She cared for his presence a great deal, did Madeleine, and the respect she showed him was not altogether happy for a Brahmin husband to bear. She felt that here was a man that possessed a secret knowledge of something, some magic that could make mountains move, or the seas recede. And Georges was too distant and too whole to think he had any other feeling for Madeleine but the most brotherly; he almost felt a paternal affection for her, and besides he liked being with her. Her agnosticism was childish, he knew, for her innocence was so great. God could not but inhabit where innocence was. In fact the moment Madeleine acknowledged her innocence God would shine on her soul. He was there already. ‘You are not a saint, you are not a heathen — you’re a girl,’ he would remark, just to exasperate her.
But when Georges went off on some abstruse theory of docetic Christology, or the theory of incarnation among the Monophysites, she would enjoy his tortuous logomachy as though it was so much time gained, and so much argument against some unnameable enemy.
~
Montpalais is a little château on the top of a sharp monticule, as they say in France, a lone, eleventh-century bastion, with many gaping eyes and hands and feet, all torn to bits, first of all by the Saracens against whom it was built. The comtes de Montpalais were cousins and vassals of the Ducs of Montségur, and when the Cathar heresy came the comte rose against his own overlord, joined the Dominicans — he had meanwhile married Isobel de Navarre — and fought with such violence that even today, in the region, they say ‘courage a celui de Montpalais’, meaning headstrong as an ass.
The castle was fortified again during the wars of religion, Comte Henri de Montpalais having joined Henri IV, and when this liberal-hearted prince went to Paris and was crowned king there was Monseigneur Henri, Comte de Montpalais, first as adjutant-general in the royal cavalry, and later as minister of marine. He enriched himself thus with booty from the Spaniards, but because of some strange streak of cruelty in him his wife left him and ran away; later he was shut up in the tower, on the second floor, where they say he still walks about in the costume of the Grenadiers.
Apart from Isobel of Navarre the women in the chateau were never very interesting, it would seem, except another Isobel, daughter of Louis de Montpalais; Isobel who though so near to Spain would visit Montaigne in his country house, write verses in the Italian manner, and was known to have ridden a horse in battle. The story of her lovers is the stuff of all the poetry round Montpalais, and when a girl is beautiful they call her Isobel-Marie, for by adding the name of the Virgin they feel she will remain in virtue. All she did for the chateau was to give it an Italian entrance, but when the Revolution came they just couldn’t tolerate anything outlandish; thus of the famous Italian double curve of steps there is nothing left but a bit of stone that juts out of the first floor right beneath the central balcony of the main hall.
Today you enter the chateau from the kitchen, for after the revolution nothing very much remained of the castle. The estate was bought by some bourgeois from Condom, and from generation to generation the family added horrors to make themselves feel at home, till mercifully one day a little daughter playing in the stables set fire to the hay outside, and for days on end, they say, Montpalais was one block of fire; you can still see the charred steps at the back and many charred beams. They offered the place then to anyone who wanted it, and some rich peasants from La Romieu bought the hill and the land, almost for nothing. The buildings served to keep hay and wheat and bottles of Armagnac. But during the Occupation, like many such old châteaus that came to life again, it was bought by some northern refugees from Laon, who made it comfortable with doors, windows, and balustrade. They must have had such nice taste: it was difficult to realize that only forty years before the whole structure had gone up in flame.
When the war was over, Robert Fern, an English painter, bought it, to be in the sunshine of France but not among the ‘Picassos’; he fitted it up with the necessary modern conveniences, and added to it all the English sense of comfort. He did not live there much, except in winter, for in summer he preferred to go yachting all over the Mediterranean. We had met Robert at St Rémy among the Cubists and Madame Férrol had such love for India that she often asked us over. When we wanted to go somewhere for the summer she suggested Montpalais, and Robert Fern was only too happy to let it to any decent people. He took only a nominal rent — all we could afford — and left us his servants, his horses, his cows, and even his canvases to admire. Cubism is not entirely in my line of understanding, but Madeleine and Georges would stand for hours before some portrait of a lady in a tub, which had nothing to say for itself other than that its quadrangles and its pentagons were of the most curious and coloured admixture. But Robert was a fine person for all that, so civilized, so noble- spoken; the whole castle felt him and his clear presence.
I slept in the chapel. There was nothing left of the sanctuary but its niche for l’eau bénite, and over my door was a very lovely cross. Lezo jumped to the conclusion — for the cross had here and there some little twists and scratches making it look like a swastika — that the chapel must secretly have been used by the Cathars. The swastika, that emblem of the Aryans, was brought from central Asia by the Nestorians, the Bogomils and the Cathars, so that before Hitler had any knowledge of it, all the Basque and many Béarnais houses had this noble symbol on their outer walls.
‘Your anti-heretic, Henri de Montpalais, must have been pretty much of a heretic, like all the people in these parts at one time; and like many noblemen who preferred when the battle was lost to save their skin rather than be burnt on the stake, he must have joined the Bishop of Auch as an afterthought. As for his heroism, it must have come, as with so many others of his kind, not from conviction, but from wanting to be convinced. Veni Creator Spiritus…’
Lezo was an incorrigible cynic, to whom human history, indeed mankind, was one large question of grammar and dates. For the rest he believed, like most Spaniards, that man is a fine animal. There is something of the Arab tradition in this division of life into enjoyment — and God.
Lezo occupied the large northern room, the one used by Henri de Montpalais himself, and he always had curious dreams there. How much of it was his own invention — for like most Latins he could enjoy a story simply for its own sake — or how much of it was true, was difficult to say. He would sometimes call in Marie, the maid, to bear witness, and Marie would describe in the most elaborate and emphatic way how she had a similar dream of the comte riding wildly into battle, stopping suddenly and shouting, ‘Cowards, give me a glass of water.’ Water, of course, could only have meant death — for wine meant life.
Georges had a small room in the corner by the stables. He liked to live near the animals — it came from his Russian sense of intimacy with all living things. But I think that like people who love concentration he wanted the isolation in which one feels the intimacy of one’s own presence. In a larger place you become one with the fields and the sky, and your eyes seek the height of the mountains.
For the Pyrénées were only a hundred kilometres away, and on a good summer day it would look from Montpalais as though you had only to go right ahead on the white charger to come to this straight wall of white mountain and the heavy Saracen.