difficulty making friends? Maybe she needed none? She had the expression of someone searching constantly, yet never finding it. She looked, indeed, just a little cautious, but determined that no one should suspect her weakness.

Nothing else could be gleaned from the photograph, ripped out of its context in such a brutal way, the book that contained it upturned and shaken, so that it fluttered down onto the old worn carpet where it rested until swept up with all the other debris. In this way, the vital connection was lost, for before Barneuve’s relation so rudely disturbed it, the photograph had rested in a small book on Provençal church decoration, tucked up on the page that contained a reproduction of what Julien had come to believe was a portrait of Olivier de Noyen’s true, unknown love.

Anyone who chanced to see both together—had they taken the trouble to look, if they knew both faces so well they were engraved in the mind as they were in Julien Barneuve’s—would have had to agree that the resemblance was extraordinary.

ONCE HE HAD turned away—in his heart, if not yet openly—from the career of a lawyer, Olivier de Noyen for many years assumed that he would become a priest, despite his evident lack of capacity for the life, and accommodated the idea in his mind so completely and with so little thought that he never truly gave it up. It would have been more surprising if this notion had not occurred to him. He was, after all, surrounded by priests, living in a clerical household, knowing mainly priests or others destined for the church in one form or another. The priesthood was the most certain route of patronage as well—stay within the fold and he could count on the support of Ceccani and others within his circle who would willingly advance a personable, if wayward, young man of intelligence who would bring credit on them in return. And Olivier would have risen high indeed—Ceccani held immense resources in his gift. Even though Olivier could scarcely expect great advancement, for the necessary instincts of a politician were as strange to him as they were fundamental to his master—he would undoubtedly have come to a position of some power within the curia, and servants are often more influential than the masters they serve.

A life of plenty, power, and obscurity. How many names of papal bureaucrats are known to us today? How many engage the attentions of a Julien Barneuve? The Romans (before they became Christian, and probably thereafter as well) held Renown to be a god, and sought out her harsh attentions, even though her blessing might be bought at the price of death and disgrace. Some part of Olivier was attracted to that same altar in a way a man like Julien could never understand. And if (as the Romans also held, although they contradicted themselves often on this point) immortality is conferred by the continuous memory others hold of us when we are dead, then Olivier was the only one to win everlasting life.

Not that he ever thought all this through, weighed the pros and cons of the various options open to him, then made up his mind. Had he proceeded in this way—had he been more reasonable—a priest he would have become, for he did not know he sought fame nor did he ever understand why he sought it.

Rather, his life developed on the surface in the way necessary to indulge his passion for the old learning. Once his father had left him and his tears had dried up, the first thing he did was to go to his master’s scriptorium, take pen and ink and sand, and copy out the now destroyed manuscript. Word for word, with no errors. He had read it so often—and indeed had the gift of phenomenal memory, so that a text, once read, stayed with him forever—that it was not even a difficult task. And then he had a small inspiration. The hatred of his father, which he did not allow himself to feel—such things were unnatural and could not be admitted—he transformed instead into admiration and regard for Ceccani. And to express this admiration, he decided to make his patron a gift.

It was, in its way, his first publication, the nearest that could be reached in the days before the printing press. In his best, still-adolescent hand, he copied out the secret treasure that he had held to himself for so long and, to present it in an appropriate fashion, added a separate sheet of paper on which he wrote an epistle dedicatory praising the cultivation of the recipient, describing the gift as best he could, and expressing how the joy of bringing both together was reward enough for someone who admired Ceccani as much as he reverenced Cicero.

And he wrote it in verse, although he had not intended to when he began. But the first two lines came out as natural hexameters, and once Olivier noticed this, he grasped that he could lay on another level of compliment, by repeating a classical form for a man learned enough to appreciate the style.

By later standards—his own, and that of the intellectual world he helped bring back to life—it was a pitiable performance, gauche and inelegant, and this was no doubt the reason he refused to let it be reproduced later. But there was also a freshness to his efforts, a touch of spring in his words. The imagery, the grammatical constructions, were no doubt unsophisticated, but they also lacked the arch mannerism, the self-referential cleverness of a later and earlier period. What he wrote instead was a poem of simplicity and directness, a fresh morning after a long cold winter, with a faint aroma of rosemary and lavender in the air suggesting the warmth to come.

It was also a remarkable performance by a boy of sixteen, and Ceccani’s greatest talent as prelate and politician was to spot ability and harness it to his own purposes. Olivier was too shy to present his gift in public, at dinner in the hall or on some other occasion when others might see and perhaps also witness his master’s scorn should his effort not be well received. Indeed, he carried the roll of paper in his tunic—neatly tied with a piece of red ribbon he had stolen from the seamstress, and sealed with wax bearing an imprint from a seal he had fashioned himself from a small piece of wood—for several days, always hesitating whenever an opportune moment presented itself.

Nor could he draw strength and encouragement from any of his fellows, for although Ceccani had some twelve boys in his household, the rivalry between them was too great. All knew that patronage and advancement would come to only a few lucky ones, and the eldest, furthest up the pecking order, were more concerned to portray their juniors in a bad light to prevent them becoming rivals. Olivier knew instinctively that no one must know of his gift before it was delivered; it would be either stolen or ruined if anyone so much as suspected its existence. Few secret letters of state, fewer treaties of alliance between popes or emperors or kings were of such importance in Christendom as his few sheets of paper in the world of the boys’ dormitory, for they had the power to turn all upside down, to break alliances, shift the balance of power, exile some, and shower others with gold.

Did Olivier realize this? Was his the innocent gift of a young boy consumed by the love of learning and intoxicated by the half-sensed awareness of his abilities? Or was this his first offering to the god Renown, a move in the great game of power and advancement? Perhaps both; perhaps he knew that both are necessary, that his desires could only be satisfied if he won the support of men like Ceccani, and that his gift was a route to that support.

Either way, he carried his roll of paper with him for many days before courage and circumstance combined. He saw Ceccani walking along a hallway of his newly completed palace, so great that only the pope’s excelled it in size and magnificence. Merely possessing it gave Ceccani power, no one could enter it, even glimpse its high walls or fortified tower from the street, without being overcome by awe. He had only a secretary with him, and Olivier, knowing that no better chance would ever come his way, stepped forward, then bowed and did not take a step backward to allow the cardinal to pass.

Ceccani paused, a look of surprise on his face, one of those ambivalent expressions that could turn into anger or amusement in an instant.

Olivier bowed again and reached into his tunic, utterly oblivious of the look of momentary alarm that passed over the stocky man’s heavy and powerful face. For it was not unheard of for men like him to be struck down by an assassin, nor for youths as young as Olivier to carry daggers in their clothes. This was the papal court.

“My lord, ah . . .” Olivier began, then paused, overcome with doubts and worries and the overwhelming self-consciousness of youth. Ceccani’s expression began to turn wrathful; he considered such grotesque inelegance of expression to be insulting to his person and position. Olivier saw this all too well, and knew that he had but a fraction of a moment before his fate, his entire life, perhaps, was decided.

“My lord, I have been most graciously permitted to live in your household, and in your presence, for many months, and yet I have never given proper expression to my gratitude. I have prepared this gift. It is a poor thing, inadequate, and I hope only that you do not find it an insult. But if you will read words of the author, rather than those of the giver, I believe you cannot be too displeased with my presumption.”

And he handed over the roll of paper—to Ceccani, not to the secretary, which was itself presumptuous—bowed sagely, then came close to ruining everything by turning tail and fleeing down the corridor.

The last sounds he heard before he turned the corner was a gale of laughter from the two men, as their sudden tension and alarm dissolved. His ears burned for days. And that night, after the other boys heard of his démarche, he received the most savage beating of his life. They knew that, if his petition was well received, they would never get another chance.

EVERSINCE MEN began to study themselves, the gift has attracted the fascinated attention of those who see the practice as one of the strangest and most complex forms of communication—particularly, but not solely, human. When to give, how to give, what to give; these are complex matters, and getting the practice right requires subtlety and care if it is not to miss the mark. In many ways Olivier, though still so young, had the easiest task, as he lived in an age when the language of gift giving was understood, with a straightforward grammar and simple syntax. His position in relation to Ceccani was perfectly clear to both, and there was no possibility of confusion. He did not need to ask for anything in return as it was taken for granted that this was what he wanted, and the request (and its fulfillment, should he succeed) would be to the honor of the donor, rather than placing a burden on him. The boy did not mind the prospect of being under an obligation, perhaps for the rest of his life, since every man was obliged to someone (if he was lucky), and all were obliged to God.

The only doubt was the response: kind words that would be translated by all to mean “I appreciate your request, but do not feel it is worthwhile to do anything for you; your family is not important, and you have little prospect of repaying me by bringing credit on my patronage.” Or alternatively: “Your request is granted. I take you under my protection; in return you will bring credit on me, for I intend that what you do and how you behave will be a small—very small—aid in my perpetual ascent in men’s esteem. And perhaps in God’s as well.”

No such words would ever be exchanged, of course; there was no need. The joy in Olivier’s heart when he received back a letter from Ceccani himself, in his own hand, asking him his opinion about the form of gerundive used in the seventh sentence knew no bounds. His petition was accepted, his way was assured; within a matter of hours everyone in the household knew it.

By the time Olivier’s father saw him again—and it was nearly a year before he passed through Avignon once more—it was instantly clear there would be no more burnings of books, and no more instructions about becoming a lawyer. The boy had passed forever beyond the older man’s control. It says much either for Olivier’s character or for the formal reverence in which fathers were held, that this new situation was never alluded to directly, and there was no glorification in the triumph. It also says much about the father that, while he grieved that the desires he had nursed in his heart for near seventeen years were now extinguished, he allowed himself to be consoled by the prospect of the favors that might descend upon him from a son in papal service. Children exist to safeguard their parents in old age; it is their entire purpose. Instead of a bleak, mean old age (should God allow him to live so long) living solely on the small rents of his little estate, de Noyen’s father could now bask in the prospect of security, perhaps even a pension, which would descend to him from the court and through his son. This expectation (which in a later, crueler age would excite only resentment in the younger generation) was fully shared by Olivier, and while he rarely thought about it, when he did consider the prospect of being a good and dutiful child, the idea brought him great pleasure.

THE TRIUMPH was on the same scale as Julien’s achievement in passing the agrégation, although the Frenchman would never have seen the parallels; rather, he saw his success as the legitimate result of a meritocratic examination, rather than the exercise of a fickle, personal favoritism. The element of patronage—the fact that he was under the protection of the great Gustave Bloch, who had decided to advance him and, by doing so, would augment his own already prodigious reputation and power—never occurred to him. Nor, when he left the ship at the end of his cruise and gave Julia Bronsen an old book he had found (at a good price) in a Palermo bookshop, inscribed with an oblique salutation in his own hand, he never for a moment considered any great subtlety in the gift, nor considered that he signaled a desire for something in return.

A few words, yet so many meanings. The choice of book—Vergil’s Eclogues—recognized the young woman’s intelligence and education, suggested that the giver appreciated her interests and shared them. The edition, an Aldine, indicated a commonality of taste and discernment, for how many people truly understand the difference between one edition and another, see beyond the cover, which in this case needed a good deal of care and attention?

The inscription, a fragment of the second line of de Noyen’s poem that begins “my soul, completed, rises to God . . .” was a curious choice. It was hardly appropriate; a bit jarring, a little excessive in a gift otherwise so restrained and refined. Yet of all the phrases in all the poems, this one came to Julien’s mind and remained there when he pondered the inscription. It was, he later discovered, Olivier’s first real love poem, when he passed beyond singing of an ideal and fell into the grip of a real passion.

AND MANLIUS, penning the Dream that encapsulated all of Sophia’s teaching, how can his gift be understood? It was not given in the same spirit as his first offerings, presented in the full flush of his youth, when his exhilaration had rendered him foolish. For in Marseille he offered her two things; both were rejected. On the first occasion he had tried to express his esteem for her by giving her money, enough for her to live in security; he had presented her with a small casket filled with gold—a vulgar, ostentatious gift, full of the coarseness of youth and the arrogance of his position, which he had not yet learned to control.

“Why do you give this to me?” she had asked calmly. He replied that it was because she was the only good and noble person in the world.

“Then let me remain so,” she said, handing it back.

And the second occasion, he offered his entire soul, and declared his love for her. Again, a crude gesture promptly rebutted, for it meant he had failed to learn anything from her at all. So she turned it into a lesson, starting again the long and arduous process of teaching him something so utterly hidden from his sight.

“Come with me,” she had said. And she had led him from the room where they had their conversations—Manlius had nervously paid a call to her alone, outside the hours she normally held for public speech—and took him outside to the midden.

“Look inside,” she said. “Smell. What do you see? What do you smell?”

Manlius did not know what to say. The cubicle smelled, and looked like all such.

“Only I use that,” she continued as she shut the door. “Do you love it as well?”

“Of course not.”

“Yet it is me, part of me. The natural product of my body. And yet you turn from it, wrinkling your nose in disgust. You say you love me, but do not love what is part of me. Or are you lying, and is your love just an adolescent fancy?”

“I love the idea of you.” This from their lessons.

“My beauty is a reflection of the divine beauty?” she said ironically. Manlius hung his head in shame; being mocked was not something he could ever accept.

“No. The love I feel is the reflection. As you say, madam, you are not beautiful, although I find you so. If I were as useless as you imply, I would surely have fallen in love with the pretty young serving girl who draws the water at the end of the street every morning I come here. I would have drowned in her black eyes and her beautiful hair. But I do not. I lie awake thinking of someone much older, who turns no heads when she is not known but fascinates all who have heard her speak. You say that, at its best, the physical craving is a reflection of the desire of the soul to reunite with the ultimate beauty, with God. And can only be justified as such.”

“But I said it was only a reflection. Not a reality. As real as a glass reflected in a pond.”

“But a reflection of water in a mirror can make you thirsty.”

“That is true. And is what you should work towards. You should not bend your mouth to the imaginary glass and try to drink.”

“I know all this. I have learned well. And yet I cannot stop.”

“That is the corruption of the body, its triumph over the soul. The soul is imprisoned, and what you feel is the same as the prisoner in a dark cell who sees nothing but shadows and thinks these are reality. You must study to escape the cell, let your soul contemplate what causes the shadows. That is the purpose of philosophy, and why it is suited to only those few who wish to escape. In the moment of love, when we escape ourselves and become united with the lover, then we have a hint of the joys to come when the soul rejoins the divine; but we think it is a reality of itself. And we lose sight of our aim. That is why it is dangerous.”

Manlius looked at her. “You never feel such things?”

She looked serious. “Often,” she replied. And for the first time her gaze dropped, and would not meet his.

NO DOUBT a psychoanalyst, excited with his new knowledge in Julien’s epoch and convinced that his skills could be applied universally and eternally, would have made much of this. Had he been able to read the letters that the two exchanged over the next fifteen years, some three hundred in all, he would have dissected their souls and their lives, turned over Sophia’s thoughts about her father, analyzed her views on eternity and death, and rested content with a conclusion of extreme neurosis. Celibacy, suppressed desire, the search for the mystical could now only be seen in such terms.

Sophia was spared such analysis because, as with so much else, the letters did not survive; Olivier de Noyen almost discovered them, as the last remaining copy sat for hundreds of years in a church in Aix-en-Provence, which he visited in 1344. But he had, by then, found one version of a poem by Horace and concluded, wrongly, that there was nothing else in the little bookroom except for theological texts of no significance for him. Besides, he was hungry and tired, and wanted to go home; a cold was coming over him and he felt the need to get to bed as quickly as possible. Or perhaps it was because the wind was blowing strongly that day and sapped his patience and dulled his spirit.

No one else passed by to rectify his mistake; in 1407 a baker in the house next to the church overfilled his oven and allowed burning embers to fall onto the floor. Half an hour later his house was ablaze; an hour later the entire street was in flames.

It was a great loss, for they were the finest things Manlius ever produced. Sophia had no use for artifice in speech and was impatient with it in literature. Clever allusions, apposite quotations, delicate metrical structures excited in her only contempt. Manlius consequently dropped all those devices that he considered obligatory for good writing in all other spheres and wrote directly and simply. What they produced together might well have been considered the finest collection of love letters ever written, had the baker been more careful. A mingling of the emotions and the intellect, the desire suppressed but forever bubbling near the surface, barely under control. A complete communication of two people founded on the respect and affection of one, and reverence of the other. What the analyst would have cooed over was the eroticism of the images presented as abstract philosophy, although he would probably have missed the playful, affectionate lilt of the language. He would have assumed both writers were unaware of the feelings that saturated the prose, although each was, in fact, all too aware of them. He would probably not have considered the possibility that this great passion was the more fulfilling for each because of its abstract nature, that for Manlius sex was something all men had with their servants when necessary, that for Sophia it was a reminder of a position in the world that bred resentment rather than release.

HAD OLIVIER not been on the church steps that day and fallen in love, he and his family might not have suffered such ignominy; that, at least, is the conventional view, one which all who have heard of him have accepted without demur. The disease of love would not then have infiltrated his mind, and her husband would not have avenged his honor by attacking him in the way he did.

The conventional interpretation is, in fact, entirely incorrect. Had he not seen a particular woman then, in those precise circumstances, he might have remained either unaware of her existence or indifferent to her appeal. It is no longer fashionable, or even respectable, to talk of fate or destiny taking a hand. Love is a random matter, no more than that, in a universe governed by chance, which has swept aside all other deities and taken on a power that is all but supreme. But what a dull deity Chance is in comparison to those it has vanquished. Dressed up as cool rationality—how rational it is, after all, to assert that there is no reason for anything—it appeals only to the impoverished of spirit.

This stricture applies even if Olivier did not fall in love with a woman. He fell in love, rather, with an idea as it was mottled with sunlight on that warm morning. Sophia would have said that he was touched with a remembrance of the divine, a faint recollection of the soul’s origins before it fell to earth and inhabited a body. It seemed a breathtaking idea, but was not as unique as he believed. Dante’s Beatrice was scarcely a real person by the time he had reduced her to verse; Petrarch’s Laura might not have existed at all except in his imagination. Both loved their lovers the more after they were dead, and could not disturb their imaginations with the onset of wrinkles or the annoyance of opinions independently expressed.

The result is well enough known, at least to scholars acquainted with the poetry of the period and the language of the time, for Olivier wrote in Provençal, which had come back into vogue in the generation of Julien Barneuve’s father, and the son learned the language as well. For such people, the surviving poems—about twenty of them—fall neatly into two categories, called the juvenile and the mature. In this categorization, the earlier poems are considered essais, apprentice works where the young poet has not yet mastered the art of expression he was hewing from the rough stone of language. There is an imprecision about the verse that is redolent of the formality of the Middle Ages, the slightly coarse troubadour style that went before. Olivier in his youth did not have the means of expression or the confidence to cut through the inherited mannerisms and speak straight from the heart.

And then there are the last poems written, it seems, shortly before his downfall, when he finally throws off all artifice and speaks with a vibrancy unheard of in poetry for more than a thousand years. Even in translation and over half a millennium, it is hard not to be touched by the way he talks of his overwhelming joy at love realized and the poignant knowledge that it can lead to nothing. Not that this was the only reaction, of course; for others, the final poems were evidence of a mind disoriented by the Black Death or falling prey to some innate madness.

What was not considered, because it was not even thought of until Julien surmised it, was that this sudden maturity of expression, this shift toward a heightened emotional intensity—accompanied by a new solidity in imagery and sureness of approach—was because Olivier truly fell in love, this time with a reality, not an abstraction that existed only in his imagination. Nor was it known that this love was not for Isabelle de Fréjus, the commonly accepted subject of his poems; Julien established that this particular association began only after he was dead.

Isabelle did come down those church steps that day, but Olivier scarcely noticed her. He was looking in the other direction, staring fixedly at a girl in a dark woollen cloak, neatly but obviously patched, hurrying by alone on the other side of the street. Until he saw her again and discovered her name, Olivier searched for her with an obsession that can be seen in the lines he wrote in that period. Every day he went out he hoped to see her; on many occasions he followed a figure in a dark cloak, only to be horrified when at last he did discover whose face lay under the veil.

JULIEN GLIMPSED Julia on the first day of the cruise, as he walked up the gangway carrying the small bag he was unprepared to entrust to the ship’s crew. She was leaning against a rail, high up, staring at the bustle of the port, talking to a man whom Julien correctly assumed to be her father.

She was as beautiful as her father was ugly; in her the darkness, the fullness of the lips, and the slight elongation of the nose produced a result that a painter like Modigliani would turn into a classic image of the age, a hint of unplaceable strangeness. In her father those same features could be stretched, twisted, and caricatured also into another classic image of the age, but with none of the subtlety of a hint.

He met her that same evening at the cocktail party to celebrate the start of the voyage. They were all in first class, which had been taken en bloc by the organizers for the learned party of professors and writers and intellectuals who had banded together to take the leisurely cruise around the Mediterranean, some giving lectures or leading tours when the ship came to the part they had studied, others listening. Most were French, although there was a scattering of Europe across the tables, mainly from those countries that had so recently fought together. Julia Bronsen and her father, traveling alone, were of uncertain nationality; France was a flavor in a complex recipe, but an expert concerned to analyze could also detect a touch of Italian and a suggestion of Russian about her. Julien never knew how important this was for his love of her.

Initially it was the father, Claude Bronsen, who struck up an acquaintanceship, and when Julien joined him and his daughter for dinner one evening, he was astonished once more to realize that such an ungainly, un-handsome man could possibly have produced such a beautiful daughter. He responded to the way Bronsen drew him out, asked him questions about himself, congratulated him on his success—which he was vain and young enough to mention before the first course was done—and talked about Paris and Rome and London. They brought a touch of the sophisticated to Julien’s world, for despite the war he had seen little of society. He had long dreamed of such surroundings, of being welcome at soirées and receptions, of counting writers and artists and diplomats and men of power among his circle, or at least to be part of theirs. The Bronsens were his first taste of such things, and he would have found it delightful even had they been less pleasant, less amusing, less friendly than they were.

“And you are going to Rome, is that right?” Julia asked.

“In September,” he replied. “To the École de Rome for two years.”

“I congratulate you on your good fortune,” she said. “I have only been once. And that was when I was fourteen. But who knows? Maybe I can persuade Father to let me go again. It is even possible that he might one day let me go without him watching over me all the time.”

From some mouths such a comment might have been sarcastic and even cruel; Julien at that stage would have talked of his father in this way. But Julia mingled the criticism with a loving acceptance of his weakness that still did not manage to disguise the way his need weighed on her. Her gentle, rich voice had all the resigned, partly amused affection of a daughter for a doting parent, who had separated from his wife when Julia was young, and who had done his best—according to the temper of the times—to bring her up alone. He had never remarried, never even considered it; Julia was his beginning and end, and she accepted this with only a small protest at the cost to herself.

“And what will you do there, Monsieur?” the father asked. “Become dissipated and steep yourself in idleness? Or waste your time in honest labor?”

He had this way, which his daughter inherited, of turning remarks upside down and presenting them in a humorous fashion that, if analyzed properly, spoke volumes. Was Julien a mere bookworm? Or was he sensitive to the outside world, could he absorb time and place, feel history in the stones and use this to make his work more sensitive and more subtle? Are you a mere pedant, Monsieur? Or do you have the spark of vitality inside you? Will you do something with your life? Answer my question with all the wit at your disposal and let us see.

“If I do not labor, I cannot be idle,” Julien replied. “There are constant supervisions and I would be sent back if I didn’t perform well. After nine months we are allowed to live in the city and begin to work more on our own—or not, as the case may be. But I may not have much encouragement in corruption. Everyone at the École, who will be my comrades, will be people like myself.”

“Which means?”

“Earnest, hardworking, and dull,” he said. “We cannot help it. Dissipation is not on the curriculum.”

“In that case,” the father said, “you will miss what is most charming and educational about Rome. We must come and rescue you. I have to come to Italy at least once a year, and I offer you an exchange. You show me Rome, which you will no doubt know better than I in a short while, and I will show you the Romans. They, at least, I know well.”

“I accept with great pleasure,” Julien replied happily. “And you must keep your word. I shall now be looking forward to your arrival and will be greatly disappointed if I don’t hear from you. Might I ask why you come to Italy?”

After near an hour of conversation, this was the first initiative he had taken, the first time he ventured to move the conversation away from himself, partly aware that he must be seeming terribly self-centered, but more because the two people were making him relax in their company.

But the father waved his hand. “Neither important nor interesting,” he said. “But merely work. It will take a generation to replace what was destroyed in a few years. Perhaps longer, as the politicians seem determined to waste as much time and money as possible. It is my job to make sure they have no excuse but their own lassitude. But it is not exciting, not in comparison to what you do.”

Was that a joke at his expense? Julien thought so, but Julia translated for him. “Father is a scholar manqué,” she said gently. “He always wanted to write books. But he became rich instead, so is not allowed.”

“And you, Mademoiselle?”

“She is an artist,” Bronsen said, smiling at him.

“Are you really?” He addressed his question back to her, and noted that she was scrutinizing him carefully as he spoke. False admiration? Disdain for the rich hobbyist of no talent? Incomprehension and slight disapproval of the possible bohemian? “What sort of artist?”

“A painter,” she said, but gave no more away.

“A good one?” He persisted.

Again, her father answered for her. “Yes, she is. She is exceptional.”

Julien’s smile, understanding but with too much insight, prompted her to respond a little more fully. “No, I am not,” she said. “Not yet.” She said it with such care that Julien, who could easily have changed the subject then to pursue matters less obviously sensitive, was minded to probe further.

“I sense a little divergence of opinion here.”

“Father speaks from hope. I speak from knowledge. I am not being self-deprecating. I have the ability to be a good painter. More than that, perhaps. But I am a long way from that point yet.”

“And what is required? What is missing?”

“Work,” she said. “Labor. The sweat of my brow. A great painting is not genius with a paintbrush. It’s years of concentrated effort. A journey without maps, with only a faint idea where you are heading.”

“She is being disingenuous,” Bronsen put in with a smile, patting her affectionately on the shoulder. “You should not be fooled by her modesty. She has none, in fact. She is perfectly aware of her abilities. As are the committee at the Salon d’Automne, which chose three of her pictures for hanging last year.”

“Now it is my turn to congratulate you. Although without seeing something for myself, I will have to suspend judgment,” Julien said. “I would like to see what you do. If you have no objection. Although I warn you in advance that my opinions are worthless.”

Julia gazed at him carefully. “We’ll see. Perhaps.”

ABOUT HALF WAY through the cruise, Julien began talking amiably and purposelessly to a middle-aged man—a jovial, good-natured, kindly fellow, the sort who is instantly likeable. They had just left Athens and were heading for Palestine; the weather was beautiful, all had relaxed into complete pleasure in their shared experience.

“I am surprised to see you spending so much time with those two Jews,” came the remark. “If you’re not careful, people will think you’re one, too. Personally, I think it spoils the atmosphere, having them on the ship.”

A pointless, casual remark, made even without malice. For the flickering of a second the comment nestled in Julien’s mind, and made him anxious, but the brilliant, hypnotic glittering of the water was too magnificent for him to worry too much and he soon forgot it. He said nothing in reply to either justify himself or praise his companions’ qualities. Rather, he shrugged with feigned indifference and looked out over the sea; he understood the comment. It was a moment, he realized later, that summed up his whole existence in a tiny moment, like the world reflected in a tiny bead of water as it falls to earth.

JULIA WAS sitting cross-legged on the ground, sketching, in the hills above Jerusalem, where they had gone for an overnight stop. Brown arms and a concentration so perfect even a wasp—the one thing that made her genuinely terrified—could walk up her leg unnoticed. Julien watched, enamored of her self-possession, recognizing something in her, a faintly stirring unease about him as he did so.

This image lodged in his mind like a photograph, and stayed with him until his death. Such things happen; the entire voyage, the wonderful things he saw—cities and towns, ruins and pyramids, temples and churches—were slowly effaced from his memory, or became the sort of memory that can be summoned when necessary but, for the most part, rests undisturbed. This one vignette had a life of its own. It nagged him, called him, imposed itself on him. As he went to sleep, sometimes when he was buying a newspaper or walking in the street or sitting reading by a warm fire and his mind drifted off, it would take him back to that precise moment—always unvarying, never changing.

Everyone has a glimpse of paradise in their lives; this was Julien’s. All he had to do was reach out.

Later, he decided he had been constrained by the morality and timorousness of the provincial bourgeois; the man who returned from Rome in 1927 would have been subject to no such doubts and hesitations; he would have become Julia’s lover then and there, and given the magical moment a fleshly guise. He knew, however, that the explanation was a false one, designed only to disguise and reassure. He was not afraid of being rejected but rather was afraid of being accepted. He knew that she was the one person he would never manage to let go. He was afraid of falling in love with her.

A few moments later she sighed and began packing her paper back into her bag. She didn’t know why she sighed, she did not do it often. Perhaps she, too, realized something had been missed at that moment.

And Julien came away with his shard of memory, forever glinting in the hot Mediterranean sunlight, as a reminder of something offered but turned down. It stayed with him until he had learned more and was ready. Until then he had that moment instead, that look on her face as their eyes met.

HE TRAVELED around the Mediterranean to see and learn, an idea that would never have occurred to people of Olivier de Noyen’s age; they had little energy, or money, or time to spare for any type of luxury, and the wasteful use of all three simply never crossed their minds. Nor did they find nature so wonderful; they knew it all too well already, and had no soft illusions about its benevolence. Occasionally, in lyric verse, we catch a slight hint of appreciation, when the light breeze awakens the lover’s heart, or falling leaves indicate a love that is dying, but in general the works of the age are quiet about nature’s beauty except as metaphor.

Even Olivier thought he traveled for a purpose on his endless criss-crossing voyages across what is now Southern France, Italy, and Switzerland. There is even a hint that he once visited England in the retinue of the Bishop of Winchester in 1344, although there is no solid evidence and, indeed, it seems unlikely. Ostensibly, he voyaged either on those little missions of informal diplomacy and administration at which he proved adept and useful—delivering a message, paying a compliment, finding information—or he was in search of those manuscripts with which he became ever more obsessed.

And yet Julien did not entirely impose his own values and opinions when he fancied that Olivier took pleasure from the journey as well as the destination, and that he often took a less than direct route and dallied unnecessarily in places with no other interest except their charm. Much, again, was supposition: The poet was only known for certain to have taken two trips, one to Dijon, which produced his great allegorical letter on Saint Sophia, the other to Bordeaux. Nonetheless, others must have been made, for the list of manuscripts he acquired implies considerable travel.

Certainly Olivier saw the world in a novel and strange fashion. Manlius contemplated the landscape and forced it into the conventions of the Vergilian eclogue, making it a confirmation of a literary tradition that was by his time almost dead and imbuing it with the melancholy of a nostalgic futility. Julien responded with all the orthodoxy of a man brought up on Rousseau, but Olivier’s response was more wayward and indeed more original. For he felt he was tasting a private, personal pleasure; the fact that no one else could—or wanted to—share his delight was the essence of his happiness.

Some casual comment led to the detour after his trip to the Burgundian court in 1346. Refreshing himself at a household obliged to the cardinal about two days outside Avignon, he heard someone mention the Chapel of Saint Sophia, which lay a good walk to the east.

“A very holy place,” said his host, “with great powers, thanks to the intercession of the blessed saint. Women in particular go there to ask help when faced with difficult decisions. There is also a little hermitage, I believe, of very great antiquity, occupied by a few people who look after the shrine.”

Olivier was intrigued immediately, and the mere name of the saint almost guaranteed that he would cancel all his plans the next day, leave his small band of servants and friends—much to the irritation of his host, who was faced with the prospect of feeding them for an extra two days—and set off the next morning. That the chapel lay only a short while from his hometown, and he had not seen his family for nearly two years, perhaps also aided his decision. Besides, it was well known, he said to justify himself, for such places to contain all sorts of treasures.

And all that was part of the reason; the other part, which he scarcely even recognized himself, was the delight of walking through the fresh country air, entirely on his own, never knowing what might be around the next bend. To sit halfway up a warm hill in the sunshine, listening to the birds and eating some bread and an onion, to doze off in the shade, then wake up to the sight of the light glittering through the thick trees above him. And to be quiet, to hear no man’s voice, make no conversation, to let his thought flit hither and thither.

What a paradise it was, as well. For if that region of France delighted Julien Barneuve’s heart, and made him rush to return there whenever he was in need of solace, it was still more so for Olivier, before building works and deforestation had cut into the landscape and robbed the hills of their trees and soil. Although settled for two thousand years already, mankind had yet made only a small impact on the landscape; most was still untouched and uncaring of his presence.

At the end of his journey lay the little chapel; a tiny thing on top of the hillside looking down the valley of the Ouvèze, only partially cultivated and the rest given over to woodlands; by Julien’s day the trees on the western side would be cleared and replaced with vines and olive trees, as they had been during Manlius’s lifetime. The chapel itself was stone, and a more educated eye than Olivier’s would have categorized it as Romanesque, built on an earlier foundation. A semicircular archway framed the door, with a space for a bas-relief that was never executed. The roof also had an unfinished air to it, despite the small shrubs and treelets growing up between the stone tiles, but its lack of completion did not bother Olivier at all; he was more transfixed by the way the trees had grown around it, giving it shelter from the sun and the winds of autumn, the way it nestled in the landscape. He felt joyous the moment he saw it, and it was this feeling that he tried to capture and turn into first prose and then poetry.

The walk took two days and—because even poets tend to reduce their experiences to a conventional and often literary form—became in retrospect a pilgrimage. Julien knew of it because Olivier wrote a letter to his patron on the tour that was also filed away by the clerical bureaucracy. The letter was partly an excuse, to explain why a simple expedition to deliver a letter had in fact taken five months and cost a small fortune—but also one of those occasions where an attentive reader could discern the first glimmerings of something new. He used the allegory, describing the long journey as the journey of his soul, the ascent of the hill as the climb toward God, the arrival at the chapel as the embrace of truth. Within this form—not novel—was a realism of description without parallel either in Dante or Petrarch, a feel for nature that the others reduced to conventionality. The confusion then very much present in Olivier’s mind produced a remarkable effect, a mixture of pilgrimage and tourism, spiritual yearnings and physical desire, all expressed in a form that was part troubadour, part a revival of classical form, and as a result entirely novel. Julien translated and published it as an appendix to his Histoire, although the troubles of the times meant that it received little attention.

WHATEVER THE beliefs of the inhabitants nearby—and many still hold that the saint came with the Magdalen and lived the rest of her life as a hermit once she had converted the area—the shrine of Saint Sophia had more ordinary origins, which Julien first glimpsed when he noticed the relationship in name between the saint and the female guide in Manlius’s manuscript. For Sophia did indeed live out the last years of her life in this place, but scarcely as a Christian evangelist; rather, Manlius Hippomanes placed her there when he plucked her out of a Marseille that was becoming too dangerous. Without his support, her future would have been bleak indeed; she had never had much in the way of family fortune, simply the rents from a few houses and shops and some land in the hinterland, but these now produced next to nothing. The population was dwindling, the trade drying up, and the rental was all but vanished. Only the tax assessment remained the same.

So great was her distress that Sophia, for the first time in her life, knew true poverty. That such a woman—once revered and even feared for the power of her thought and the nobility of her soul—should be reduced to such a pass touched Manlius deeply when he heard about it, even though by that stage he had not seen her for some years. To be able to help her was the greatest, proudest moment of his life, which gave him more pleasure even than the moment he stood before all the senators of Rome to speak, and was rewarded for his words with a ceremonial high office. Little else occupied his mind until he could deliver that help.

The news was brought by a Jewish merchant of Vaison, who came to his villa to inform him of her plight. A quiet, softly spoken man, not unworthy to be treated as a guest and given hospitality, if he would only have accepted it.

“You know the lady?” Manlius asked after the refreshments were brought. The Jew—politely and unostentatiously—declined even to touch them, and drank only water. A small, neat man, with precise movements and a face that only rarely changed expression. Calm rather than cautious; Manlius would have found him intriguing had he been closer in rank to himself.

“I have known of her for some years,” he said. “Although I cannot claim to know her, of course.”

“You say she is in some distress.”

“She can barely afford food and dresses in rags, although she finds this of no great importance. But her health is not good and her spirit is diminished by her troubles. She is alone there, and has no family to turn to. Some people have tried to assist but”—he spread his hands wide in a gesture of hopelessness—“every day there are fewer people capable of assisting. She is a proud and haughty woman, my lord, and is somewhat feared by the population. She would not ask for help, I think, unless she was truly desperate, and yet she asked me to deliver this message to you.”

Manlius scarcely thought of what to do; he had no need to. The obligations that bound him to her had not lost their strength merely through the passage of time, and his position was such that he was perfectly equipped to assist. Not that it would be so easy; the days when a simple letter to the authorities would have sorted all were past; there were scarcely any authorities left, and those who retained their positions were no longer able to do anything.

But he still had vast resources. “She must be brought to safety so she is troubled no more,” he said. “I am in your debt, sir, for being so kind as to bring me this news. When will you be returning there?”

“In about two weeks, assuming my business goes well.”

“In which case, I trust you will do me the great favor of carrying a letter to her, and perhaps of rendering me some more services on her behalf.”

The Jew agreed readily, and left. He returned, as good as his word, exactly thirteen days later, and Manlius handed him a letter and a leather bag.

“The letter is for the lady, and the bag for her taxes. I would like you to take care of the matter for me; you will of course be rewarded for your goodness.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The letter to her explains everything, but lest she refuses to accept what she so obviously needs, then I will explain it to you as well. Please carry out the instructions whatever her opinions on the matter. Find the owner of the tax revenues and pay whatever debts she may have. Sell the properties for the best you can. Then I will come as swiftly as possible to take her to my villa. I will be there in three weeks.”

The Jew nodded and prepared to leave.

“One last thing,” Manlius said. The Jew turned.

“Yes?”

“What is your name?”

The man smiled. “Strange how rarely I am asked that,” he said. “My name is Joseph, my lord.”

“Thank you for your kindness, Joseph.”

“Odd,” he said with a smile to Lucontius later when he recounted the meeting, “that the world depends on him.”

“I wasn’t aware that it did.”

“Oh, indeed. My deep researches into all things Christian show me so plainly. They fully accept it. The resurrection of the body, which I understand to be a stage in the second coming, cannot take place until all the Jews embrace Christ. Saint Paul says so, I think. Judging by my friend Joseph, it seems that greatly longed-for day will be some considerable time a-coming. He shows no sign of doing any such thing.”

“Did you point out that he was being a little inconsiderate, keeping everyone waiting like that?”

“Ah, no. He is an admirable fellow, honest, kind, and diligent. A sense of humor was not easily detectable in him, though. It may be that he doesn’t find it funny. And, truth to say, these Christians believe the absurdity so strongly that there have been occasions when their efforts at persuasion have gone beyond mere argument. My dear friend, it makes me sad.”

“What does?”

“To see the triumph of something so crude and coarse. Think of Sophia, and the wisdom and elegance of what we learned from her. Think of the beauty of her philosophy and the completeness of the contemplative ideal. The sophistication of her conceptions and demonstrations of God. Then think of this smelly rabble and their beliefs. These poor Jews being screamed at simply because these vulgarians think it a way of getting into heaven.”

“You could hardly explain her doctrine of the soul to the Christians,” Lucontius replied. “Let alone instruct them in the formal nature of her logic.”

“I know. They want results. They want someone to come along and say, ‘Repeat after me, and live forever. The less you know, the better it is.’ ”

He smiled. “It’s not that I plan to invite Joseph for dinner. He is a merchant, after all, and would not accept the invitation in any case. But I talked to him a bit, and he seems decent enough, if as strange as most of his people. He, after all, doesn’t insist that his salvation lies in anyone else’s behavior. He just believes, in a perfectly polite way, that everyone else is wrong about everything.”

He stood up and took a cup from a servant. “Long may he do so, say I, for it is worth it just to see the look of outrage on the Christians’ faces at the very thought of such people.”

And, smiling ironically, they drank a toast to Joseph the Jew.

MANLIUS THOUGHT carefully before she arrived, and prepared one of his houses in Vaison for her use, a building near the forum and one of the areas that remained busy and fully occupied. It was a compromise; as simple as she wanted and as grand as he required, for she would be under his protection and could not embarrass him with her frugality. The slaves, however, she insisted be removed.

“I have my one slave, and that is enough for me,” she said. “What would I do with a dozen?”

He tried to answer.

“I know. You are worried. ‘There goes a protégée of the great Manlius and he only gives her one slave.’ You are concerned about your reputation. Take them away, my boy. There must be better things for them to do.”

So he did; also, he removed nearly all of the furniture, shut off many of the rooms, painted over the frescoes (thus preserving them for Père Sautel when he began to excavate), and let her be.

Eventually, she came to him again. “I am weary of town life,” she said. “It weighs on me, this provincial little place.”

“You told me that philosophy could only exist in the society of men.”

“Cities, my boy. Not small towns. And certainly not towns so shrunken they are scarcely more than villages. Do you know, they call me the pagan, these worthy citizens? They spotted in a day that I do not go to church, and actually came to ask me why. I thought I might give some lectures here, but I might as well try to instruct a herd of goats.”

He knew what she saw, she whose father had come from Alexandria, one of the greatest cities on earth, who had grown up in Marseille, still a city even though diminished. Vaison was a poor thing now, though once rich and prosperous. Several quarters had been sacked a century before and never rebuilt; slowly they were being quarried as the fitful work to build a wall continued. Even this project was not complete; the town could not even act with dispatch over its own defense. The builders would not work without pay, and there was no money. The citizens would not do the job themselves, for they considered it unfitting. There were not enough slaves and servants left to be forced to the task. The public buildings were small and crumbling; houses once great were divided up, or abandoned or dismantled. He felt the conflicting loyalties of a man who belonged here, a member of the tribe of the Vocontii, which had occupied this land when Rome itself was still a few huts on an Italian hill, and of a Roman aristocrat who had seen better and greater things.

“I was told you have established a reputation for yourself,” he commented.

“As a giver of good advice. People come to me with their aches and their worries. I pour balm on both. Do not misunderstand me; I am happy to do so. But all they are really concerned about is the state of the roads, the level of taxes, and how long the water supply will remain fresh.”

“All pressing problems.”

“I know. But sometimes the noise of their chirruping and gossip drives me close to madness.”

“So what do you want?”

“Somewhere to be quiet. Peaceful. Where I can meditate without being interrupted by the rabble, or harangued by a deacon about the love of Jesus. Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their ear. They have the great merit of disagreeing with nearly everything I say. In fact, they disagree with almost everything they say themselves. And most importantly, they don’t think that shouting strengthens their argument. They just talk loudly out of habit. I have been entertaining myself by reading the Bible with one of their priests or whatever you call them. It has been most instructive.”

“You astonish me.”

“I astonish myself. But fascinating though I find Moses, I still want a little peace and quiet. Do you have anywhere in the country I can go to?”

Manlius laughed. “My lady, you know quite well that I own nearly all the country. According to the tax collectors, I have some forty-nine villas, many of which are now unoccupied and falling into ruin for lack of labor. Not that they take this into account.”

She sighed. “Don’t you start. I would like to borrow something small, about two days from here. As isolated as possible.”

Manlius thought. “I know just the place,” he said.

A fortnight later, the repair work had been carried out, a dozen serfs transferred to provide basic services, and the lady Sophia was escorted to the villa he had in mind about four kilometers from his own principal residence. It lay among a group of hills that provided coolness in the summer and protection from the winds in the winter. It was much too grand for her, consisting of some twenty-five rooms, and she hated it on sight. But, as she was leaving, she saw the tiny dwelling on the hill—with a clear view over the countryside, a copse of trees to provide shelter—and on the instant decided this was perfect. Clean water nearby, a path for bread and other supplies to be brought from the valley. Fresh air, and the simplicity she desired. Once the family of farmers had been ejected on Manlius’s orders—for Sophia never thought that philosophy should bow its head to equity—she took it over and achieved something of the tranquillity she had long sought. When she finally decided that this was where she would stay, he gave it to her, along with the neighboring farms and about forty laborers. Within a few years all but six of the laborers had run away, and the farmland had turned back into scrub. What did he expect? That she was going to turn farmer? Fret about the wheat? Examine the olive trees for blight? The waste annoyed Manlius, he who worked so hard to keep production going on his own lands, but he said nothing. Nonetheless, she was a difficult, impossible woman, sometimes.

She lived there, on and off, for near twenty years before she died, and much to her annoyance, she became genuinely respected by the rough country folk who lived nearby and adopted the habit of coming to her with their illnesses and concerns. She even outlived Manlius himself, and on his death, the tax revenues of the land passed to a Burgundian soldier, who collected them, every quarter, in person.

They even came to have a grudging affection for each other, this representative of Greek sophistication and the rough, unlettered barbarian who was now her effective overlord. She was lucky, and she knew it; her new master—such he was, although only she, with characteristic bluntness, ever referred to him in this way—wished to be more polished, and had a crude, rough sense of fairness that made her life more fortunate than many enjoyed. Ordric—middle-aged, fat, and powerful—was one of the better men in an age with few shining examples of virtue left. It was strange to find such qualities in such an unlikely place, but the times themselves were strange. She taught him nothing, he did not wish to learn; rather, they learned only to appreciate the kindness of the other, and in the end, she left him all her remaining lands in her will, not merely the taxes of them, as she could think of no better person to take possession. In return, Ordric built the little monument to her over her grave, to remember someone to whom he had become quietly devoted. The story of his respect survived, the memory of her advice gathered miraculous overtones, and eventually a small chapel grew around her tomb as people came to pray there for help.

CARDINAL CECCANI kept Olivier’s letter about the shrine, which was constructed from the Burgundian’s respect, for it gave him an idea that nagged quietly at him in the months after he read his protégé’s words.

By 1347 Ceccani was a star in the ecclesiastical firmament, and had become so powerful that he was richly detested. He had accumulated so many offices that he was all but indispensable for the good running of Christendom. And he had absorbed so many benefices that many whispered he had an annual revenue rivaling that of Pope Clement himself. He was, consequently, a focus of real hatred for all those who either wanted more for themselves or genuinely believed that the gentle shepherd of men would have been appalled to see what he had created.

Ceccani, of course, was as aware of this as he was aware of everything that went on around him. And he was wounded by it, for he was, in his way, a man of the utmost piety and duty. He wore the richest, costliest garments made of silk and cloth of gold because it was necessary to impress men with the majesty and power of the church; underneath he wore a shirt of the coarsest hair, crawling with lice, his flesh covered in suppurating sores. He gave banquets of such cost and magnificence that they endured for days and attracted the disgust of those excluded, yet himself drank only water and disdained the roasts and sweetmeats and fine wines that he pressed so liberally on his guests. He entered church like a prince, carried on a bier and attended by at least a dozen servants, generating more condemnation from those revolted by his arrogance, yet prayed alone three hours every night, on bare knees on the stone of his private chapel, carefully locking the door so no one would see him. He was the greatest lover of learning, using men like Olivier to rescue priceless texts and his money to restore them to humanity, yet condemned all deviation from the orthodoxy of the church and, on two occasions at least, ordered the burning of heretics. Like the church of which he was a faithful servant and perfect reflection, Cardinal Ceccani was a contradictory, inexplicable creature.

He was, moreover, the embodiment of the corruption that had settled on the church like a thick fog since it had fled Rome and come to Avignon, and yet no man in the curia was more aware than he of the dangers of its presence there, nor more desirous that the pope should return to the Eternal City. But he had been too young to stand a chance in 1342 when the Frenchman Pierre Roger instead had ascended the throne as Clement VI, and Clement could live for many years yet. Other means of restoring the head of Christendom to his proper place, accordingly, began to come to his mind.

The chapel of Saint Sophia and the story of her life appealed to him greatly, not least because when he prayed to her for guidance as the papacy was being drawn into the English wars, he found her assistance valuable. He was a man of many vows, and he offered her at that time a gesture of thanks, should her intercession be efficacious. Her name meant wisdom, and wisdom, he considered, had been granted him; the chapel was in his diocese—one of his many dioceses—and it needed a reminder of his power. The area was not entirely quiescent; although the heresies of the previous centuries had not badly infected the region, it had been touched; to have a saint of such antiquity revealed to them in their very midst was a gift from heaven. That she was all but forgotten was better still, if Ceccani could restore her to proper attention.

All these reasons combined to make Ceccani one day summon Luca Pisano and commission him to decorate the chapel with as much speed and grandeur as he could manage. For his part, Pisano was overwhelmed with gratitude until he learned just how isolated it was; for he was only just beginning to be a master of works, and craved attention more than anything. He knew that Martini was unwell, and would either shortly die or return to Italy; the post of chief painter was there for the taking, and although history has largely forgotten him, at that time he was coming to be highly regarded.

But a commission was a commission, and one from a man like Ceccani was doubly valuable; everyone thought he could well be the next occupant of St. Peter’s chair, if the French could be persuaded not to meddle for once. And then, perhaps, the papacy might return to Rome after its long exile in Avignon. Pisano bowed deeply, expressed his profound thanks to His Eminence, and backed out of the chamber to go and organize some money with the cardinal’s pursekeeper. He came away from that encounter somewhat disappointed.

“I think I have you to thank for this, my friend,” he said to Olivier later that day. “It is your doing that I am now a fellow servant of the great cardinal, and must stand and fall with him.”

“I would like to take credit for your good fortune,” Olivier replied. “But I cannot see how I am responsible for anything.”

By this stage, the two men were old friends; both were alone and without any family, having to live off their wits in a town where there were many men and few places. They had gravitated into each other’s company mainly by virtue of sharing the same tastes and ambitions, but little opportunity as yet of realizing them. Each believed in the other, and each was convinced by the other that their abilities would surmount all obstacles.

“Nonetheless,” he continued, “I congratulate you, for it is good fortune indeed.”

“The higher they are, the further there is to fall,” Pisano said.

Olivier laughed. “I do believe you are the most miserable person I have ever met,” he replied. “You have gained work from one of the most powerful men in the world, and all you can think about is that he might not remain so. Even if he does fall, so what of it? A brief spell in his favor is better than never to have been favored by anyone. Besides, you might even do a good job of it, although considering your utter lack of ability, I doubt it very much. But should a miracle occur, then others will want you, too.”

“Why should they?” asked his friend. “No one except shepherds will ever see it. I will quite literally be casting my pearls before swine.”

“But there will be great things to come, no? Decorate the chapel well, then there will be a basilica in the nearest town.”

“Oh, yes. Thirty years’ work, no doubt. And meanwhile the pope will go back to Rome, and I will be stranded here.”

Olivier burst out laughing. Pisano was always superstitious; whenever anything good happened to him, he would spend at least the next day seeking out every possible misfortune that might result from it, on the reasonable grounds that a disaster imagined never occurs. As indeed was the case here; one thing the painter did not foresee was the plague, which ambushed him late one night as he was sleeping beside his donkey on the road back to Italy.

“You can be certain that this pope will never go back to Rome. He listens to Cardinal Ceccani on most things but on this he has cloth ears. My lord will have to chain him up and drag him there. He is a Frenchman, remember, and they do not like to go far from home. Even being in Avignon makes him feel homesick. You must pray for his health and longevity, I think.”

“But I am serious,” the painter protested. “I am to paint a series of pictures which no one will ever see, in a chapel hidden from everyone, about a saint I have never heard of.”

“In that case you can paint anything you want.”

Pisano frowned. “Just because I am frivolous sometimes does not mean you can take liberties, you know. To honor a saint is a great thing. A life of holiness is precious, and to retell it is a heavy duty.”

Olivier studied him, surprised by the somber voice. “I suppose so.”

“And you are my only source for the story.”

“I know very little.”

“That is more than anyone else.”

“I can barely tell you enough for a sketch.”

“That will be enough. Tell me what you know, and prayer will supply the rest.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“If you are sincere, yes. I will pray to the saint and, if my wish is granted, then all the details I need will come to me. If they don’t, then that will mean she does not want her life commemorated, and I will have to tell the cardinal so.”

And so Olivier settled down and retold the story that he had heard from the shepherds on the hill.

“A FEW YEARS after the crucifixion of Our Lord,” he began, “when men were beginning to embrace His teaching, the priests became angry and fearful, and started persecuting the faithful. Mary Magdalen, so privileged that she was the first to hear of Christ’s resurrection, was hounded and spat on, as were the group of women she had gathered around her. A plot was hatched to kill them all, but an angel came to her in her sleep and warned her. ‘Rise up, Mary,’ the angel said, ‘and leave quickly. Gather your friends and depart.’

“Mary did as she was told, gathering half a dozen companions, and went to the shore. Waiting for them was a miraculous boat, empty of sailors, its sails of silk and its hull of pearl. The moment they got in, the sails unfurled and the boat slipped into the water, just as their enemies ran up to stop them.

“The voyage lasted weeks, but no one was afraid. When it rained they did not get wet, when there was a storm the boat scarcely rocked. Angels brought them food and water every day, and kept them cool in the sun by carrying a great silken awning over them. When the time came, the boat turned inshore, even though the wind was blowing strongly in the opposite direction, and came to rest on the beach of a strange land. Again an angel spoke to Mary and said they were to travel throughout the land and tell everyone of Christ’s coming. But some were afraid, and refused to leave Mary’s side, knowing that she was beloved. Only Sophia obeyed, bidding farewell to Mary and converting town after town so that everywhere she went became Christian, tearing down temples and building churches in their place.

“Many miracles attended her; on one occasion a great nobleman called Manlius who had been blind for years came to her.

“ ‘You say God is love and cares for all His creation, yet I am blind,’ he said. ‘How can that be?’

“Sophia took him to one side and instructed him, then passed her hands over his eyes, and instantly his sight was restored. He fell at her feet in gratitude, and the crowd was so amazed that they all did the same. This man spent the rest of his life preaching, and established himself at Vaison, converting the whole area around. He, too, became a saint.

“One day, when Sophia was preaching in a town, the people, incited by the priests, began to shout and threaten her; they took her to jail and sentenced her to death. But her work was not yet done, and an angel appeared to the man she had cured and told him of her plight. Straightaway he was transported to the spot and held up his arms; the guards all fell asleep and the jail doors opened. He then escorted her away from the town, and they walked until they came to a hill. When she died she was buried there, and so many wonderful things happened at her grave that all realized she was a saint. So they built a chapel, and came on pilgrimage.”

JULIEN WAS NO HISTORIAN of the church and, indeed, was rather impatient with the manifest confusions and contradictions that were so much part of its identity. Nonetheless, he read this account of Olivier’s with fascination when he found it amongst Ceccani’s papers, in the same dusty bundle as the Dream, not least because of the correspondences with the other manuscripts he discovered at the same time. It would have taken someone very much slower than he not to have noticed that the philosophical discourse by Manlius Hippomanes used its Greek personification, Sophia, as a guide. Nor that Manlius was Bishop of Vaison while the shrine to Saint Sophia lay only two days’ walk to the southwest.

Initially, though, he did not pursue it, not really knowing how to do so. And, in any case, he was distracted by some of the other fragments in the same folder, one of which appealed more to his youthful sense of drama and flair. To begin with he was mainly interested in the mention of Gersonides, as he sat in the Vatican archive one spring, dressed in suit and tie and waistcoat, sweating in the heat, taking endless notes in his neat, precise hand. He never hurried, never skipped a page, but wrote methodically and steadily. It was his technique not to think too much about what he was transcribing; he had discovered that this made him careless.

Rather, he emptied his mind entirely and copied, storing up impressions that he refused to dwell on during his working day. The pleasure of analysis he kept for later, for the evenings when he returned to the École and, after eating with his fellows, went for a walk or for a quiet drink in the Piazza Navona. Here he would sit, watch the world go by, and let his mind wander over all his day’s reading.

Shortly after his discovery, he was taken to dinner by Julia’s father. Julien was pleased by the invitation; he was intrigued by the older man and he was, in any case, kept on a tight financial leash by his bourse and the supplement given to him by his own father, an allowance that was generous by his standards but pitifully small when set against Julien’s Romanized tastes. For he began there the interest in art that was to become a passion for the rest of his life. He spent every lira—a drawing here, a painting, a print—and on several occasions he visited the monte di pietà to pledge his watch or his ring to get the cash he needed for another purchase. Every couple of months, more or less, another letter went to Vaison, and his father grumbled, criticized, moralized, then sent the money required, just in time for him to recover the articles he had pawned. Julien never felt any gratitude for the generosity, although he knew he ought to do so.

In Rome also he discovered those more sensual pleasures to which his inner turbulence made him all too susceptible. The series of mistresses he acquired began in Rome and did not end for some fifteen years. Unlike his pictures, he took few pains to retain them once the initial pleasure had faded. He discovered he could be charming, was generous with his time and his money, listened well, but could not be held, always moving on before the slightest hint of disappointment or true intimacy could taint the pleasure.

He wondered about this in only the most superficial fashion. His parents had not been happy; he did not wish to experience the same unhappiness. He met no one who could tempt him. His work and his paintings held his attention more securely. For the most part, these affairs were conducted with decorum; Julien perfected a style of courtly pursuit, loved lavishing expensive dinners and presents and holidays—none of which he could truly afford—on the women he had chosen for his attentions. Even more, he was meticulous in the little details, always noticing clothes, perfumes, the way their hair was set. Nor was this merely a strategy; he could not help noticing such things, and took the greatest pleasure in being in the company of beautiful women.

Throughout these pointless dalliances he was aware of a sense of avoiding something important, and his constant pursuits had less of the sensual and more of the desperate about them. For every time he was charmed or fascinated or smitten, he was made aware once more of part of him that was detached and that stood aside in disdain. He had no idea what he was looking for, except that he always knew that he had once nearly discovered it; that on the hills outside Jerusalem he had come close to unlocking a secret so deeply buried he might well have lived out his entire life without even suspecting its existence. It was why he was more than a little afraid of Julia.

Instead he occupied himself with those whom he could never be close to, or who could never be close to him, diversions high or low who had no interest in either his work or his pleasures. He invariably pursued those who were unattainable, married, or unlikely to regard him as anything other than a temporary entertainment. At one time he spent several months with a woman slightly younger than himself who worked in one of the great department stores that Rome was at last acquiring. When he bade a final farewell, he could not recall a single conversation he had ever had with her, not one remark that had struck him. Afterward he seduced the wife of a notary a decade or so older than he was, listened carefully to her sadnesses and concerns, enjoyed her company, and took an odd pleasure at the necessary secrecy and subterfuge that enlivened an otherwise empty involvement. It was not insensitivity or cruelty that meant that, some months afterward, he could barely remember her name; both were of the moment, and their moment had passed.

He knew, of course, that not loving them was part of the attraction; Julia was the only one to whom he had ever responded in that manner and with her he had held back. But in contrast to all the others, she remained in his thoughts almost daily; he dreamed of her and could recall every word she had ever said to him. Even more, he could imagine whole conversations he had never had, but knew what she would say nonetheless.

He welcomed the arrival in Rome of her father, for he brought news of Julia, and also provided a good dinner and sympathized with his passions for paintings and ruins. The conversations they had were delightful and fitted in perfectly with the Roman life that Julien had fashioned for himself. Indeed, the sojourn in Rome ruined him. He went there as a bright star, destined for a glittering career; he left it almost a dilettante, unwilling to settle down, determined that the drudgery of teaching would never claim his soul. Rome has destroyed many a character; in the period 1924 to 1927, it claimed Julien’s as well.

An alternative explanation: During this period the impact of the war finally swept over him, and accounted for the sleepless nights, the distraction, the refusal of what was expected. He became dissatisfied and as eager to embrace new experiences as, in the previous few years, he had shunned them entirely. But the frivolity masked the continued seriousness that showed up in his work; the sheer volume of notes he took in this period, squeezed in between the meals and the excursions, the elegantly empty conversations and the charming women. For Julien had seen into the darkness and felt in himself what could happen.

He dreamed of it still, a face he had seen only for a fraction of a second as a flare lit up the area around, and the German soldier turned. He remembered the look of foolish concern as they stared at each other, neither knowing what to do next. And Julien had reacted first; he had been on patrol, his nerves were frayed, while the other had only just come on duty and was slower. A slight frown, the impression that Julien was behaving badly, rudely, when the bayonet went into his stomach. And then nothing else at all; the rest was in total darkness; Julien heard him fall, remembered pulling the bayonet out and ramming it in again and again. More than anything, he remembered the satisfaction. He remembered that he had continued to stab long after he knew it was necessary, that he did so for pleasure. The moment turned him into a barbarian, exulting in his triumph. That was what he dreamed about, and which so frightened him. He knew how easy it had been to surrender to those feelings. Even worse, his dreams played dreadful games with him, and confused themselves, so that when another flare lit up the landscape and he looked down, he saw the deathly pallor on Julia’s face; the blood flowing from her body in the mud; her lips, moving inaudibly as the rattling of gunfire drowned out her words like a train passing through a station and extinguishing all conversation on the platform. He had killed her, and the nightmare came to him fitfully and without any reason he could discern.

“How is she?” It was the question that he asked as soon as was seemly.

“Splendid,” her father would reply, as he always did, even when the letters she wrote to Julien suggested differently. Julien never discovered whether Bronsen was unaware of her travails, the difficulties she had in painting something she was proud of, or whether he was reluctant to admit that she was not perfect. If the last, the aim was laudably paternal, but even when he first met the Bronsens he considered that it made her life that much more difficult, and in one burst of correspondence he mentioned it. Once a month on average, Julia wrote him a letter, once a month Julien wrote back—long letters on both sides, funny and touching, although neither fully appreciated how much the other waited for them, opened them eagerly, and read them with breathless delight.

“Of course you are right,” came her terse reply. “He wants so much of me and how can I deny him anything? It’s hard to work with someone looking over your shoulder all the time. It would be easier if he thought I was a bad painter, if he discouraged me rather than being entranced by every piece of rubbish I produce. Sooner or later, though, I must find some room . . .”

“She is doing wonderful things, wonderful,” Bronsen said at the dinner in a magnificent restaurant near the Spanish Steps shortly after this letter arrived. “She must keep going with it, I think. I do hope her marriage will not distract her.”

This was said with a slightly arch look, as though he was well aware of the impact the words would have. What, young man? You presumed to my daughter? Don’t be so ridiculous. Julien froze for a moment, and had to make an immense effort to try to hide the effect of the news.

“I didn’t know . . .”

“She’s very private, of course. She will marry a diplomat, a man with the greatest potential, from a good family and the sort of connections which will help her immensely with her work. They will be very happy together, I’m sure.”

So that was the escape she had decided upon, Julien thought. He was not quite convinced by the story; her father seemed too satisfied and content, but he wrote some formal congratulations that omitted all the little intimacies of earlier letters. And back, in due course, came an equally formal reply. There their friendship lapsed for some time.

“Perhaps Mussolini will manage something. Who knows?” The conversation continued, as did the dinner, and Julien tried to enjoy himself, or at least to appear to do so. “Everyone else has failed. He has the support of absolutely everyone from cardinals to avant-garde sculptors, so there must be something to him.”

Bronsen had turned to politics now. He had that morning been at a meeting at the finance ministry and two days previously had met the new Italian leader for the first time.

“What did you think?”

Bronsen paused, enjoying himself. Julien had learned that there was no point expecting an even conversation on such topics; Bronsen believed firmly that the person who knew most should dominate. To give him credit, he deferred to Julien on the subject of ruins and paintings, but would brook no interruption on more worldly topics. It made conversations with him sometimes a bit like miniature lectures. “I was impressed,” he said. “Truly I was. He looks like a bit of a fool, but clearly isn’t. He knows what he’s doing and what he expects everyone else to know as well. That clarity is refreshing. It makes a change from the normal squabbling and bickering. Decisions get taken and acted upon. You don’t know how rare that is. God knows this country needs it. France could do with some of the same, I fear. Someone like Mussolini would make mincemeat of the corrupt incompetents we manage to put into power.”

Julien shrugged and looked away. “Politics bores you?” Bronsen said.

Julien smiled. “It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven’t tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations.”

“And how do you do that?”

“Me? In particular?”

“Yes.”

“My contribution is to go into the archives and read old manuscripts. To collect paintings—one of which I would like to show you later on to get your opinion—and try to communicate the importance of such things to other people. To persuade people that politics is the waste product of the ferment of civilization, unavoidable but dangerous if not properly contained. To be a teacher, in fact, which is probably what I will end up doing when I go back to France.”

“That’ll frighten them, no doubt,” Bronsen said with a smile.

“I mean it,” he said, trying to cover his earnestness with a worldly smile. “Civilization needs to be nurtured, cosseted, and protected from those who would damage it, like politicians. It needs constant attention. Once people stop caring, it withers and dies.”

“So? The world burns and you sit in a library?”

“The world did burn,” Julien replied. “I was at the cremation. And it would have been better if I had stayed in a library. One person, at least, would be alive now who is dead, because I wouldn’t have been there to bayonet him.”

Bronsen grunted. “I admire your clarity—though not the experiences which brought it to you. My horizons are bounded by making money, because it is something I know and am good at. I become thereby something of a caricature, which distresses me, but not enough to deter me. I am all too aware that a Jew without money is even more vulnerable than a Jew with money. Not that any of this is so very interesting. I would much rather hear what shape your defense of civilization is taking these days. So tell me. What news from the archives?”

MANY YEARS AFTERWARD, Julia told him that her father had been utterly perplexed by the conversation. “He was so pleased with himself. He had just signed the biggest contract of his life, to build two factories outside Rome and Milan, and was bursting to tell someone. And you never asked what he was doing.”

“I thought I had,” Julien replied. “But he had just dropped into the conversation the little detail about your getting married. I don’t think I was quite so keen to gratify his vanity after that. I did give him a chance to tell me, though. At least, I gave enough hints.”

She laughed. “Oh, dear. Did you never notice that he didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘hint’? That subtlety was not part of his makeup?”

“I thought it would be rude to ask.”

“And he thought it was rude that you didn’t. Therein lies a lesson for us all.”

“Is this a characteristic you’ve inherited?”

She considered. “I am, perhaps, a little bit more civilized than he is. But only up to a point. You may, perhaps, have realized that now.”

THE MAIN THINGS preventing Claude Bronsen and Julien Barneuve from becoming close friends were Julia, and their different ages, a form of separation that the ever more egalitarian twentieth century found no means of overcoming. In other respects, a deep and abiding amity should have been possible. But the reserve that attends a span of years, building disparities of experience and vision, was too great. Over the few days following the meal the two saw each other frequently, talked incessantly. They shared many small experiences, and many pleasures. But the distance remained, and in the end Bronsen left to go home and Julien returned to his archives. Insensibly the friendship, otherwise so promising, lapsed because neither of them saw its potential, and because Bronsen was a constant reminder of his now unattainable daughter.

No such possibility even arose with Ceccani and Olivier de Noyen, although each had a genuine though ill-defined affection for the other. There the distance was much too great. It was impossible for a man such as the cardinal to have friends; there was no one with whom he could share. He was bound by the strictness of his relations; disparities of power were evident in all his dealings with his fellow men. Popes and kings required deference and respect, which shrivels friendship like vinegar on the oysters he loved so much he stopped eating them. His fellow cardinals were also his rivals, requiring constant watching. Others were his clients and his servants, and the rest of humanity simply did not exist.

Similarly, the gap between Manlius and Syagrius was too great, because Manlius regarded his secretary as a son, and no true friendship can exist between fathers and sons. Indeed, in the Dream, he excluded such relationships specifically from consideration when he touched on the subject of love. There duty took pride of place as the great motor; children fulfilled their fathers’ wishes, ensured that their names and fame continued. There was no room in such a vision for anything more tender. It was because of this that his treatment of the young man was also so harsh and distant, for Syagrius was his opportunity and his reproach.

Manlius had no children of his own, and it is possible that this lack determined many of his actions and decisions. For the twilight of the culture he held so dear was paralleled by the extinction he himself faced. The Christianity he affected, and which others of his age adopted with greater conviction, had no power to conquer such fears. When his name ended, there would be no one to take offerings to his grave, hold an annual feast in his honor, give him the eternity he craved and which he did not believe his new religion would confer.

The night his wife miscarried for the fourth time all his training as an aristocrat and a philosopher left him. He went to the cemetery and poured oil on the grave of his father. It was the only way he could apologize for his failure and the looming end of his entire line. When he slept, he saw the tombs crumbled on the ground, the low-born taking them to build their barns, the weeds growing all around.

He accepted his fate nonetheless. He did not divorce her, although he could easily have done so and few would have blamed him. Even she would not have minded so much, coming from a family that knew the importance of continuity. She would have gone to a woman’s house to pray, and been happy. But he kept her with him, made plans to adopt Syagrius, and soon afterward turned back to public life.

He knew that Syagrius would carry on his name only; nothing of true value, for the boy was kindhearted but utterly stupid, dull in conversation and simple in thought. He never read and, in all the time he stayed in Manlius’s villa, never said a single word of any interest; nothing beyond the commonplace ever dropped from his lips. No cliché, no imbecility was too hackneyed for him, it seemed; the most trite remark would cause him to nod his fair head in agreement, any phrase of elegance or profundity would elicit only puzzlement. He tried hard, certainly, was keen to please, was liked by Manlius’s wife, had many merits. But Manlius could not but compare him to what his heir should have been, and the difference made him curt, and unjustifiably rude. Syagrius put up with it; indeed, he had little choice and still got the better part of the bargain. For in return for earning Manlius’s disappointment, he got his name, and would in time have his estates as well. He had been lucky; had Manlius waited a few years until his character was more formed, he would not have chosen him, but he had been misled by his flaxen hair and open smile into thinking that a beautiful face must indicate a refined and noble soul. This was Manlius’s mistake, for the boy was kind and honest and tried to please. But he was part of a different world, and could see nothing of value in the refinement and cultivation that lay at the core of Manlius’s being.

When Manlius turned back to public life, it was not with total enthusiasm, for he was also mindful of other aspects of Sophia’s teaching, which appealed to him on a more profound level. Her eternity was different, a search for completion without ever knowing the goal until it was attained. She taught by parable and by discussion, as her father had before her, using the simplest of forms to begin the task of approaching the most complex ideas. One of her favorite techniques was to examine the myths, to discuss them and dissect them through the lens of philosophy to seek out the truths that lay therein. One day, Manlius found himself talking of Hélène, who fell in love with Paris because the Trojan shepherd had won a promise from Aphrodite. It was a matter of moments for Sophia to dismiss the story as nonsense, of course; the divine does not intervene in the life of men in such a way, either by entering beauty contests or, she said with a smile, by parting the seas or turning water to wine.

“But can we see anything more here? As we have concluded that the higher does not intervene with the lower, does this mean the story is foolish and without merit? I remind you that literature is full of such tales. Why do Dido and Aeneas fall in love, an event which Vergil also attributes to the gods? Why does Ariadne betray everyone she holds dear for love of Theseus?”

“I have read,” Manlius said, “that it is sickness, a disease of the blood. Is that not what Hippocrates wrote?”

She nodded. “But why do we contract this illness? The way the lover is drawn to the beloved, suffering sleeplessness, sweating, a loss of reason, an overwhelming desire to be united with the other person that can cast all normal behavior aside? An illness, I grant you. But we must go further. Why a particular person? Why this person and no other? Why only one person at a time? I have heard of many strangenesses in man’s behavior, but I have never heard of lovesickness for two people at once.”

And she went on from there, weaving in the speech of Aristophanes in the Symposium, in which he says that men were once spheres but were cut in two by the gods to punish them. Thereafter, they must search for their other halves, and can never rest until they are reunited. And the myth of Er in the Republic, in which men must be reborn time and again until their souls learn to ascend to the heavens and escape the prison of the body. Again not to be taken literally, of course—nothing she said was literal—but a metaphor for the quest that the soul must be engaged upon if it is to embrace the transcendent. In its dissolution lay the immortality Sophia had to offer, and which Manlius chose to pursue through his deed.

Manlius avoided so long his public duties because he was afraid of how he would discharge them. His father had known he had enemies, but did nothing until it was too late; he was killed by those he was trying to save. Manlius knew that he would not make such a mistake. He would then be faced with a decision, and a conundrum: Can one act unjustly to achieve justice? Can virtue manifest itself through the exercise of harshness? He did not know how he would answer these questions. All he knew was that his father had answered wrongly and paid heavily. Whatever virtue he had possessed was dissipated in failure.

WHETHER THE CONVERSATION about Saint Sophia between Olivier de Noyen and the Siennese painter ever took place is merest supposition; Julien surmised the existence of something like it because of the strong correspondence between Olivier’s narrative in Ceccani’s archive and the iconographic sequence on the walls of the chapel. Something of the sort must have occurred, and to suppose that Olivier repeated to the painter of the chapel the tale he put in his letter to Ceccani is reasonable. By the time Julia Bronsen had grown so familiar with his work she might almost have painted it herself, it seemed even likely.

She had told Julien she was potentially a good painter, and her self-confidence was not misplaced. By the late 1930s she was beginning to be known as such, although her reputation was still small. She had, it is true, studied in Paris at the Académie Colorassi—the Mediterranean cruise with her father was to mark the end of this part of her apprenticeship, and the beginning of the period in which she truly began to learn to be a painter—then was an early student of Matisse, a man she admired and who even attracted the approval of her father. After this she went her own way; she did not follow the necessary route to fame, was disdainful of the associations and connections that artists must have to make their mark.

Someone once said that being wealthy had been her ruin as an artist, and in her heart she agreed. Not because it had stunted her vision, or affected what she painted, but because she could afford to ignore the dealers and the critics who make artists great. She paid little attention to them; they returned the compliment. Had she worked at it a little harder, the posthumous reputation that began to form in the 1960s around her surviving work would have crystallized earlier.

She worked obsessively, and generally in solitude. It was a life she had chosen at some cost to herself, for no husband could fit into such a schedule for long; there was not enough room. The marriage that so distressed Julien when he heard of it was a foolish mistake, partly a desire to escape the overpowering presence of her father, and partly a desire, for once in her life, to do the expected, to be like everyone else. Jacques Menton was, as her father told Julien, a diplomat with a great future in front of him. A good family, not too high, not too low. A man of intelligence, kindness, and even some wit. A Protestant originally from Alsace, with more than a bit of German in him. Not wholly French, as she was not, but in his case the sense of not quite belonging made him more conventional, straining constantly to be and appear perfect.

But he loved her, in a diplomatic, cautious fashion, and she believed for a while that she responded. She felt a wish to belong, and he could show her how to do so; curiously her father said nothing against the match even though he found Jacques’s company tiresome and never for a moment believed it was based on any great love. Julien saw this and later remarked on it in a letter to her. “Of course he was unsuitable as a husband,” he said loftily from his desk in Avignon. “Your father didn’t mind him. You must make it a rule in the future never to fall in love with anyone unless Claude Bronsen detests him. The more he detests him, the more suitable he will be. If you are not prepared to meet your admirable father’s jealousy head-on, then you will have to wait until he is dead. He is a healthy man, your father. Good for many years yet. You’d better get on with your painting, I think.”

His instincts were right, for while her husband indulged her painting, and judged it a fine thing to have an accomplished wife, she thought that he understood why she painted, and mistook his indulgence for something more profound, his silence on the subject for an instinctive understanding.

“I’m not going to stop painting. It’s my job. It’s what I do.” This astonished comment replying to a casual remark he dropped into a conversation after they had been married for some six months, during which his disappointment grew that she had not changed her way of life one jot since their wedding. He had pointed out—perfectly correctly—that she did not have time to paint ten hours a day and fulfill her role as hostess at the parties he needed to give in order to rise in the diplomatic service. Let alone fit in children, which he wanted quite desperately.

It was his light laugh that killed the marriage, stripping away all the make-believe. One slightly high-pitched whinny from his mouth, half choked off in the way he had learned, imbued with a cynical tone, lasting only half a second. He mistook her passion for an amusement, and her deep concentration for empty-headed vacuousness. Worst of all, he had no idea how good she was. That was something she would not tolerate.

Perhaps she was wrong in her reaction; she never discounted the possibility. From a diplomatic point of view—her husband’s point of view, indeed—the unrestrained rage she let loose was unforeseeable, excessive, even a little coarse. But there was no forced melodrama, no striving for effect in the way her hands trembled and her voice shook as she tried to explain—to someone who could no more understand than a deaf man could understand Bach—why she did what she did, and why it was important.

“Why are you people always so hysterical?”

Centuries, if not millennia, were squeezed, dessicated, and distilled into that one offhand comment made merely to fend off her anger; the implications could write, and had written, many books. The words themselves, the tone of contempt, the mingling of distaste with a slight fear. All these could have been unraveled at enormous length. But there was no need to; Julia needed no interpretation and could see by the alarm in his eyes that he needed none either. He knew what he had said.

She never talked to him again; there was no point. Nor did she ever divorce; there seemed little point in going through such a complicated ordeal, and for her husband’s career even an invisible wife was better than none at all. He had been, and remained, a decent, honest, simple soul; loving in his way, and once the anger passed she could see his many fine qualities. But she had also glimpsed a darkness that, although she could forgive, she never wanted to be close to. Still, she had no desire to harm him. She was not vengeful and eventually felt somewhat apologetic. The fact that her rage had faded so swiftly convinced her she had never loved him in the first place; the whole messy business was her fault.

By the time she told Julien, she could even laugh about it. He had been her confessor during this period, as she reopened the correspondence with him shortly after her wedding, ostensibly to explain why he had not been invited. She wrote him letter after letter justifying what she was doing, and he replied, sometimes consoling her with idle anecdote, sometimes giving reassurance, sometimes criticism. It was, Julia realized, the worst form of betrayal, an adultery of the mind and of the emotions, and the pleasure she gained from his letters was one of the main reasons that she ultimately decided to walk out.

“You spend too much time trying to find a reason for things,” he said gently in one letter. “I suffer from the same fault myself, so I know what I’m talking about here. Listen to an expert. You want to run away. You have made a mistake. And that is the end of the matter. After all, no one around you will ever manage to be happy while you are not.”

“Do you know why I’m a painter?” she said when they met a few months after she had finally packed her bags and moved into an apartment. “Do you know why I cover myself in brightly colored oil like some ancient Pict? It’s my sign. It’s so that people know immediately that I belong to nothing and don’t waste their time trying on me. My mother was as Jewish as can be, my father has cast all that off and regards religion as superstition and tradition as cowardice. So I am nothing. Thanks to him even the outcasts cast me out. So I have to do it all myself.”

“Do what?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. If I did, I’d probably know what I was looking for. And I wouldn’t have troubled poor Jacques by marrying him.”

He smiled gently at her, and watched as she ordered another drink. A whiskey this time, her second since they’d come into the dingy bar that she had adopted as her favorite after a day working in her studio on the boulevard Montparnasse.

“Why do you never ask me questions, or try to understand me? I always feel a bit of a failure with you. I try to be elusive and mysterious, and you seem quite uninterested.”

He shrugged.

“Don’t you find me fascinating? Strange? Wonderful? Quixotic? Exotic? Aren’t you concerned about where I come from, where I’m going? What makes me tick?”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “Not really,” he said eventually.

She sniffed. “I don’t know whether that is charming or the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“At least I haven’t said you’re hysterical.”

“That’s true. But I’ve never thrown a vase at you either.”

“You threw a vase at him?”

She nodded, an impish, childish look glinting in her eyes. “Missed him though,” she said. “Dammit.”

Their eyes met in mutual appreciation, and they started to laugh. It was a delightful meeting. And Julien was aware once more that he had never tried to charm or impress or compliment her. He was also aware, of course, that Claude Bronsen quite liked him.

HER REMARK was not true; not entirely true in any case. Julia had determined to become a painter at the age of ten, in 1913, when she had a tantrum two hundred yards from the family apartment in the boulevard Haussmann. She was with her nanny, an Englishwoman of the sort the wealthy Parisians preferred at that time, a kind woman but with the emotional subtlety of a cavalry officer, reluctant to admit what sort of family she worked for but who loved Julia after her fashion. She was not destined to remain long; she tried to impose order and discipline, but had to battle against Bronsen himself and his indulgent whims. Julia at that stage had spent only a short while in school, for her father was forever taking her with him on his voyages around Europe, sometimes for a month, once for six. They would go where his business took him, and while he knew he should settle her in some pension and give her proper schooling, he could not bear to be parted from her. He had, after all, worked hard to keep her from his wife and, having won her, would not easily let her go again.

Julia had many relations, but was brought up almost alone, for the way her father had ended his marriage had been bitterly criticized. His wife, thought sweet and obedient, known to be so gentle, had been clearly wronged, had been driven into illness trying to understand the fiery and aggressive man she had married, so given to titanic rages and bursts of angelic kindness, each as unpredictable as the other. All agreed that he was impossible, and in revenge for the condemnation, Bronsen had cast off much more. He never accepted his guilt; far from it, he believed he had defended his daughter from a woman whose dark moods and violence were insupportable. He never put forth his side of the case; he was either too proud or still too loyal to a woman he had once loved; never detailed the innumerable doctors, the times she went supposedly on holiday but in reality to clinics across Europe in a fruitless search for a cure that eluded even the most famous of psychiatrists. He never told of the screaming, the times she disappeared and he had to call the police to find her, the times he had to bundle Julia into her room and stand in front of the door to protect her from her mother’s rage over a trivial wrong. Only Julia knew; in her memory she kept those dark days hidden and spoke of them only once, when Julien came to her after her father’s death. But she remembered, and she remembered lying on the floor, the bruise growing on her cheek, and her brusque, rude, ill-mannered father kneeling by her to comfort her, stroke her hair, and carry her to her bed. He stayed with her all that night, to keep her company and to reassure her. The next day her mother left forever.

Claude Bronsen took the blame, but he also took his revenge on those who were quick to judge and condemn him. He walked away from his family, his religion, his entire society, eradicated all memory of the language he had spoken as a boy before he had left Germany to escape the cloying attentions of his parents. He knew, as early as ten, that he had to leave the hardworking, solemn atmosphere of their house, where his father labored as a commercial traveler and his mother kept a traditional Jewish home in a pinched and joyless fashion. He took pleasure in little that they—such respectable people, so timid and cautious, but also disapproving and demanding—found valuable in life. But he did his best to mollify and reassure them, tried not to make them ashamed of him when he was still poor and unsuccessful, guarded his tongue meticulously when they came to admire the life he had built for himself from his own labors and abilities in the sparkling world of Paris at the turn of the century. His wife, Rachel, was the prize of this hard work, a German-Jewish beauty, blonde and cultivated, with a haughty, almost aristocratic air.

His parents’ criticism, the way they assumed that his fine wife must have been unbalanced by his treatment of her, or by the birth of Julia—a difficult, painful birth, for she did not enter the world without a fight—was a betrayal of trust which he could never forgive. Even in the 1930s he refused to be reconciled with those who had, in his view, ostracized him so unjustly. Now they needed his help; they were being buffeted by economic chaos and political malevolence and they turned to him. He did not respond and felt little concern for their persecution. Bronsen indeed scarcely considered himself Jewish; he was French, naturalized many years before, and a man of business and of culture. That was all the identity he needed.

It was his greatest pleasure that Julia resembled him and had almost nothing of her mother in her, either in looks or in temperament. When she grew up to be both beautiful and accomplished, his pride and gratitude were so great he could barely contain them. His reward for her achievement was to offer her the world: He gave her books and museums and foreign cities and a sense of never-ending inquiry. He denied her ritual and offered her freedom in exchange. Anything she wanted was hers, and only once did he lose his temper with her, and that was when she said, at the age of fourteen, that she wanted to see her mother. They had their only serious fight, which Julia won. But she only did it once. The meeting was not a success; she had had an adolescent dream of making everything right, of healing injuries, and of having both her parents. It was not possible; her mother’s illness had grown rather than diminished and had turned into a deep and violent hatred of the man who, so everyone told her, had been so cruel, so heartless and so unjust. Julia, by then, had so many of her father’s mannerisms that even the way she stroked the side of her cheek when trying to think of something to say became a provocation. She was thrown out, told to leave and never come back. She obeyed completely and ran away crying into the arms of her father, who had been waiting, anxiously, at the end of the street. They never met again, and Julia learned only through a gruff comment from her father when she was eighteen that her mother had died. “Go to the funeral if you want,” he said.

And she had; she went alone and was confronted with the baleful glances of her family, none of whom offered her any consolation or understanding. It was her first and last brush with her religion, and from then on, she associated it with the disapproval that suffocated her in the synagogue that cold March afternoon.

In bringing her up, Claude Bronsen knew that Julia should learn to be more polite and refined than he was, cultivated in a way he could never be; his own appetites created in him a sort of disdain that he hoped Julia would share but learn to control better. He knew exactly what sort of child he wanted, could see her growing up in his mind, and the results of his labors bore their first fruit that day in the boulevard Haussmann. The nanny was completely perplexed by the outburst and smacked the child to make her hurry up. Julia screamed even more, and kept on screaming until her face was red with a mixture of outrage and despair. She was dragged back, still screaming, to the apartment, and sent to her room until she learned to behave. She never knew how much this frightened her father, how many nights he stayed awake, unable to sleep lest the affliction that had destroyed his wife had also been visited on his beloved daughter. Out of this terror came the overwhelming, stifling concern for her that too often turned into a swamping solicitude that allowed her little room to breathe.

Her performance that day, however, was mere petulance and rebellion, not a sign of incipient insanity. Julia did not behave; indeed it might be argued she never really behaved again; a moment transformed a polite, amenable girl into the paint-stained outcast she described (with some pride) to Julien much later. The outburst was triggered by a picture just visible through the window of a not particularly respectable art dealer; she wanted to stop and look, but the nanny was in a hurry and wanted to make tea. She made tea every afternoon, and Julia was expected to change her clothes, sit politely, and make proper conversation for thirty-five minutes about her day.

She had always done so; after that afternoon she never did again. The nanny left to go to a more civilized family a few months later. She refused Julia’s request to go into the little gallery and look at the picture that was not even in the window, but partially glimpsed on the wall on the left-hand side. Julia pointed to it. The nanny laughed. “Look at that thing; why, a monkey could do better.”

The incident opened the floodgates in Julia’s developing personality. Here was something around which she could organize all those confusing, confused thoughts and feelings that swirled through her mind. Here was a reason not to make polite conversations, not to change her clothes and sit with her knees touching. Here was a reason to disobey.

The next day she slipped out of the apartment when she should have been reading quietly in her room, tripping out of the maid’s entrance, then down the stairs, past the concierge and into the street. It was the first time she had ever been outside on her own, and she was frightened by her daring for the first dozen steps, and exhilarated thereafter. She walked brazenly into the gallery, affecting the manner of those grand women she had witnessed buying cosmetics in the faubourg Saint-Honoré, and went to look at her picture.

It was a pencil and wash of a woman with a firm mouth and chin, a streak of hair falling down the right side of her face from where it had been bundled up on top of her head. She looked tired, mournful even; Julia felt a pang of recognition.

In the background two men were talking, and their voices got louder and louder, so Julia could not help hearing as she stood entranced before the picture.

“You goddamned crook,” one was saying in heavily accented French. “You cheat. Why should I have anything to do with you?”

The unsuppressed rage was frightening; he was small, undistinguished-looking but with dark eyes and an air of compelling power.

“I do what I can. What do you expect? I keep this gallery, pay an assistant, pay the rent, give parties to try and drum up clients and get little in return for it. It is not as if these paintings are snapped up the moment I hang them on the wall, you know.”

“You don’t even try.”

The older man spoke softly, trying to conciliate. “I’m sorry. I do my best. And if you know a better dealer I will be happy to let you go. And wish you all the success you feel you deserve. But I speak the truth. And, if I may say so, your own attitude to the people who do think of buying your pictures does not help.”

“My attitude? My attitude? I am charm personified.”

“When you want to be. Which is not often. For the most part you are gratuitously offensive and overbearing. You talk about yourself without a break, and the first thing you ever do is inform your clients that you are a genius and you will first have to determine whether they are good enough to own one of your works.”

There was a long silence, then the little man burst out laughing and embraced the other. “And why not? It is all true.” Julia was thoroughly perplexed. She thought a punch on the nose might have been more appropriate. Then she noticed that both men were looking at her; she blushed and started to retreat.

“Stop, little one,” cried the painter. “You see, someone likes my paintings. She came in just to look at it. Did you see? Did you see the look on her face? I know that look. Ha!”

He walked over and knelt down beside her. “You do like it.”

She nodded, cautiously. The little painter put his arms around her and kissed her chastely, but full, on the lips; it was the first time anyone had ever done such a thing. She wished she could stop blushing.

“So? Tell me what you think.”

Julia panicked, then forced herself to respond, trying to think of something sophisticated and worldly to say. She could think of nothing at all.

“I think you must love her very much,” she said eventually, and felt ashamed of her reply.

But it delighted the painter, whose dark eyes bored into her in a way she found disturbing. She did not want him to take those eyes off her, ever.

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

Julia looked sad. “Did she die?”

“In my heart, she did.” He cocked his head to one side and smiled impishly. “She was my mistress, some years ago. I gave her to someone else. She began to tire me.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said the dealer, appalled, “don’t talk so to a young girl. What a shocking thing to say.”

The painter laughed, but Julia looked at him very seriously. “I think she was unhappy already, when you painted this. You made her unhappy, then painted her sadness. That was cruel of you. You can love someone and make them unhappy, I know.”

“Do you now?” he replied uncomfortably. “Then maybe you know too much for someone of your age.”

The owner of the shop looked satisfied. He had never seen his most difficult client made uncomfortable, never heard him challenged so effectively. He would retell this story often.

“She was looking for something I could never give her.” Again his dark eyes bored into Julia’s mind. “You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don’t think you will find it in another person. You won’t. It’s not there. You must find it in yourself.” Then he stood up.

“So that’s me unmasked,” he said. “But at least you like it. Eh? Don’t you?”

“I think it’s the best thing I have ever seen,” she said.

He bowed. “And that’s the best compliment I have ever received. Are you going to complete my happiness and buy it?”

Julia gasped. “I couldn’t possibly. Why, it must cost at least a hundred francs!”

“A hundred francs! Oh, dear me! It is worth millions of francs, my child. But my—dealer—here tells me that in fact a picture is worth only what someone will give for it. How much money do you have?”

Julia took out her purse and counted. “Four francs and twenty sous,” she said, looking up at him sadly.

“Is that all the money you have in the world?”

She nodded.

“Then four francs and twenty sous it is.” He took it off the wall. “And in return I can say I have a patron who bankrupted herself, gave me every penny she possessed, just to have one of my works. Besides, it’s more than this greedy little pig will ever get for it.”

He handed it to her, taking the four francs and twenty sous, counting them carefully before pouring them into his pocket. “You see?” he said over his shoulder. “You see how charming I can be with a real client? A worthy client, rather than one of these self-assured morons with too much money who lecture me about what is wrong with my paintings. Now, my child, you must have a proper receipt. What’s your name?”

“Julia. Julia Bronsen.”

He paused, and looked at her. “A Jew, are you?”

Julia thought carefully. “No,” she said, looking at him carefully. “My father says I am not.”

“A pity,” he said. “Perhaps you should pay less attention to your father. Never mind.” And he scribbled on a piece of paper, which he handed to her with a flourish.

Julia looked at it. “Received, from Mademoiselle J. Bronsen for a portrait of Madeleine, four francs and twenty sous. Picasso.” He signed it with a prideful gesture, which Julia tried to emulate on her own works for months afterward.

IN 1938, Julien read an article published in an English journal of that year on the Italian banking house of the Frescobaldi, who dominated European finance in the fourteenth century. It was not his usual sort of reading, far from it, but a colleague remembered his quirky interest in Provençal poetry and passed it on to him: the story of Olivier de Noyen’s end was well enough known, but the reference to the Comte de Fréjus, Isabelle’s husband, caught his eye. The article was concerned with laying out something of the network of the bankers’ interests, trying to show how international and sophisticated its operations were before it was brought to ruin by impolitic lending to the English king to finance his wars: The king defaulted, and the Frescobaldi, together with most of the international banking system, went down as well, adding extra misery to people already battered by the Black Death.

As part of the argument, the author was at pains to show how important the Frescobaldi were for the smooth running of the church across Europe and, in one example, cited the business they did with Cardinal Ceccani. This included a loan given to the Comte de Fréjus on his behalf, to finance the purchase of land in Aquitaine.

The implications were fascinating and not only because Aquitaine was then owned by the English, against whom de Fréjus had fought only three years previously. More, it demonstrated that de Fréjus, like Olivier, was within the network of patronage controlled by Ceccani; by attacking Olivier the count had attacked one of his own. Initially this confirmed Julien’s suspicion that Olivier must indeed have murdered Isabelle de Fréjus as legend said, for only such a dreadful deed could possibly have prompted such internecine violence. Only later did he reconsider this comfortable conclusion.

The first stage in the events that were ultimately recorded in the article was in fact perfectly simple; the comte came to Ceccani’s great palace for a loan. And in his brusque way, he indulged in no elaborate phrases.

“I have to pay two thousand crowns to the king of England to complete the payment of my ransom and gain the release of my cousins,” he said. “We were all taken captive at Crécy, and the king of France refuses to help us. So we must fend for ourselves. And I do not have the money.”

There was a defiance in his voice that suggested that he anticipated a rejection, that he was used to such rebuffs already. He was a big man, trained to the horse and the sword, used to commanding. He was not one who had ever had to plead. He had no objection to priests, but had never been in their power before. The fact that circumstance had given someone like Ceccani a dominance over him incited him to defiance and petulance. He had in fact been in captivity in the English castle in Aquitaine only a few months, scarcely enough for his pretty young wife to realize how pleasant his absence was. But the cost of his release had been high, and he had promised those relations captured with him that he would not rest until they, too, were set free. He was a man of his word, too straightforward and too uneducated to be anything but honorable. This was why he so bitterly resented the fact that those for whom he had fought had not stepped forward to help him in the same way that he had so dutifully gone to fight for them. In this lay Ceccani’s opportunity.

The cardinal’s eyes narrowed. He had taken the precaution of discovering much about the comte’s finances before the interview took place and knew quite well that he was desperate. Five banking houses had already turned him down, and if he did not find the money within a month, he would have to return to Aquitaine. Those were the rules; no one broke them readily.

“That is about five years’ income for you,” he said. “I would guess. I would not, could not, charge any interest, of course. But a donation to the bishopric’s finances equivalent to, say, one-twelfth of the total each year would be in itself more than you could easily support. How would you ever pay down the principal?”

“You talk like a banker, not a man of God.”

“I talk, I hope, like a man who takes due care of the funds entrusted to me,” Ceccani said severely. “You are not asking to borrow my money, but the church’s. I am charged with its good governance. I have many requests, most of them worthy, still more of them desperate. It is my regrettable task to have to choose. And, sir, I must say you do not seem like the best or most secure way of laying out money.”

The comte was not a man to beg; his dignity was too great to allow such a thing. But the way his jaw tightened; the look of despair that passed over his flaccid, somewhat stupid face; the set of his shoulders; all these confirmed what Ceccani already knew: This was a man waiting to fall into his hands.

“Surely,” the cardinal said, delicately putting his touch onto the most painful of wounds, “you must understand that the king of France has many difficulties at the moment. You cannot expect him to trouble himself over such matters.”

“I can, and I do. I fulfilled my obligations to him, even though I had my own troubles. I left my new wife, raised a mortgage on my land to pay for my soldiers, marched the moment I was summoned. I served him faithfully.”

“Then if he does not reciprocate, your duty to him is the less, is it not? He is defeated in battle, yet will not repay the help you offered him at that time.”

“He is still my lord.”

“But so are the counts of Provence. Perhaps the Lady Joanna might be prevailed upon?”

“I think not. I have in the past rendered her homage, but not service. She owes me nothing, and has troubles of her own at the moment, I believe.”

The cardinal sighed. “Of course, we all have troubles. And any man who might help with those would earn the blessing and indulgence of many. If, for example, you chose to ally yourself to the countess, and found some means by which you could dissociate yourself from the king of France, then you might find yourself amply rewarded and compensated for any loss.”

“I would forfeit all my lands in France.”

“Which produce about seven hundred livres a year, as I understand. That could be rectified.”

“And my ransom, and my cousins’ ransom?”

“Those would both be forgiven you. Indeed, you might well find yourself compensated by double their value.”

“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.

“It’s like being an orphan,” Julia said in one of her letters. “I haven’t seen him for months. It is oddly liberating. And now that I know he’s coming back in a week or so I find myself apprehensive. I don’t know why; it’s not as if I will see him if he is in Paris any more than if he is in Milan. But I have decided to rent myself a little house by the sea for the summer. Somewhere in the Camargue, I think, where I will see no one, and be able to pretend there are no such people as fascists or communists, and no such things as depressions or gold standards, strikes or riots. I’d invite you, but I know you won’t come, and to be frank, I don’t want even you to disturb me. I have done no useful work for months and am dreadful company.”

Between Julien and Bernard there was an amity of relaxation; between Julien and Marcel, a friendship of interest. Both were loyal in their way; both believed fervently that the course they took was correct. Both Bernard the résistant and Marcel the collaborator were engaged—to borrow the lofty phrases of Manlius Hippomanes—in the business of salvation, and both were prepared to abandon humanity in order to achieve their aims. Both were, or became, accidental fanatics; circumstance brought out tendencies that otherwise would have remained hidden. That evening over the dinner that Julien had carefully crafted, from entrée to dessert, the first signs were there to be seen.

Bernard was amusing in a way that Marcel could not imitate, and did not wish to imitate. He was too serious; devoted to books and his religion. In place of skiing holidays, Marcel went, every year, to Lourdes, to help the sick and the poor and to bathe in a faith that was never shaken, and which Julien envied, remembering still the faint loss he felt when he was removed from his catechism lessons. He endured the sneers of Bernard with stoical fortitude as confirmation of his faith.

For Bernard was not only a freethinker, he was an ostentatious atheist, and took a perverse delight in insulting those with any religious sensibilities whatsoever. All were fools or cowards, often dangerously so, wedded to lost causes like the monarchy, believing in some lost idyll of order and rank that had never existed. A century and a half previously he would have sent people to the guillotine. A century and a half previously, Marcel would have been one of his victims.

Curiously, they were not dissimilar in appearance, although character obscured the resemblance so much that both would have been shocked at the idea that they looked alike. Both had fair hair, and both had green eyes. But, where Marcel cut his hair short and oiled and combed it so there was never a hair out of place, Bernard’s grew long, hanging just close enough to his collar to indicate a bohemian soul. Marcel’s eyes gazed steadily at whomever he was looking at, giving an impression of calm and consideration; Bernard’s never rested in one place for more than a few seconds. Even when studying Julia, he seemed to absorb her in fragments, while also examining the food, the way the waiter served, the diners at the other tables, all details Marcel scarcely noticed. But the greatest difference of all lay in their expressions: Marcel somber, always serious, often with a frown; Bernard always smiling, leaning forward into the conversation, managing to suggest fascination with whatever was being said.

Julien’s later dilemma could be seen in microcosm at that dinner, indeed Julia did see it; she was more perceptive because she saw with fresh eyes. She noted without commenting how Bernard interrupted the other two ceaselessly; interpreted Marcel’s seriousness and the frivolity of Bernard’s replies. And she saw how Julien took upon himself the role of pacifier, steering the conversation this way and that, trying to avoid the pitfall of open argument. It was a mistake to invite both of them to sit together; they could not help battling for his sympathy and her interest, even though both knew that Bernard would win, if victory there was to be.

In other circumstances, Julia would not have been so determinedly polite; she had not the patience. Rather she would have encouraged a brawl, or at least permitted it; it would have been good for Marcel, at least, to lose control of himself so utterly. She also noted that although Bernard was the more genial, he was the more ruthless, prepared to use his quickness to impose all manner of tiny humiliations to win his point. Marcel doggedly plodded on, severely and seriously arguing in a straight line. “But really, you must see what I am saying.”

Bernard did, of course; saw it long before Marcel did, but that was of no concern. He did not argue from principle; he argued to win. His delight was in tripping the slower one up, of demonstrating his superiority in countless little ways. Julia saw also what Julien did not, that there was the seed of true hatred there, deep buried, one expressed in the barely concealed contempt, the other in the detestation that the slow must develop when the quick strive to humiliate them. Perhaps Julien was right after all; it was only the thin crust of civility that kept these more dangerous emotions in check.

Because Marcel was polite, and because Julia was beautiful, he refrained from discoursing on the malign influence of Jews in France; he never got to the point where belief could overwhelm courtesy. Rather he talked about art, which served as a more civil cloak for the same thing. In Marcel, the conventionality of his tastes matched the orthodoxy of his religion and the conservatism of his politics. Julia, and people like her, infuriated him.

“It is not a question of understanding,” he said at one stage during the dinner. “I am talking about responsibility. People like you have turned away from responsibility. Instead, you suit yourself.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Julia said.

“Artists should be servants. That is their glory. Either of kings or priests. You have broken that association and exist only for yourself. What was it that man said? Can’t remember which one. He painted some pictures in a church and the priest thanked him and said God would be pleased with such a gift. And he snorted and said, ‘Who cares about God? I’ve pleased myself.’ You are unrooted and egotistical, and you call it the search for beauty.”

No one at the table needed the meaning of the statement explained. Everyone knew what “unrooted” meant.

“I call it nothing of the sort,” Julia replied, not even considering getting angry, so foolish was the attack, dismissing the implications as not worth contesting. “I do not think I can please God—if there is one—if I do not satisfy myself. Am I supposed to give things which aren’t even good enough for me? I paint. Some think quite well, others think badly.”

“Why?”

“Because it pleases me. And it provides me with a small income which keeps me from feeling totally dependent on my father.”

“You might as well be a typist, then.”

“That wouldn’t please me.”

And here Bernard broke in. “She is misleading you, dear Marcel. Telling you lies to put you off the hunt. She is not saying why it pleases her.”

“It pleases me because when I am working well I am aware of nothing. Because when I have done something good I know it is good, and no one else’s opinion is of any consequence. And occasionally, not often, I do manage to do something good. What is more, I know I can do better. So I keep on trying.”

“What do you mean by ‘good’?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “Has anyone ever managed to say what it is? A catching of some idea. Reflecting it, pinning it down.”

“But it is rubbish, what you do. No technique, no skill. Just self-indulgent daubs on canvas. And the less people understand it, the happier you are. And you’re mistaken. I think people understand it all too well. That’s why they don’t buy it.”

Even his expression seemed stupid, for Marcel’s tendency to frown as he spoke gave the impression that thinking was an effort for him. It was a mistake; many people underestimated him, as Julien told her later. In both intelligence and determination he was a good match for Bernard.

“And you?” she asked.

“I don’t compete with either of them,” Julien said. But with a little smile that gave another answer. He did not feel he needed to.

“Personally, I’ve always found that the less people are interested in art, the stronger are their opinions about it,” said Bernard smoothly. “In my case, I would like actually to see some of your work before I pass judgment. If, that is, you won’t mind me denouncing you as a self-indulgent fraud the moment I clap eyes on the ridiculous rubbish you try to foist on the public.”

Julia laughed; Bernard had sapped the implicit violence from the conversation and forced Marcel into awareness of his offensiveness. He had not the slightest intention of looking at her pictures; it was something in which he had absolutely no interest. He was curious about her, mainly because he picked up Julien’s fascination and would have tried to capture her for himself had he suspected for a moment it was possible. But even he— generally insensitive on such matters—could grasp that there was something perfectly untouchable about her. And Julien realized he had been outwitted—he should have intervened, not Bernard.

“I am always happy to show anyone who is interested,” she said.

“Splendid. Next week, perhaps. Now, if you don’t mind, I will finish the story of my extraordinary skill on the ski slopes.”

After the meal, Julien walked her home. “I’m sorry about all that,” he said. “My mistake. I imagined a jolly dinner with everybody getting on tremendously well. I hope at least you don’t take Marcel seriously.”

They were crossing the Seine and paused to look along the dark cavern of the river to where the towers of the Conciergerie could be seen against the lights of the city. “I’m used to people like him. And I don’t suppose he will ever do me any harm. If you disagree with him about the way I am sapping the vitality of the French race, you could always say so, you know.”

He snorted. “I have. But it’s a complete waste of time; he will rabbit on about discipline and order. I sometimes think he should have gone to Rome, not me. Then he could have seen the new society in the making. He would have had a lovely time singing the praises of Mussolini. Although I don’t think he could ever bring himself to march around in a black shirt. He would find it too ostentatious. Besides, his abstract beliefs have never to my knowledge got in the way of perfect kindness when dealing with individuals. He is a good man. It may surprise you to hear it now you’ve spent an evening in his company, but he is.”

“And Bernard isn’t?”

He thought about it; she had picked up a parallel he had never bothered to consider. “No. He isn’t. He has many fine qualities—he’s intelligent, funny, dynamic, capable of good advice if he doesn’t have a personal stake in the outcome. But he is not a kind man. He has no time for people, and doesn’t understand them. He loves the working class, but the workers revolt him. Marcel, in contrast, likes the workers but loathes the working class.”

“And these are your friends?”

“I’m afraid so. If I confined myself to friends who were perfect I’d only be left with you.”

She gave him a push. “Stupid thing to say,” she said, and began walking once more.

“I mean it,” he said, catching up with her and walking alongside her, close but not touching. “I put up with their imperfections, and they put up with mine.”

“And what are yours?”

“Mine? Oh, dear, where can I start? Pride, excessive caution, unwillingness to take risks, a general disdain for humanity masquerading as humanism. An inability to love what can be loved, and a fascination with what cannot be.”

He stopped, and she laughed. “You’re letting yourself off very lightly this evening, if that’s all you can come up with.”

“I know you could do better. That’s the trouble.” He paused, sensing the atmosphere, and retreated once more. “Anyway, all three of us have many faults. Unfortunately they cannot manage to tolerate each other in the same way that they put up with me. It was a mistake to have invited them both. I should have just gone out with you.”

“Why?”

He completed his withdrawal. “It would have been cheaper. Did you see how much both of them ate?”

FOR FELIX, the elevation of Manlius was an attack on his family. Moreover, he knew perfectly well that the election—presented here in mimicry of the bishop’s own version—was only partially true. While a holy man might be pressed to become a cleric by a grateful village or rustic town converted through his influence, or under the impact of a miracle wrought before their very eyes, a town as old and as sophisticated as Vaison was not to be overwhelmed in such a fashion.

Manlius and his family had undoubtedly worked hard at securing the position, setting up contacts long before the previous bishop had died, dropping hints about his availability, laying out policies to be pursued should the prize become his. What he had offered was unclear. His wealth was certainly a factor. His estates were large enough to build the walls and man them should the need arise, and few doubted that soon it would. His granaries could feed all the poor and still have enough left over for others. His influence across Gaul and into Italy might be of use if help was needed—although whether anyone had any help to give was a matter for debate.

But his action was a slight against Felix’s family nonetheless, pushing them into a subordinate position in a region that the two families had shared. For four generations the Hippomanes and the Adenii had competed for office, and in the region east of the Rhône, Manlius’s family had come to dominate the secular positions while Felix’s clan had taken the ecclesiastical ones. Manlius had broken the unspoken treaty; moreover, he was still young. He could be bishop for two decades or more, and the Adenii would have to watch their influence slowly but steadily wane.

Felix had no choice, in fact; the most important members of his family made that clear. During a heated meeting, he was informed by young and old that, although his leadership was undisputed, that position could change. He was expected to act in their best interest.

“We know that this man is your friend, has been your friend since boyhood,” said Anacleius, a cousin of his wife’s. “We applaud your loyalty to him. But we must remind you that your loyalty to us must come first. How will you be able to defend us, enrich us, look after our interests in a hundred and one ways if you are powerless, having to go to your friend and beg favors? I do not even doubt his friendship to you; I do him the honor of believing him an honorable man in this respect at least. But he has his own family. Will he put your interest above theirs?”

The question went unanswered. There was no need to answer it. Felix dismissed the meeting with sweet words and reassurances, then went to pray, for he was devout in a manner that Manlius could scarcely understand. In his youth he had grasped this problem and saw the disjunction between Sophia’s logic and the faith of the church, and placed her reason in a secondary position. His faith was an area she could not penetrate, the more valuable because it defied her rationality.

And when he had finished praying he knew what he must do. He could not risk open enmity with Manlius, for that might lead to violence; rather he had to bide his time. Whatever Manlius wished to do, he had to be allowed to argue his case, and it was not inconceivable that he would deserve their support. Justice demanded that he get his hearing. Their friendship was gravely wounded, but he could not bring himself to dispatch it yet.

This he told his family, noting that Caius Valerius, the cousin who otherwise might have won the bishopric had Manlius not intervened, fortunately seemed willing to accept his disappointment.

In fact, Caius Valerius stayed quiet because Felix’s reticence gave him an unparalleled opportunity, and he had resolved to make the best possible use of it. For years he had smarted under his cousin’s leadership of the family, and saw a chance to take what he considered his due; he considered himself the better Christian and the better man, for all of Felix’s accomplishments. He would now outclass Felix in the area where he had been unchallenged: in that of action. But not yet; like Felix, he saw the virtue of waiting.

SHORTLY AFTER this family gathering dispersed, Manlius traveled the seventy kilometers to the south and west to Felix’s principal villa. He arrived on his own, with no attendants except half a dozen guards. He was astonished at what he saw, for the great, elegant building he had known since his youth was transformed beyond recognition. He stood and gazed at what had happened, the arching columns vanished as dark, heavy walls were built around, the baths abandoned and plundered for stone, the immaculate lawns and flower beds dug out to make defenses. And all around the noise, the shouts of laborers, pulling stones and fitting them in place. The workmanship was terrible; great gaps were filled with rubble and concrete; it seemed like something children would make with building blocks, and seemed as strong, as well.

Felix came out to greet him, and saw the look on his face. “Not a decision taken easily,” he said sadly. “This place has been in my family for two hundred years, grown and added to and nurtured.”

“Are you sure it is necessary?”

“You know it is. If Clermont falls and Euric moves east into this region he will inevitably have to take this area. Like you, we have been attacked already by brigands. Lawns and ponds are for a time of peace. These walls are as weak as you think, but the skills to do better have gone. We have run out of choices.”

“Are you sure?”

“Or we roll on our backs and pray for mercy. That, I suppose, is another option.”

“Have you forgiven me yet?”

Felix sighed. “You insulted my family and our friendship. You should never have acted without talking to me first of all.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I did not fear you; only your family, who I was sure would put you in an impossible position.”

“They did anyway; I have persuaded them to wait and see. If you serve us all well, they will accept the situation. But you must not presume on friendship too much. You have made a great enemy of Caius Valerius. He will not readily forgive you, although I imagine I can rein in his anger, and he is too stupid to do anything on his own. But enough of all that. Do you want to see what I’m doing here?”

And for the next hour, they climbed over the new fortifications, surveyed the walls and the countryside beyond, pointing out weak spots, giving and taking advice. Manlius almost found it thrilling, and reveled once more in the friendship of a common purpose, however temporarily it might last. And he was impressed as well; Felix was in his element, he was a natural soldier, and needed war to give of his best. That was what worried him. He desired a solution that would enable him to win fame, to justify himself. In that lay the center point of their difficulty.

“Very fine,” Manlius said eventually. “But you remember Diocletian’s remark: that a defense is only as good as the soldiers manning it. What quality of soldiers do you have here? Old men and women with scythes?”

“Better than that,” he replied shortly.

“How much better?”

“If they are properly led, and sufficiently frightened, they will do well. But all I can do is defend. To counterattack, to take the battle to the enemy . . .”

“You need mercenaries. Money. And help.”

He nodded. “Exactly. And are you going to get them for me, Manlius? For if you do, I will show you wonders in return. Together we can accomplish extraordinary things; things men will talk of for generations to come. So tell me. You have your power now, My Lord Bishop. Faustus, and through him all the other bishops, seem to have placed their trust in you. They must have done, for you cannot have been elected for your piety. What are you going to do with that trust? What is it for, this sudden irruption from your study into the world of affairs?”

Manlius thought and was aware of the difference between them. Felix, as ever, was openhearted, straightforward, and spoke with the most total sincerity. And Manlius composed his words, trying to turn them into the music his friend wanted to hear. He did not lie; but he knew he deceived.

“I am going to try and get you something even more precious at the moment than either men or money. I wish to buy you time. And I wish to avoid the war you are preparing for here. It is the one thing we cannot afford. Whether we succumb to an invasion or beat it off, the result will be the same: ruin and devastation that will be almost total. Look at this villa of yours; you see what even the threat of war has accomplished? What will be left if you have to defend it? How many laborers will there be afterwards, or fields able to be cultivated? How many sheep and cattle? And what about the towns which depend on your produce? Who will live in them then except ghosts and memories of what once was? If I can avoid that, I will. So I will weave words and fine phrases and try to make your valor unnecessary. But if it comes to war, my old friend, I will pick up my sword and die with you shoulder to shoulder, like the sacred band of the Thebans did before Alexander.”

Felix bowed his head, so Manlius could not see his tears. “Thank you, my friend,” he said in a choking voice. “Do this, and our friendship will last forever.”

FROM THE MOMENT he arrived back in the south, Julien’s life continued smoothly until war came and disrupted it once more. He saw his friends every now and then, continued his correspondence with Julia, heard occasional news of her father and his successes and setbacks. He had not particularly wanted to return; for him, as for all academics, anywhere but Paris was a defeat, a backwater. To abandon the idea of the capital was a wrench, even though he never accustomed himself to the northern climate, the long wet drizzly days, the overpowering grayness of the skies, the coldness of people and climate. That was not his idea of France.

In Paris lay everything he needed. The professional and intellectual context, the new ideas, the constant necessity of striving. In Provence lay peace and tranquillity—calm, reassuring, and stultifying. But the choice was not his; his career was guided by others. It was Bloch who had raised him so high, and now it was Bloch who cast him adrift, or so it seemed. In the great man’s mind was a question of strategy as he neared the apogee of his own career. He needed no one in Paris to ensure his reputation; although he was not so foolish as to believe that his reputation would last forever. No; in Paris he had dozens of others raised by him and placed by him. It was beyond Paris that his hold was weaker; it was the outlying defenses of his reputation that needed to be bolstered. So one pupil was sent to Rennes, one to Strasbourg, one to Clermont, and Julien to Montpellier, to establish their sway over departments and educate pupils themselves, passing on an ever fainter but still palpable echo of the great man’s method and style. It was another form of that eternity so greatly desired by those who believe in it the least. None of these chosen apostles had any say in the matter; this was not the way things were done. And the strongest would claw their way back to Paris eventually.

So, in 1932, Julien had packed up his apartment, rented a smaller one to maintain at least a foothold in Paris, and headed back home, going initially to the big empty house in Vaison, which he had maintained as an act of thoughtless filial piety ever since his father’s death. He realized how much he hated the house, and was suffocated by the heavy furniture, the velvet curtains, the dark wallpaper, the ponderous pictures on worthy themes. In the end he sold it, sent the furniture to a brocanteur and took instead a large apartment in Avignon opposite the church of Saint Agricole. A curious, whimsical decision, for it would have been so much easier to have lived in Montpellier, but he decided that if he was to come home, then he would do so properly, and be in the city he had known since he was sent there en pension as a schoolboy of twelve. He refused to live in Montpellier itself; rather he traveled there by train when necessary, lived in a guesthouse when teaching, and always returned to his true home the moment his liberty was granted him.

The apartment he lived in for the rest of his life was not in the most opulent part of the town—that already lay beyond the walls, in the grand suburbs that had been spreading since the latter part of the previous century—but he considered it to be by far the best, on a circling avenue of handsome eighteenth-century buildings, alive with shops and bars and restaurants and people, not so large that it attracted the motorcars that were beginning to clog the streets with their smells and impatient raucous horns. His building was light and airy, angled to avoid the whine of the winds in winter and the excessive heat of the summer. Into this he put his eclectic, judiciously chosen collection of furniture and pictures—his little Greuze, the Cézanne he had bought at a street market in Avignon for a few francs, the drawings he had acquired in Rome, the picture of the hills of Jerusalem, which Julia had given him—and they fitted as if they had all been designed for the pale green walls and the soft gray of the delicately carved woodwork. Over the years he added to his collection, carefully buying works that few others liked. By the time of the war, he had a substantial number that were beginning to be of some value. Among these were four paintings by Julia, which he had selected quite ruthlessly, returning to her studio each time he went to Paris, coming away empty-handed on nearly every occasion.

“You are very hard to please,” she said dryly once, after he had examined carefully one work she was proud of and yet again shaken his head. “What do you like?”

“I don’t know. Something special. There’s a vacuous reply for you.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “An intellectual like yourself. You should do better. Why don’t you like this, then?” She pointed at one painting, a seemingly rough sketch of a woman in a boat, the form of the woman blending into the shape of the water. She was pleased with it; she remained pleased with it despite him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She grunted. “Go on. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“You’ve looked at too many pictures, you know too much. You are too aware of what you’re doing and of the past. That’s what’s wrong with it.”

“Hard words,” she commented. “And being too aware of the past seems a strange criticism from a classicist.”

“True.” He thought, then smiled apologetically. “I don’t mean to criticize. I meant it as a compliment.”

“Really? Heaven help me if you decide to be rude.”

“I am never rude. What I mean is that you really are very good. And that is not simply because I adore you without reserve. Although it helps. But look: You have Matisse and Cézanne and a bit of Puvis there. A touch of Robert, perhaps, as well. I look at that picture and I can see what you’ve built it out of. That’s what’s wrong.”

“Derivative and second-rate, you mean?” She was not in the slightest bit offended; it was one of her best qualities and one Julien could never share.

“Not at all. I mean you are being too careful. That’s what I mean. This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn’t know you I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you.”

He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. “It’s the painting of a dutiful daughter,” he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. “You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you’ve missed something important. Does that make sense?”

She thought, then nodded. “All right,” she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. “You win.”

Julien grunted. “Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out.”

“And you’ll know?”

“You’ll know. I will merely get the benefit of it.”

“What if I get it wrong?”

He shook his head and grinned. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

THE CONVERSATION summed up much of his appeal for her. Alone of anybody she had ever met he allowed her room to breathe. He wanted nothing from her. Merely knowing that she lived was sufficient for him. He did not wish to live with her, marry her, did not become jealous or fretful for her. He did not watch her or live through her. Did not swamp her with attentions or drown her with excess adoration. Above all, he did not make things easy for her. All negatives, all things she was unused to. He admired what she did, but was brutally honest when asked his opinion. Where he found the resource for this neither she nor he knew; it was a far cry from the self-confident pretense he learned with many of the women he pursued over the years, or the detachment he formed for the world in general.

Both Bernard and Marcel—neither of them particularly acute in such matters—realized that Julien and Julia were deeply in love with each other. Julien was afraid that if they became lovers now, Julia would turn into another woman, one to be consumed and discarded, and so he held back for fear that showing his love would extinguish it. Julia, in contrast, was not yet sure enough of herself for the battle—with her work and her father—that would result. She knew that her irresolution would seem pathetic and childish to many, that a stronger person would dispatch the looming, overbearing presence of her father and demand the right to a life untrammeled by his needs. He was an impossible man, and placed her in an impossible position. For most of her life she had had no one but him, and she was afraid not so much of his hurt if she fell in love, but of what it would say about her. Her life had been utterly selfish, she knew; she had allowed no one in to disrupt it; was she now to hurt so desperately the one person who had always meant something to her? She had to put someone’s interests and needs above her own in order to remain human; and the only person she could do this for was her father.

So she was contradictory and difficult, with him and with Julien, hard to understand; often irritable, veering between affection and criticism, drawing close then pulling away again. She knew all the while that she did indeed love Julien, needed his existence in a way that she had never known with anyone else. When she was depressed or frustrated with her work, she thought of him, constantly concerned herself with where he was and what he was doing, felt incomplete without him, and anxious when he was there lest a mistake ruin everything. If he had only forced the issue that day in Palestine before she could consider all the complications, then, she sometimes told herself, all would have been well. She even felt slightly insulted by his rejection, but knew that such disdain was unjust. Julien could not make it so easy for her; he wanted her soul as well, and must bide his time until she was ready to give it.

So, instead of each other’s physical company, they had their letters, which crossed the country in a constant flow, month after month and year after year, continuing even when Julia went to Vietnam, then on to Japan for nearly two years to seek inspiration and escape there, or when Julien returned to Rome, something he did as often as possible. For much of the 1930s they were not even in the same country, but the letters continued nonetheless, creating something far stronger than mere physical closeness could ever approach. In between the letters, both burrowed down into their work to hide from the world, which was becoming ever more terrifying.

That there was going to be another war they both knew, as did everyone else; sometimes Julien was even sure there was going to be a civil war, with the streets of France again running with blood and echoing with screams of faction. Almost any little incident, it seemed, could set off a disaster, either in France or in Europe as a whole, but no one knew when it would actually happen. The threat contaminated everything they did and felt long before it actually erupted. Men like Marcel and Bernard took their sides and seemed to make it the more likely, sowing rancor and blame in advance for a defeat that, strangely, everyone knew would come this time. Even those like Marcel, who once lectured Julien on the extraordinary military achievement of France’s defenses, could talk in the next breath of what would happen when the war was over and the Germans had established their grip on the whole of Europe. And as the day grew ever nearer, and the continent sleepwalked its way into a conflict that threatened cataclysm on a scale no one could imagine, his opinions became the more extreme and the more vengeful.

Julien once pointed out the contradiction to him. “If the defenses are so good, why do you talk of defeat?”

“All the defenses in the world will be useless if we are led by fools. We’ve built ourselves a wall, but we are crumbling behind it. Our politicians are corrupt, money-grubbing rabble-rousers, obeying the orders of the moneylenders and the masons. Will you fight for them? Give your blood so they can continue to stuff their pockets with money? Sweep them away; then we can start again. Build something new.”

“You want to be beaten?” Julien asked.

“Of course not.”

And Julien returned to his books, turning in these years to the subject that had been in the back of his mind for so long: to describe the resilience of civilization, its enormous strength, the way that even when near death it could revive and regrow, bringing its benefits to mankind once more. It was a lyrical conception, his own defiance of the blackness of Marcel, or the gleeful cynicism of Bernard, who derived much humor in his newspaper articles from describing the confusion, incompetence, and corruption of politicians at work. He imagined civilization as something lying outside the individual, a spirit that only required a little care to survive. It consoled him; as it had sprung up again after the Romans, and again after the Black Death, so it would now, after the darkness to come. His great book on the history of Neoplatonism thus became his plaintive song in the falling light, and gradually he worked in more and more commentary on Manlius’s manuscript to illustrate the points he was making. He, too, expected defeat.

OLIVIER AND PISANO had little in common during their daily life save their joint adherence to the camp of Cardinal Ceccani, but nothing to divide them either. No faction, heresy, or dispute over politics ever clouded their amity; they were both too lowly to have any interest in such matters, which were solely the concern of the great and the powerful. Their job was to live, although that was not necessarily such an easy thing to accomplish. They shared their food, their hopes, their worries, and sometimes their shoes and clothes and money. Gave each other advice, drank together, and knew that, sooner or later, they would part forever. It was Pisano’s ambition to go back to Siena one day, for he daily suffered the pangs of homesickness and saw himself in exile. Olivier knew perfectly well that he would probably never go there. Nor would their friendship continue by letter, for while Pisano could write, he did not like to do so.

Indeed, had the commission for the chapel of Saint Sophia not suddenly descended on him, Pisano might have gone already, as until that moment all favor and income had been denied him. He had been in Avignon for two years or more, waiting his chance. He had worked as a journey-man for that fat, smug dauber Matteo Giovanetti when, by rights, the old-fashioned, harebrained scribbler should have worked for him. Pisano was young, but not without confidence, and held within him the conviction that he could do something the world had never seen before, if only he was given the chance.

He had received the best possible training, under Pietro Lorenzetti himself; the only man in the world for whom he had total reverence and unquestioning devotion. He had seen the quiet, great man racked with the agonies of doubt and indecision about what he did, and seen that uncertainty convert like magic into calm assurance the moment he picked up his brush. For what he was doing was remarkable, unique. He did not try to paint nature; he made his paintings part of nature, as real as the birds and the trees in the countryside all around. The endless possibilities made a head as young as Pisano’s giddy with delight, and after he made his way to Avignon—to seek his fortune, as he had heard of all the building works going on there—he sometimes physically ached with desperation and yearning to show what he could do.

For Pisano had an idea, an idea of such boldness that he scarcely dared mention it. It first came upon him one day when he had brought his master a drink of water from the fountain after a hot morning’s work at Assisi. He’d found him sitting idly on the ground in the shade, with a young boy before him. They were talking, as Pietro delighted in the company of the young, never turned away any child who came to see him work, spent long hours talking to them, and always gave them a little present when, at last, it was time for them to go.

The two were talking as he approached, the child laughing and telling the master a story, unaware of his greatness and importance—as, indeed, was most of the world still, despite the prodigies he had created. Pietro was listening and encouraging him to continue, but kept on glancing down at a piece of parchment that he was drawing on with a lump of charcoal. As Pisano put down the water, Pietro laid the parchment aside and told the boy it was now time he went home to his mother. Pisano held out a hand to help the aging, arthritic man up—his hands the only part of him still unaffected, it seemed, either by the grace of God or the sheer determination of willpower—and also picked up the sheets of paper as they were about to blow away on the wind.

He had drawn a portrait of the boy in the act of tossing his head as he had done when talking and laughing. It was so perfect in the way it captured the child’s spirit that Pisano was astonished and cried out in delight.

“Something I learned to do when I was young,” the older man said. “Before I was trained and forced to forget it all again. I began with sheep, then shepherds.”

“It is wonderful.”

“Ah, but it is but a boy. Our job is to paint the divine.”

Pisano must have looked confused, not knowing what to say. Pietro clapped him affectionately on the shoulder and laughed gently. “Come with me.”

He led the way back into the church, then slowly and ponderously climbed the scaffolding that covered the choir of the building, working his way up then across with an agility that left him the moment the day’s work was done. Eventually he reached a scene he had painted himself a few weeks previously; gestured at it, then stood back.

It was of the Last Supper and, though the face of the Jesus conformed absolutely to what it must be, he had given the figure a similar gesture, that toss of the head, the movement of the shoulders, the slight upward glance and flash of the eye. Half in jest, Pietro held his finger to his lips.

“Our little secret,” he said. “But observe it well. Something of God is all around us, perhaps. All we need is eyes to see and a hand to capture.”

Lorenzetti dared no more, however; or perhaps that was the wrong word, for in his craft he was as absolute in his determination as any pope or emperor. He saw no need to. Still his figures for the most part needed to have something of the divine about them, needed to be recognizable as well. He would give them a gesture, a movement, an air that he had seen in the street, but could not go further. His art and his pride would not allow it. Knowingly or not, he turned from that last step, fearing it might lead to blasphemy, that he might be drawn into the conceit of making God, rather than humbly representing Him. Give the Blessed Virgin the face of an anxious mother? Have Saint Peter resemble a fisherman? Make Our Lord look like a carpenter? Thus formulated, Pisano had his answer, and the secret he took with him when he left for Avignon. He would take that extra step, or try to.

His first essay came when he was given the opportunity to do a whole painting himself in the entrance to the Cathedral of Our Lady in Avignon. Close by the doorway, but in a dark corner, a space of wall that needed filling but that no one would ever see unless they peered hard in the gloom, the contrast with the light flooding in through the door making it all but invisible. Too insignificant a spot for Matteo himself to bother with, so he farmed it out. And there Pisano painted a Virgin high up on the wall, being approached by a prince of the church, an appropriate scene for what was fast becoming the main cathedral of all Christendom. The Virgin was conventional, seated, with the child on her left arm; here he dared little. But with the figure before her he allowed himself to experiment. He painted this as a real man, standing rather than kneeling, giving an impression of power, almost of equality before the divine. And he gave it the face of Cardinal Ceccani, conveying through it the strange mixture of deference and command that that man had so perfected.

He was not pleased with it; he could do better, he knew. And Matteo was outraged and wanted it erased. It was he who sent word through the corridors of what Pisano had done, hoping to cause a scandal; the result had been that Ceccani himself, the next time he came to the cathedral, stopped and looked, peering up in the candlelight to see his own features flickering on the wall.

He stared, his eyes narrowed, he grunted. Then he turned to a priest standing nearby. A few weeks later, Pisano was summoned to the cardinal’s palace and given the commission to paint the chapel of Saint Sophia. So cryptic was his benefactor that Pisano could not be sure whether it was a reward or a punishment. Nonetheless, once the dismay and disappointment faded he realized the chapel would give him his chance. There were no conventionally understood notions of what any of the characters in the tales looked like, apart from the Magdalen; the chapel was isolated and unlikely to attract too much attention; he could experiment at will and see what resulted.

But whom could he choose? How could he decide? This practical detail had gnawed at him. He could not choose anyone; he had to find someone who, in some way, resembled what the saint must have looked like, which meant he had to know in his mind what that was. Hence his reference to prayer, for he was convinced that God would show him the way.

He had the face of the Magdalen easily, although he did not know where it came from; he sat down one morning and this handsome, tranquil face drew itself on the piece of slate he habitually used for idle jottings. It was not what he expected, certainly, but the pious painter was not one to query the will of Heaven; he had prayed and had then settled down to draw: this had been given him. A pretty face, young and charming even after the necessary artistic improvements had been made to make it conform, just a little, to what such a woman must have looked like. He knew well enough that it was probably the face of someone he had seen, someone glimpsed in the street, for he had an extraordinary memory for such things. But he had not the slightest idea who it was, or when he had seen her. His mind, or God, had joined the face with the subject; that was all he needed to know.

For the blind man, he decided he would allow himself a small jest—nothing impious—but painters were habitually permitted a little leeway in the matter of sinners. He used Olivier for this figure, a piece of whimsicality that made him smile throughout the business of transferring his sketches onto the chapel wall. For Olivier was, surely, such a person, forever seeking wisdom so he could see more clearly. But even he, this man he saw daily when he was in Avignon, he could not get right. He could draw his face, of course, that was easy. But he could not get the pair of them, the saint and the blind man, Olivier and this unknown other, to look anything other than two figures placed side by side, and he wanted more than that.

For Saint Sophia herself would not come to him, and as she was to occupy all the first panel and was to be a major figure in all the others as well, the lack reduced him to despair. He could, of course, have used a conventional image, but knew he must not; he had set out to do something new, and refused to retreat into the ordinary merely because a difficulty came to interrupt his progress.

So Pisano went to the chapel, then came back to Avignon having accomplished little, and there he moaned to Olivier and all the friends who were prepared to listen, prayed incessantly but to no avail. Even renewed visits produced only the barest outline of a face, until one day he was walking through the streets and saw the Blessed Saint Sophia, shopping at a market stall. He noticed nothing at first, and only became aware of her when Olivier turned pale and gasped in surprise.

Pisano noticed and followed his eyes, saw what he saw, and knew that his search was over. That was what the saint would look like, and that was how a blind man given back his sight would react, not with joy, not with a happy smile, but with something close to anguish, with a piercing cry and an expression of something approaching terror.

“Yes,” he cried. “That’s it. Perfect.”

Pisano began to dance up and down in his excitement, making so much noise that passersby turned to look, and the woman herself glanced around in fright and then hurried away.

“Hush, my friend,” Olivier said urgently. “Calm yourself.”

“Why should I be calm? You’re not. I’ve never seen anyone turn so sickly in my life. Who is she? Are you in love with her? You must be. Is this the woman you’ve been putting in all that doggerel you produce?”

“Be quiet,” Olivier snapped, so violently that Pisano for once ceased his otherwise endless babble. “I do not know who she is. But I am going to find out. Stay here. Don’t move, and above all, don’t talk.”

He pushed his friend away and told him to wait quietly at the corner of the street, then walked up to the seller of herbs she had bought from.

“Who was that woman you were talking to?” he asked.

The woman chuckled at his attempt at innocence. “The fat one?” she asked.

“No.”

“The old one with the warts? I have lots of customers.”

“No.”

“It couldn’t possibly be the beautiful one in the old cloak.”

He grinned.

“The one wearing the yellow star,” she added with a smirk as she saw Olivier’s face freeze.

“Fallen in love with a Jew, have we, dearie?” she said with a cackle.

Olivier looked shocked, and stared at the grinning woman. “No,” he said hesitantly. “It could not have been her.” And he retreated before her jeering, contemptuous look.

JULIEN NEVER admitted to himself that Gustave Bloch had done him the greatest service in packing him off back south, that he came alive again as the memory of the northern fog was replaced by the southern early morning mist, burning off as the sun rose, fresh and clear each morning. Despite his profession, despite the fact that he had to spend most of his life indoors, in archives, libraries, or classrooms, Julien was an outdoors creature. This was where he read best, thought best, and worked best, given the chance. As he ate breakfast each morning, the housekeeper bringing him his fresh bread and jam and coffee, or sat on his broad balcony in the soft warmth of the evening looking down at the people below, or when simply walking in Avignon or Montpellier, past the soft, crumbling stone of the buildings, and the ivy and plants that grew along the walls so luxuriantly in the heat, he knew he was content. Still more so when it became too hot or oppressive and he packed a few things and left, taking the train that then still operated to Vaison, and walking the last ten kilometers to his mother’s old house outside Roaix, where he would stay a few days, or weeks or months, reading, talking to old friends he had known all his life, even occasionally helping pick the grapes as he had done as a child. And when he went back to Paris so he could spend necessary time in the libraries, or commune with colleagues, he noticed how his heart shrank, just a little, as the train chuffed north, and how it had shriveled into an inhumane lump by the time he stepped onto the platform at the Gare de Lyon.

He kept tabs on his dinner party friends, though their differing trajectories meant that he saw them only infrequently. The occasional letter, a meeting every year or so, sometimes a holiday skiing with Bernard. He went to Marcel’s wedding—a staunchly Catholic girl from a respectable family of lawyers, just right for him—and again a year later to become acting godfather to their newborn daughter. The world outside the library detained him only a little; the rash of strikes that paralyzed the country in 1936, the riots in Paris he read about; the way the streets became dirtier, voices more harsh and raucous, tempers shorter. He noticed, but his only reaction was to find his work the more comfortable. He was sheltered from the storms, and felt they could never touch him.

Only Marcel, solid and dutiful, had anything that could be called a career in this period. His grandfather had been a prosperous corn merchant, his father an ever poorer miller, whose love of drink exceeded his devotion to duty. Of the three friends, only he had known poverty, and from the age of fourteen, when he had found his father covered in his own vomit with his neck broken at the foot of the stairs, he became determined never to make its acquaintance again. His father had debts, and his creditors, who had long indulged him, were harsh when he died. Marcel came away from the experience with a fear of insecurity and a hatred of those who lend money. Big business, banks, financiers, men like Claude Bronsen, were his natural enemies, who exploited the humble and honest who could not defend themselves. For him the civil service was the perfect home—warm, comforting, and secure. His achievement in rising within it was an immense one, too easily discounted by the likes of Bernard, whose own father—a landowner and rentier whose wealth had begun to form with Napoleon—had protected him from too much reality until the economic hammer blows of the twenties and thirties turned his fortune also to dust.

Bernard indeed forever made fun of Marcel’s sense of duty, his belief in the goodness of governance, the dogged, dull way in which he made his way in the world. The aspiring civil servant was sent hither and thither as opportunity, carefully cultivated contacts, and friendships brought promotions that took him, inch by inch, up the ladder to the point where he even began to be allowed to make decisions. He became a sous-préfet in Finistère, enduring purgatories of weather and food to learn the arcane craft of administration; attached himself to a rising politician and went to Paris with him when his patron won his ministry; was all but unemployed for a year when the Popular Front came to power. His patron worked tirelessly to bring the government down, and was reputed to have strong contacts with those bands who took to the streets to demonstrate against bolshevism, radicalism, and Jews. Marcel took little active interest in any of this: his religion had become administration, paralleling and completing his Catholicism; the belief that, whatever the law, the country had to be carefully and firmly governed.

Indeed, so discreetly did he manage himself that in 1939 he won a better position in a department on the Loire. It was a deserved post, for he was able and diligent and experienced. But by then he had seen how politicians worked at too close quarters, and the sight had bred not a safe cynicism but a holy and much more dangerous disgust that reinforced his belief in the bureaucracy, the sole institution that could save the country from the rabble on the one hand and the politicians on the other.

Bernard, in contrast, did not have to see and learn in order to become disenchanted; Julien thought he had been born so. He was an only child, yet absorbed nothing of the father’s seriousness of purpose or the mother’s sweetness. He drifted, becoming first a poet interested more in the life than the words, then a casual journalist. When the first war came, he avoided any fighting, delaying his entry into the military until 1918, then opted for training as a pilot. He arrived on the front line in October, and never saw an enemy plane.

In his subsequent writings he was scathing of the generation that had caused the conflict, and even—no one knew exactly how—began to acquire a reputation as a hero, responsible for all sorts of bravery talked about yet never actually detailed. His career by the 1930s was successful, and lucrative, for he applied himself to the business of earning a living when his father’s impoverishment required it and even enjoyed the liberation that self-reliance provided. He was engaged in—or at least engaged in commenting upon—all the major political issues of the day, his opinions sought after and valued; in Julien’s view the amount that many were prepared to pay him for his views was remarkable. Marcel had a much less polite response and considered that the constant criticism and cynicism that came from people like Bernard was one of the fundamental symptoms of the weakness in the country. Given the slightest opportunity, he would silence them all, so that men of goodwill would be able to build something worthwhile, rather than seeing all their efforts pulled down and destroyed by those who delighted merely in destruction.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Bernard should support the left-wing Popular Front as much as Marcel detested it; equally inevitable that he should rail against the feebleness of a government that refused to help the republicans of Spain, and that he should go there himself, although as an unofficial observer and informant for politicians rather than as a combatant. He returned once more as a man with a glowing reputation, so that his opinion was still more valued, if not directly sought after, when the war he had predicted finally erupted once more.