Free Heretic Dawn by Robert Merle

Angelina, and as constant in your love as you are inconstant in your body, sowing your seed to the winds.”
    “I, Madame?”
    “Don’t deny it! Whom are these coins destined for if not some chambermaid?”
    “This chambermaid, as you call her, is named ‘doctor of medicine’.”
    “How now? It costs you 100 écus to be promoted to doctor?”
    “One hundred and thirty! I still need to find the other thirty! A candidate’s expenses are infinite!”
    “If it’s thirty écus you need, I can give them to you out of my own purse here and now.”
    “Oh, Madame!” I cried. “You’re the most beautiful angel on this earth, but I’d be ashamed to accept them.”
    “What?” she exclaimed, her eye suddenly darkening with anger. “You would refuse my money because I can’t enrol in your ‘schoolof sighs’? Do we have to get to that point in our relationship before you consider me your friend?”
    So I had to accept. She would have been angry, I’ll warrant, given that the sweet sex are so infinitely giving once their hearts have been touched, if only in friendship. For there had been no intimacies between us, other than a few pecks on her dimples and nothing but a very rapid little kiss on her lips but with both hands behind my back, which is how she’d ordered it. So I left the Joyeuse residence greatly burdened by gold coins, but unburdened of my worries and overcome with gratitude for these two wenches. However, now that my purse was filled, I had to empty it straightaway, however much it cost. I had to bring my doctor-father Chancellor Saporta his due, that is, thirty francs’ honorarium, for it was he who would preside over my triduanes . I was very hungry as I did so to catch sight of Typhème, the beautiful young bride of this greybeard, but of the sweetling there was not a trace. Saporta was a veritable Turk, and kept his wife closed in his room for fear that someone might steal her away—or even steal a look at her—so that I went away with nothing to show for my thirty écus, not even the pleasure of seeing her or even a word of thanks.
    Dean Bazin—whom my schoolfellow Merdanson had named “the foetus” since he was so small, emaciated, puny and sickly; what’s more, he was venomous in look and speech—greeted me even less warmly. Since I was the “son” of Chancellor Saporta he hated me as much as he did my “father”.
    Moreover, since his plan to preside over my triduanes had been undercut by Saporta, he felt cheated out of the thirty-écu honorarium, being as miserly and snivelling as any mother’s son in Provence. Which tells you with what grimaces and gnashing of teeth he pocketed my two écus and ten sols, predicting in his whistling voice what a stormy and vexatious time I’d have of it at my triduanes .
    Dr Feynes, the only Catholic among the four royal professors, received my offering with his customary beneficence. Wan and pale, he was even more than usually self-effacing, feeling himself to be a timid little papist mouse who’d wandered into a Huguenot hole. I could expect no vexations from him, but no help either: he scarcely opened his muzzle and weighed but little in our disputations.
    As for Dr Salomon d’Assas, whom I’d saved for last, he lavished more thanks for his two écus, ten sols than if I’d laid at his feet all the treasures of the king whose name he bore (though of course he had dropped this name in favour of d’Assas, the name of his lands in Frontignan). He received me once again under the leafy boughs of his garden and offered me some of the delicious nectar he drew from his vines along with some pastries baked by his chambermaid Zara, who looked so languidly graceful that I could have swallowed her whole after tasting her pies. But that was impossible and would have been downright felonious, given how much Dr d’Assas loved her and trusted in my friendship.
    “Ah, Pierre de Siorac!” he warned. “Watch out! The man who’s predicted stormy and