Free Heretic Dawn by Robert Merle Page A

vexatious times for you has set innumerable pitfalls for you. Every one of his questions will be a trap! You can’t escape it.”
    “But what can I do? How can I get around it?”
    “Listen! Here’s what you must do,” continued d’Assas, who was round and benign from head to foot. Saying this, however, he opened his mouth, but suddenly fell silent.
    “Venerable doctor, for heaven’s sake, tell me!”
    “I don’t know,” he said, looking me over with his dark eyes, so mild yet so cunning. “Should I tell you?”
    “Tell me, I beg you!”
    “Promise me you’ll tell no one.”
    “I swear!”
    “It’s my belief, Pierre, that to pose a series of insidious questions to the candidate—questions on the most difficult, debatable and obscure points—is a nasty trick. Do you agree?”
    “Of course!”
    “Then, Pierre, the best defence against a ruse is a better one, yes?”
    “Naturally!”
    “Pierre, listen up! The man in question pretends to know Greek, but in fact never mastered it. He quotes things but all awry. So, my friend, between now and tomorrow you must memorize the passages from Hippocrates and Galen in your text, and when this so-and-so asks you a trick question, just answer calmly in Greek and with the casual air of a player taking a pawn.”
    “But what if the Greek text has no relation to the question?”
    “Ah, but that’s the beauty of it! Rabelais used this same trick with his most sticky debaters! And if they knew Greek, he’d stump them with his Hebrew!”
    “Aha!” I laughed. “What an excellent trick and hilarious joke!”
    And, looking at each other knowingly over our goblets of his delicious wine, we suddenly burst out in an uncontrollable belly laugh.
    Later that same day I visited the doctors Pinarelle, Pennedepié and La Vérune, who were not members of the Royal College of Medicine, but ordinary doctors who gave occasional lectures at the school and were admitted to judging panels as a courtesy by Dr Saporta, though I would happily have done without their attendance, since they cost me six écus, thirty sols, which brought the honoraria paid to my judges to forty-three écus.
    But that was not sufficient. On the eve of my triduanes I had gifts brought to the lodgings of each of the seven doctors that had been prescribed by an immemorial custom as to both quantity and quality:
A block of marzipan weighing at least four pounds, well iced with almond paste and stuffed with dried fruits.
Two pounds of sugared almonds.
Two candles made of good and sweet-smelling wax of at least a thumb’s thickness.
A pair of gloves.
    These offerings were delivered to the seven lodgings by the beadle Figairasse, to whom I paid a commission of two écus, twenty sols, both for the delivery and for his role in introducing and seating the visitors at my exams—as well as for, to my greater glory, sounding the college’s bells when I had been proclaimed a doctor, and finally for preceding me through the streets of Montpellier, dressed in full armour, to announce throughout the city my triumph.
    And in further obedience to ancient customs, I hired four musicians to play the fife, drum, trumpet and viol, and I brought them at sundown on the eve of my triduanes to serenade the doctors I’ve mentioned. Almost all of them condescended to open their windows and throw a few sols to the musicians (whom I’d paid handsomely), and acknowledge my deep bow while their wives clapped courteously. However, at Saporta’s house, Typhème, no doubt on orders from her husband, did not show herself. And as for the lodgings of Dean Bazin, they remained as closed as the heart of a miser, the dean no doubt wishing to make it clear just how detestable he found me. As I took my leave of the musicians, I reminded them to be at my parade three days thence, for when the beadle went before me, they were supposed to precede him playing happy tunes as would befit a triumph.
    You must not imagine, dear reader, that with these