Chapter 11

The Discovery of a New World

 

 

 

Journal Entry

 

“Dormoy, I had begun to observe, had been quick to hold his terror in check and had become morbidly curious about the kinds of forbidden things that this man must know. Was this the ‘New Learning’ that has come bursting forth from the rediscovery of what the Greeks and Arabs knew a thousand years ago? Did Doctor Michel possess medicinal and arcane secrets and procedures that could cure the plague, as people were saying about him? Did he have visions of the future as clear as his knowledge of the past?

“Testagrossa didn’t think so. ‘You don’t really believe that he sees the future, do you?’ he asked rhetorically, with his best theological frown, ‘that there are things which are destined to happen, no matter what we do to forestall them? What, then, is free will, if our life’s courses are determined by an inexorable fate, no matter what we do? That would mean that none of us is responsible, either for his actions or for their consequences!’

“Gaudin looked amused, as usual, searching for the practical side of every question. ‘That would be convenient. If anything goes wrong, we can always blame it on Fate and say it was out of our hands.’

“‘Still, we would want to take the credit if something were to turn out well, wouldn’t we?’ I added, trying to take the conversation to the next level. ‘We can’t very well take authorship of our successes if we blame Destiny for our failures, can we?’

“‘I suppose not,’ said Dormoy, ‘but, if there is no fixed or predetermined future, then what is it that he sees, assuming he sees anything at all?’

“I seized upon the question. ‘If we see the past, as if looking in a mirror, at what is already behind us, we can say that we are viewing something that truly was, and if we see it accurately, it should always look the same, regardless of what we do as a consequence. If we view the future, however, as in a window in front of us, through which we see that which has not yet arrived, what is it that we see, if it never happens because we subsequently alter what otherwise would have been our chosen course of action?’

“‘It’s not the future,’ admitted Dormoy, ‘because it is not what will eventually happen.’

“‘It’s nothing’ said Gaudin, ‘but shadows and dreams.’

“‘Then, are they real, or just our imagination?’ I asked.

“That was when I noticed a marked change in the hitherto withdrawn and passive behaviour of my Provençal friend. Dormoy began voraciously seeking out anything that smacked of the occult or any area of knowledge that was forbidden, discouraged or in any way discredited by conventional academia.

“As if awakened from a kind of melancholic stupor, Dormoy began suggesting visits and outings. He began pestering Testagrossa to arrange a meeting with Brother Anselm, the pharmacologist at the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, where he harangued the helpful monk with a barrage of questions about the medicinal uses of this or that herb and all of the derivatives and poultices that he knew to be effective in treating fevers and skin eruptions.

“Anselm told him it was all to be found in ancient volumes, translated from the Arabic back in the 12th century and carefully preserved in the enormous library of Sainte-Geneviève. After much pestering, the master of herbal remedies agreed to introduce him to Brother Lawrence, the librarian. With both Testagrossa and Anselm as character references, Dormoy was able to gain entry for the four of us to the abbey’s massive library.

“Between the Chapter House and the abbatial church, rose a long “T” shaped building looking, from the outside, very much like a church without a steeple. Behind ponderous oak doors, set in a large, bas-relief ornamented central pointed arch and two smaller arches, stretched a long rectangular room with a high, vaulted Gothic ribbed ceiling and bounded by walls supported externally by flying buttresses. The walls were almost entirely taken up with a series of high, pointed windows, with clear, transparent glass panes, the better to bath the room in natural illumination throughout the daylight hours. There was a central aisle, on either side of which stood rows of long, heavy, oak tables and tall, straight backed oak chairs.

“Some of the tables featured portable lecterns, to hold volumes for reading and copying. We could also discern ink wells and quills, together with small thin bladed knives and blotting pads. There were only about three or four monks apparently copying that day, and eight or nine more reading and scribbling notes on small pieces of slate.

“Directly inside the main entrance, the four of us and Brother Anselm were met by a tall, thin monk in his early thirties, with a thick mop of reddish brown hair, surrounding his tonsure, threatening at any moment to overrun it. Anselm had, of course, told him to expect visitors, and he welcomed us with a broad smile and a wave of recognition for the lumbering, dark haired Italian.

“‘Welcome to our scriptorium and reading room,’ said the affable librarian, drawing his hand in a circle towards the expanse of the room about them. ‘Here is where we copy the books we have borrowed, before returning them.’ He was gesturing left and right, as they walked down the central aisle, the full length of the large room.

“‘The great monastic libraries of Europe (of which we are one of the foremost) used to have an elaborate exchange program going on for centuries. Otherwise, if you wanted to read a particular work that was held in the library at Bologna, for example, you had to go to Bologna to read it, which is, of course, not at all practical. So what we did was to make lists of the books that we had, and the other libraries made lists of what they had. Then we would do an exchange of the books we wanted and copy the books we had borrowed, before returning them to the library from which we had borrowed them. This way, works could be made available all over and not just in one collection.

“‘Of course, now that Paris and other major cities have licensed printers and modern presses, books are made available much faster and our little network is no longer needed. Still, we have some famous illuminists whose work remains in demand. Do you see old Brother Norbert, over there? He’s been copying a Latin edition of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans for over three years now. His eyes are starting to go, though, and I guess that Plutarch’s Lives will be his last book.’

“‘I never knew that librarians were allowed to talk so much!’ commented Gaudin, with a grin directed at Testagrossa.

“Brother Lawrence let out a hearty laugh. ‘Please forgive my going on like this,’ he replied, still relishing his own laughter. ‘Mine is a mostly silent profession. So when I get a new audience, I take full advantage of it.’

“By then, they had walked the length of the scriptorium’s central aisle, at the end of which was an interior, bas-relief covered façade surrounding another ponderous oak door. This inner portal led into the transept or cross section of the building. Brother Lawrence turned a latch and pushed the door open, using his right shoulder to exert additional force. Before entering, however, he turned to his guests and, indicating a sconce hanging on the wall just to the left of the door, signalled to Testagrossa to take its lighted candle, and hold it for us.

“They stepped from a world bathed in sunlight to a place of perpetual obscurity, the darkness only occasionally relieved by small circular halos of faint yellow candle light. Once their eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness, they saw, around them, a huge rectangular room lined on all sides by shelf after shelf of books, ranging from the floor to the dizzying heights of the ceiling. On both sides of the room, circular stair cases lead to yet another height where, Brother Librarian told them, there was another room of like dimensions, the walls of which were also filled with books, and above that, yet another, likewise filled with the treasure of centuries.

“Never had I seen so many books in one place before. I stood still, closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

“‘Do you smell that, all of you?’ asked Brother Lawrence, a broad smile spreading over his rapturous face. ‘That’s the smell of old books, the perfume of wisdom, the intoxicating vapours of knowledge, coming down to us from the ages.’

“‘I think you’re in heaven already, Brother’, said Testagrossa, seeing what he imagined to be the transformation that the human face would undergo, overcome by some ecstatic vision.

“‘You see a librarian’s glimpse of heaven, and his nightmare of the flames of hell! My greatest fear and my constant preoccupation is with fire. Can you imagine how quickly flames could destroy these works, irretrievably? How in an instant, all of these treasures would be lost to us and to future generations, who will visit this spot and find – nothing?

“‘Night after night, I wake in a sweat after such terrifying dreams, and I am not there to stop them. I see these books consumed in flames, as angry men and women, with lurid torches in their hands and cries of “Revolution” on their lips, burn this entire edifice to the ground.’

“The librarian’s look of ecstasy was replaced by the look of a child, frightened to death of the dark and what he could or could not see within it, and I was reminded, once again, of my own night terrors.

“Dormoy drew us back to palpable reality with his insatiable curiosity: ‘How many volumes have you here, Brother?’

“‘Over 12,000, after my last cataloguing.’ Brother Lawrence felt more himself again, thanks to the distraction of an answerable question. ‘Come with me,’ he said to us all, his face brightening again with the prospect of another opportunity to share his solitary kingdom.

“He lead us to a small indentation in the shelving that revealed an open alcove, in which there was just enough room for a desk, a straight backed chair and a range of shelves in the wall behind. On the desk we could see a stained blotter, an ink well and quills, and four very large, bound volumes. This, we gathered, was Brother Lawrence’s office.

“The librarian pushed aside his writing materials, seized the top most volume and excitedly opened it, facing the book outward, toward us. ‘Anyone can collect books and stack them in an old building,’ he began, his old ebullience having been completely recovered. ‘The real challenge of being a librarian is knowing what you have and being able to locate and retrieve it on demand. That’s what separates the great libraries from the dusty, old private collections!’

“Dormoy and I took the candle stick from Testagrossa and leaned in closer to see.

“‘Look here – and be careful with that candle. This is a catalogue of every book we have, classified in five ways, according to the ancient system of Aristotle himself, and mapped, by this method, to a particular area and shelf location in the library. Our books are categorised by:

 

1) Who – the author, if known, according to which we assign it the first two letters of the author’s name, followed by,

2) What – the subject to which we have assigned a series of numbers, 1000 – 1999, 2000 – 2999, etc., corresponding, respectively, to Philosophy, Theology, Natural Science, the Poetics, Rhetoric, History, Mathematics and Philology. This number is followed by:

3) Where – two letters for the country where the work was composed, followed by,

4) When - a numeric value for the century of composition, and finally,

5) How – for the language of the version we have on our collection (Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, or one of the modern vulgar languages). Of course, it’s possible to have two versions of the same book: one in Latin and the other in the original Greek, for example, in which case there would be a different language code in the catalogue for each version.’

 

“‘Thus, we can assign a unique value to each volume and assign that value to a unique position in our array of shelves.’

“‘And by sharing your catalogue with other libraries,” I added, “anyone can know where they can find what they are looking for and what they may want to copy for their own collection.’

“‘Except that, if it takes three years to copy one book,’ calculated Dormoy, ‘depending on how many copyists you have at any one time, it would take hundreds of years to copy all of what you have here.’

“‘Librarians are forcibly a very patient breed,’ reflected Brother Lawrence. ‘And God has given us the printing press to get us out of this dilemma, hasn’t He?’ concluded the librarian, with a tone of ambivalence, in his voice.

“‘And just in time,’ reflected Gaudin, thinking of how few of the tables in the scriptorium were actually in use by copyists.

“‘Now, let’s put this catalogue to the test and see if we can find just what you young scholars are interested in reading today.’

“‘I would like to see a copy of Aristotle’s Poetics.’ I was the first to speak up, remembering my resolution upon seeing The Murder of Gonzago enacted at the St Germain Fair.

“‘In Latin or the original Greek?’ asked the librarian, happy to have a chance to give an actual demonstration of his catalogue’s capacity to enable quick retrievals.

“My Latin is much more serviceable than my Greek, I’m afraid,” I admitted.

“‘And you?’ Brother Lawrence asked of Gaudin, the visibly least impressed of his listeners.

“‘I would like a copy of Caesar’s Commentarii de bellum Gallicum,’ he replied, feeling quite impressed with himself.”

“‘The Latin is simple and sufficiently bloody,’ replied the librarian, without much fanfare.

“‘I’ll take another look at Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, said Testagrossa before quickly adding: ‘and a copy of the Carmina of Catullus.’

“‘And what is our young theologian’s interest in licentious Roman love poetry?’ asked Brother Lawrence, with a raised eyebrow over his still broad smile.

“‘I just want to be able to give some advice to young Howard, here, who has taken a hand at writing love poetry of his own,’ said Testagrossa, trying to look as disinterested as he could.

“‘We always seek to encourage young poets,’ mused the librarian with an indulgent smile, ‘and young lovers need no encouragement at all.’ He lingered a moment with this thought, and then he seemed to dismiss the idea and quickly turned back to his catalogue.

“Dormoy had been silent and pensive, all this time. When Brother Lawrence turned to him, the sad youth’s eyes refused to make contact with those of the librarian. ‘I’d like to see a copy, in Latin, of the works of Jabir Ibn Hayyan. Do you have such a book?’

“‘Ah yes, the alchemist, Geberus, as we call him in Latin. We have a collection of his works, although they are not included in any course of study of which I am aware. Officially, we do not have these books available for students, but because you are a friend of Brother Anselm and young Giambelli, here, I can make certain titles available for your study. I, myself, have never been of the opinion that books, in and of themselves, are either good or bad, in the moral sense of the term. It depends on what you do with the knowledge that you gain from them.’

“‘And what do you plan to do with the knowledge of Alchemy, Claude Dormoy?’ demanded Testagrossa, as if the salvation of his immortal soul depended upon his answer.

“‘I just want to know.’ Dormoy’s expression changed from defensive to defiant. ‘I want to know more because we understand so little of this vast world, for all our knowledge and learning, and people die every day because we simply do not know how to save them.’

“‘There are other ways of saving them and other avenues of knowledge, apart from Alchemy,’ suggested Testagrossa.

“‘Then I want to know them all, including what is forbidden. I want nothing hidden from me,’ said Dormoy, with a decisive setting of his jaw.

“Brother Lawrence shrugged and began searching in his index for the location of the requested volumes. Having made some quick notes to himself, he turned, without a word, and disappeared up the staircase to the left, to the locations he had mapped. We went out again to the scriptorium and found a table where we could spread out and catch the afternoon sunlight, the better to read in comfort.

“After ten minutes, or so, the oak door from the inner sanctum creaked open, and Brother Lawrence re-emerged stooping under the weight of a stack of volumes, which he balanced, like a juggler as he sidled to the table where the four of us had found places. He handed out the books as a mother hands sweets to children, pleased to see them happy but careful to guard against excess. At Dormoy’s chair, however, he stopped.

“‘Our collection of Geberus is actually quite meagre, but here is a compendium, in Latin, simply called The 112 Books, containing Geber’s version of the Tabula Smaragdina.’

“’The Emerald Tablet,’ translated Dormoy, his hand cradling the tome, while his fingers traced the lettering on the binding.

“‘I’d send you to St. Victor’s monastery, just over the wall from the Cardinal Lemoine, but I don’t believe their collection is any better. I have another idea, though. I’ll go back to my office and write you a letter of recommendation to Brother Sixtus, at the Convent of the Celestines, across the river. I am told he has quite a collection on Alchemy and Astrology that the brothers are holding for the Queen. I’ll put in my note to Brother Sixtus that you are doing some research for Sainte-Geneviève’s library, and he’ll give you all the titles you want.’

“‘Thank you, Brother,’ mumbled the boy, never raising his eyes from the book in his hand.

“After, once again, caressing, the leather binding as one would sooth a spirited stallion by stroking his neck and mane, Dormoy reverently opened and leafed through the volume. He found the page whereon was sketched an illustration of a luminous tablet of polished green stone embossed with 14 lines of text, like the commandments of another god. The new devotee began to scribble them down, but they were just disjointed phrases, here a clause leading directly into another, there a statement having nothing to do either with what went before or what followed. Perhaps it was a code or secret language that could only be understood by an initiate, or perhaps there really is one true element from which everything, in the heavens, on the earth and below the earth is derived. Perhaps there really is a process by which earth can be distilled from fire, precious substances can be separated from the gross, and the Giver of life itself, with the Sun for its father and the Moon for its mother, sends its eternal gift on the wings of the wind to the womb and heavy breasts of Mother Earth!

“At last recovering from his ecstatic reverie, the self-conscious youth glanced to his right, where Testagrossa’s large head hung falcon-like over his own tome. Dormoy more than half expected to see a scowl of theological disapprobation piercing the air between them from his friend’s furrowed and prominent brow. Instead, he caught an abstracted, wistful look, as of eyes also focused on some distant and unknowable thing. At the same time, if he was not mistaken, he saw the stocky youth’s mouth moving and heard a hushed, rhythmic murmur of words, though he could not make out their meaning. Unable to make any sense of what he was witnessing, Dormoy looked over to where I had also raised my eyes from my contemplation of the willing suspension of disbelief to share the spectacle of Testagrossa in ecstasy.

“I leaned sidelong to get a better look at the open volume in front of my absorbed friend. It was not Aquinas. Oh no; it was none other than Catullus, the Roman poet of erotic love, whose work had so moved the bushy haired youth. I read the lines I could see above the outspread hand of Testagrossa, noting them carefully on my sheet containing some Aristotelian aphorisms and recorded them in my journal, with my own English rendering, as follows:

 

Passer, deliciae meae puellae, Quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere, Cui primum digitum dare appententi, Et acris solet incitare morsus. Cum desiderio meo nitenti Carum nescio quid lubet iocari, Et solaciolum sui doloris,

Oh sparrow, delight of my girl. Whom she bounces on her lap in play. With index finger pressing near to thee, Just to provoke sharp, playful bites. All the time, my most ardent desire is To offer her some sort of kindly play, To give solace to her sorrow.

 

“‘Strange,’ I reflected, ‘that although Dormoy’s reverence for the arcane gibberish of alchemy came as no surprise, given his recent strange turn of character, nothing could have prepared me for the spectacle of the thick headed seminarian’s becoming transfixed by the image of a girl playing with a pet bird.’

“I found my friend’s reverie quite contagious. I thought of Julie, who is definitely not to be paired with a sparrow, or a lark, or any bird found in a maiden’s garden warmed by the morning sun. No, Julie would prefer a creature of the night. She would play with the nightingale and not the lark! I was transfixed by the pristine innocence of the scene, the allure of such a moment of secret sweetness.

“I immediately tried to shake off my errant thoughts, reproaching myself for my idleness. It’s strange how our minds wander, when we’re supposed to be working. This mood, I considered, belongs to daydreams and not to serious study.

“That afternoon, over mutton soup and beer, both Dormoy and I confronted our heavy set friend about the whole incident. We made the mistake, however, of bringing the subject up in front of Gaudin, who had been sitting at the far end of our table and had missed the whole exchange.

“The ring leader roared with laughter, when he heard me read back the lines I had jotted down. ‘I’d really like to know what’s going on in that fat head of yours.’ Gaudin gave the Italian youth an appraising look, as if seeing him in a new light. ‘It would be a mistake to underestimate you,’ observed Gaudin with something approaching admiration.

“‘What’s to be concerned about?’ Testagrossa lifted his palms carelessly in the air over his head. ‘I love birds, as did St. Francis from Assisi,’ said the Italian youth, without regard to the other personage in the poem.

“‘And do you like to amuse young girls with your easy wit?’ Gaudin cut close to the quick, trying to get the appropriate reaction from his friend.

“‘I am as renowned for my easy wit as are you for your tact and subtlety,’ retorted Testagrossa, having summoned up all of his customary detachment.

“Later that evening, the four of us returned to the narrow streets and alleys that flowed like tributaries into the Place Maubert, to a tavern called La Coullière de Bois, a place that had been recommended by an acquaintance of Dormoy’s. The tables were of the same rough, unfinished wood that you’d find in almost any other tavern on the Left Bank. We seized upon an obscure table which had some crude lettering carved into the side where I was sitting. On closer examination, it proved to be the Latin expression: ‘CAVE CANEM’ (‘BEWARE OF THE DOG.’) I glanced over at the room’s central fireplace, where I discerned what looked like a darker piece of gloom, a kind of shapeless shadow which turned out to be an ancient sheep dog that seemed to have lain in state, on that precise spot, for longer than any of the regular patrons could remember.

“Gaudin caught the eye of a serving wench, who was stepping nimbly over the spreading haunches of the slumbering beast. While returning the youth’s glance, she missed a step and landed squarely on the dog’s outstretched front leg, spilling a good portion of Belgian lager over the animal’s eyes and snout. Although the ruffled waitress was curling her lip and mumbling expletives in the dog’s general direction, the beast remained still as death, not so much as twitching under the weight of her foot fall and the sprinkle of beer.

“’Surely,’ I thought, ‘the creature was either dead or in some kind of comatose state, not even deigning to respond to verbal or liquid insult flung his way, without the slightest provocation on his part. Only in such a state would the beast be able to maintained his peaceful dominion over the damp piece of dirt floor which his dishevelled coat continued to cover.’

“‘I think this carved message is intended more for the serving wench than for anyone else in here tonight,’ I remarked, as the girl, still scowling, approached our table. She wore a look that announced her clear intention to hurl her contempt upon us, if she could not take out her frustration on the dog.

“‘Is there not a little kindness, gentlemen, for one upon whom misfortune has fallen?’ It fell, of course, to Testagrossa to say something soothing to assuage her embarrassment, but the mood was spoiled by laughter emanating from the nearby tables.

“Dormoy was the only one of the surrounding company who was neither laughing nor making any effort to assuage the girl’s embarrassment. He had put on his familiar absorbed, distracted look, as if he were attending to another scene neither humorous nor near at hand. Gaudin, anxious to deflect everyone’s attention from the plight of the angry female, grabbed Dormoy’s shoulder, to wrench him back to this time and place.

“‘Hey Dormoy, tell us what you were reading this afternoon, so we can be sure to avoid it. This place would be a million laughs if we all put on your long cow face!’

“Dormoy looked about disdainfully and jerked his shoulder free from Gaudin’s grasp. ‘I can’t expect you to understand the mystery of the Oneness of all things, can I?’ remarked Dormoy, his eyes lifted above the earthly heads around him.

“‘The “Oneness of all things”?’ jeered Gaudin, doing his best to imitate Dormoy’s Provençal accent. ‘Your Master of Gibberish teaches, I take it, that all things in the universe are composed of the same fundamental base element? That fire and earth are the same, that water and air are the same, despite all of our experience to the contrary, despite all that Aristotle and the great masters have taught us for centuries?’

“‘He does,’ replied Dormoy with quiet, grim determination and that setting of his jaw which I had noted so often in him, of late. ‘There is a way, he hints, that with careful separation and re-mixing we can isolate what is the essence of anything and change any substance into another’ added Dormoy as if reciting a new and more powerful creed.

“‘He “hints’?’ Testagrossa seized upon the point as if he had caught his friend in a deliberate lie. ‘If this is such an important principle, why does he not say it outright, instead of cloaking his teachings in riddles and an endless series of clues and innuendoes?’

“Dormoy ignored the question, disdaining to elucidate something about which Geber, himself, had with such determination remained silent. Instead, he raced to the next level of speculative wonder. ‘What if we can transform evil body humours into good ones? What if we can make diseased organs into healthy members? What if we can make something – someone – already dead, alive again?’

“Testagrossa registered genuine shock and concern, not anger, towards his friend. ‘Do you have any idea what you are asking for? I know your intentions are good, Claude, that you want this knowledge, this power, to save lives and not to destroy them, but you are seeking the fruit of the tree of good and evil knowledge, you are seeking the power of Faustus, and you are willing to set loose forces that can turn on you and destroy you!’

“‘Doctor Michel commands those forces,’ said Dormoy his voice emitting a throaty awe.

“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he skulks in terror of the King, the Queen and their entire entourage.’

“‘It is the Italian Queen who shares his appetite for forbidden knowledge,’ said Dormoy, ‘who urges him to share his dark secrets with her.’

“‘The Queen can protect herself,’ said Gaudin, showing genuine concern for his friend, ‘but your uncle is not the Pope and you don’t have powerful friends and kin to protect you from the fowl winds that will blow.’

“Dormoy set his face and stuck his jaw out to the world. ‘I’m willing to take that chance. Someone has to!’

“I said nothing. My thoughts, upon hearing Dormoy’s incredible hypothesis, immediately turned to the image of my father, disappearing down the road for the last time, the whirlwinds of snow kicked up by his horse trailing behind him like smoke from a smouldering fire. ‘Call him back,’ I thought, ‘from the dust of death, from the headsman’s axe, from the smouldering fires of time.’

“‘You all worry too much,’ protested Testagrossa, putting his finger on a theoretical point on the table in front of him. ‘You’re either re-living the past or struggled to know and reshape the future. If you want to be at peace, find some focal point in the present world, where we are today, and rest your gaze on it. We are alive, now. When we are focused on some tiny spot of beauty, what happened yesterday doesn’t matter and what will come tomorrow hasn’t been born yet. Stop trying so hard and the light will come to you.’

“‘Now you sound like a real mystic,’ I said. ‘Have you found your centre of peace, my friend?’

“Testagrossa was about to say something, but he stopped himself. ‘Not yet’ he admitted, looking somewhat deflated at being unable to follow his own advice.

“‘Me neither,’ I admitted, ‘but I hope that my father found such a moment.’

“‘I believe he did.’ Testagrossa was not simply trying to find comforting words for his friend. His face projected a quiet certainty, so peaceful that it could not have been feigned.

“‘I wish I had your faith,’ I replied, my voice having descended almost to a whisper.

“‘Wishes won’t make beggars into knights,’ said Gaudin with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘The having is all, and the only certainty is what you can grasp in your hands.’

“‘You will always be a blunt instrument in a small surgical theatre,’ said Dormoy finally out of patience with the older boy.”

 

***

 

The candle light must have sputtered out on Howard’s makeshift table in the cramped room at the Collège du Cardinal Lemoine on rue St. Victor, because the narrative of this day ended abruptly on the yellow and jagged edged page before me.