Carlyle: “I do when you claim to be a nun.”
Heloïse: “Then you too advocate clerical celibacy?” Her voice grew bright, as if she had just discovered they shared the same home town.
Carlyle: “I do not advocate clerical celibacy, but I don’t advocate of mocking it, either.”
Thisbe: “Carlyle!” Thisbe’s anger threatened to bring her boot down sharp upon his toe. “I think what my sensayer is trying to ask, Sister, is, if you don’t mind a mildly indelicate question…”
Heloïse: “I have scrubbed bile from the floors of sickrooms—what are words to that?”
Thisbe: “Well, are you a prostitute who’s dressed as a nun? Or are you actually pursuing a celibate lifestyle while living in a house of prostitution? You can understand my confusion, I mean, don’t nuns prefer to live … with other nuns?”
Heloïse: “You’re thinking of the Tibetan and Vatican Reservations? Those nuns are not my order. And the business of prostitution is limited to certain sections of this house.”
Thisbe: “I see. But even if only in parts, isn’t that a bit … incongruous?”
Heloïse: “I see no incongruity in it.”
Thisbe: “No incongruity in a nun being around so much … erotic activity?”
Heloïse: “On the contrary, what could be more appropriate? Celibacy is the most extreme of sexual perversions, after all.”
That one floored even Thisbe. “What?”
Heloïse: “Sexual desire is the purest and most natural of animal drives. To suppress it in favor of an intellectual and theological satisfaction is a perversion of nature in the most extreme sense. Why, even to fornicate alone, or with many people at once, or with a machine, or an ass or hound, is closer to Nature’s intent than abstinence. Do you not agree?”
A long pause. Very long.
Carlyle: “Diderot.”
Thisbe: “What?”
Carlyle: “You’re quoting Diderot, that bit about celibacy as the most unnatural thing.”
Heloïse: “Quite correct, Father! Mademoiselle Saneer, has your sensayer not yet told you of le Philosophe? Denis Diderot was a great philosopher, the leader of the Encyclopedia project!”
I wish now, reader, that I had myself introduced you to le Philosophe in some lighter hour. Grant me, if you will, a moment for his noble side, before you associate him forever with this house. Once upon a time there was a bright young atheist named Denis Diderot. In his Eighteenth Century, atheism was just blossoming, and keen libertine minds hungered for a firebrand to stir and lead them. He could have made himself the Pope of Atheists, but he refused, for Diderot, while denying any afterlife, dreamed of worldly immortality, not for himself, but for the dead, the dreams and achievements of ages past, and for his world. His Philosopher’s Stone would be a book. The second half contained technical plates illustrating all the technologies humanity had achieved: weaving silk stockings, annealing metal, baking bricks; so with a single copy even the lowest peasant could reconstruct all the tools of civilization. The first half was the same for thought. Thus, if a new Dark Age should fall upon on the Earth, but a single copy of this book survived, every achievement of the human race—from bronze to Liberty—could be restored. Diderot named this talisman of immortality Encyclopédie, and, fearing that his personal beliefs might bring the wrath of the authorities upon the project, he voluntarily suppressed his own work, publishing nothing of the revolutionary atheism which like-minded doubters of his age so hungered for. The public who named Voltaire ‘le Patriarch’ dubbed Diderot ‘le Philosophe,’ the Philosopher, guardian and caretaker of all thinkers and all thought. The grand title of ‘Arch-Heretic,’ which he deserved, he left to others, to Machiavelli, Hobbes, misunderstood Spinoza, or de Sade. Can you imagine a nobler act, reader? Sacrificing his own chance to add his voice to humanity’s Great Conversation to safeguard the Conversation itself?
“And he went to jail for writing porn about nuns.” Carlyle snapped it, with a cutting glare.
Heloïse sat unfazed. “True, indeed. Rich, beautiful, philosophical pornography about nuns. I have read it several times.” Heloïse turned her sincerest smile on the sensayer. “Fear not, Father, I do not mock those whose robe I imitate. Though sex of all sorts occurs here, I am not involved. There is music here too, art, scholarship, and discourse, and if there are also earthly pleasures, then they are pursued only in harmonious consort with the others, and in sections of the house which I do not frequent.”
Carlyle gave up on goading her here, sensibly, for it is madness trying to anger Heloïse. Anger, like envy, impatience, greed, and lust all melt from her like frost from flame, and she takes modest pride in crushing such little demons underfoot. One thing, though, he would not give up on: “I told you not to call me ‘Father.’ ”
“I’m sorry, do you prefer Doctor?”
“Neither. I’m a sensayer, not a priest.”
Her brows, where the wimple did not cover them, seemed sad. “Have you not dedicated your life to your God?”
Thisbe forced the brandy into Carlyle’s hands. “Drink. You need it.”
Both women watched, expectant, but Carlyle just stared at his reflection in the amber spirit, as if trying to take refuge in the only thing in the room which was not mad. “Dominic Seneschal spends time here too, don’t they?” he asked. “Do they work here?”
Sister Heloïse’s face grew light and frantic at the same time, like a mother desperate for rumors of a runaway. “Do you have word from Brother Dominic? We’ve been so worried!”
“Brother Dominic?”
Thisbe forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Sister Heloïse, we don’t know anything about where Dominic Seneschal is, or where they’ve been the last few days. We’ve been seeking them too.”
“I see,” Heloïse answered, unable to stifle a sigh.
“You know Dominic well?”
“We grew up here together.”
“You both work for Jed … Jehovah…”
“Here you may call Him the Prince D’Arouet, if His true name makes you uncomfortable.”
“Either way, you and Dominic work for them?”
“Work for mon Seigneur Jehovah? Oh, no. We worship Him as a God.”
Even Thisbe could only feign so much calm. “What?”
“Dominic’s path is his own. As for myself I have consecrated my virginity to mon Seigneur Jehovah, and dedicate my hours to the contemplation of His divine Mysteries and the exercise of Good Works in His holy Name. It is a vocation which fills and overflows my every thought and deed, waking and sleeping, and since mon Seigneur Jehovah himself has accepted my devotion, I count myself the most fortunate of women, though not in the least deserving of such fortune.
“I was in my early days a very wicked child,” she continued, “proud, self-involved, and filled with the most perfidious jealousies. I grew up in this house, not among the common children but one of the elect, raised in the strictest discipline and with the care of many wise and generous tutors, whose efforts on my behalf I never appreciated as they deserved. They offered for my education music, geometry, mathematics, natural philosophy, the historians, poets, orators, Latin, Greek, French, all the authors whose works are proper for the eyes of a sensitive young lady, yet I began to spurn all in favor of the flattery of men. Puffed up by vacant words, I vainly thought myself the most beautiful of my peers, a double vanity, both because I judged myself superior, and because I placed value on appearance, as if true Beauty lay in face and flesh. Wretch that I was, I cared nothing for the logic of the Philosopher, the morals of the Orator, or the light of the Theologian (she means here Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Thomas Aquinas) when I had suitors to taunt and rivals to defeat.”