‘He can’t have walked away empty-handed, and I’m not only referring to money. He must have joined the Swords of the King complete with dossiers of information. That’s why he was accepted onto the committee! He’s the reason they are so well informed. Thanks to him they continually avoid detection by the police! He must have given them the names of the investigators in charge of tracking royalist organisations, and the names of their informers ... Perhaps he still has friends in the Ministry of Civilian Police, who continue to keep him informed. Now I understand why Joseph and Talleyrand chose me. It’s because I have nothing at all to do with any of the imperial police forces.’
‘That’s all I have on Honoré de Nolant.’
‘The group must be suspicious of him. They make him pay for his treachery by giving him the dirty jobs. He’s obliged to prove his loyalty by spilling blood. He’s a professional traitor: a royalist, a revolutionary, a republican, an imperialist and then a royalist again ... It must have been he who realised that the best way to disrupt the defence of Paris would be to murder those in charge. He understood the situation from the inside. He must have been the
one to suggest Colonel Berle! So at the very least, he was an accomplice to the crime!’
‘Calm down ... you’re in a state!’
‘At least the others are following an ideology. Even Charles de Varencourt is loyal to his passion for gambling. But Honoré de Nolant...’
‘If he’s arrested, the police will hang him. Unless the army has him shot before that.’
‘I can’t see any connection between him and fire.’
They reached the summit of Montmartre and Paris stretched out before them. Louis XIV had stamped his mark on the city with his grandiose architectural schemes: the golden dome of the Invalides shimmered like a second sun — sparking off dreams that were immediately quenched by fear — Place Vendome ... Napoleon had done the same, to tell the world that he was as great as the Sun King: with the column in Place Vendome, the Arc de Triomphe still under construction, the Eglise de la Madeleine imitating a Greco-Roman temple, the opening up of Rue de Rivoli, the bridges of
Austerlitz, lena and des Arts ... Paris was starting to look like a vast chessboard on which the rich accumulated palaces and other playthings like so many sumptuous pawns.
‘And finally, there’s Jean-Baptiste de Chatel. He was born in 1766,
to a noble family from Orleans. He entered the Cistercian Abbey of
Pagemont in the Loiret at an early age. He wasn’t like you: he really
wanted to become a monk. But he soon got himself expelled by
the Abbey, discreetly, on the pretext of ill health, because the
Church wanted to avoid a scandal. Why do you think he did that?’
‘I spent four years in an abbey and you’re asking me why? I could
talk all day on that subject! Because he wanted to see the world,
because he had fallen in love, because he wanted to have children,
because he was attracted to women, or men, or he’d lost his faith »
‘No, it wasn’t any of those things. It was because he wanted to reform everything: the running order of Mass, the ordination of priests, the functioning of the Vatican ...’
‘A reformer?’
‘Yes, but a conservative reformer. He found the other monks didn’t pray devoutly enough to God and that Pope Pius VI and Louis XVI were too moderate.’
Margont shook his head, incredulous.
‘Pius VI, too moderate? You mean that Jean-Baptiste de Chatel was more royalist than the King and more Catholic than the Pope? How is that possible?’
‘Well, here’s an example. He wanted to ban all religions other than Catholicism.’
‘Wonderful! He wanted to ignite religious wars! What else?’
‘He was adamant that atheism should also be banned, and that education could only be provided by priests; he campaigned for renewed crusades to liberate Jerusalem.’
‘Oh, so that’s why the other members refer to him as “the crusader”. He’s a bigot!’
‘In 1791 he was keen to escape revolutionary France and considered the French clergy were too soft, so he went to Spain. He made an impressive start there: he was admitted to the Abbey of
Aljanfe, near Madrid, where he became the heir apparent to the abbot. In fact, many of the Spanish clergy shared his views that the French religious community was too moderate. His intransigent sermons were very appealing.’
‘But I wager he rapidly overtook even the most fanatical Spanish.’ ‘Fie did indeed. In Spain, you don’t take liberties with Catholicism, and in 1797 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, accused of heresy because some of his interpretations of the Bible diverged from dogma. For example, he stirred up controversy about Christ’s poverty. According to the Bible, Christ had no personal or shared possessions. And it follows from this that the Catholic Church should also take a vow of poverty.’
‘That’s a long-standing debate that worries the Catholic Church a great deal. In the Middle Ages, Franciscans were frequently burnt at the stake merely for raising the question.’
‘His trial lasted three years.’
‘That’s incredible!’
‘It’s because he defended himself so vigorously. He used his
theological knowledge to confound the Inquisitors, he contested every point and argued ceaselessly. He kept going back to what he called the original Bible — that’s to say the most ancient texts in old Hebrew, in Aramaic and Ancient Greek - and referring to what he considered translation errors.’
Margont was astounded. He himself was quite capable of insolence - it was a typically revolutionary characteristic - and so he was always impressed when he heard about someone even more daring than he.
He said, as much to himself as to Lefine, ‘So in fact, he was saying to the Inquisitors - the most fanatical of fanatics - that they had the wrong Bible and he had the correct one, so he was the only man on earth to have access to the word of God.’
‘I would have loved to see that! And because inquisitorial trials are scrupulously recorded, the Inquisitors were obliged to answer him. Besides, Chatel drew attention to the irregularities in his trial. He knew all about inquisitorial proceedings because he believed that the Inquisition should be re-established in all countries.
During his time at the Abbey of Pagemont, he had worked on updating the proceedings - although no one had asked him to. Apparently he was already assuming that he would be the new inquisitor general of France.’
‘But where did he find the time? Monks are busy all day long: praying, listening to sermons in the chapterhouse, working, praying again, reading the Holy Scriptures, listening to the word of God ... They rarely have even short periods of free time.’
‘It doesn’t say in police reports how he found time.’
‘He must have done it at night...’
‘At the end of the trial the Spanish Inquisition condemned him to death. But the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after an appeal was made to the newly elected pope, Pius VII. Chatel rotted in a Madrid gaol, dying a slow death while reading the Bible the Inquisitors were happy to let him have. It was Napoleon who eventually saved his life in 1808 when he suppressed the Inquisition after he besieged Spain.’
‘Chatel wasn’t very grateful. He thinks the Emperor is the
Antichrist. I thought he was joking when he said that, but now I’m sure that everything he said he meant literally.’
The police lost track of him after he was freed, and I haven’t been able to do much better. He only reappeared in 1813, in Paris, as a member of the Swords of the King. I can’t see any link between him and fire either.’