“Ah no,” she said. “My father was a much greater philosopher than I could ever be; and when we came here from Alexandria he had high hopes of teaching such things; but few wished to hear, and many were afraid of what he had to say. So he fell silent, and taught the mechanics of giving speeches empty of meaning. You have been too polite to say what we both knew too well, that he had no skill at this at all; his words reflected the dullness of his heart. But Manlius, if you had only heard him talk of true philosophy! His voice was music, his thought the purest beauty. All gone now, and all silent forever.”
“Not while you are alive, my lady,” he replied. “And you are wrong that no one wishes to hear. I know myself of half a dozen people who would fall at your feet and worship you, if they were only allowed to listen.”
Over the next few weeks he proved it, gathering together those whom he considered trustworthy and bringing them to her. All aristocrats, all young, all ready to be captivated. For the next two years, they met twice a week at Manlius’s house in Marseille, for he was by far the richest of them, and heard of marvelous things. When he was finally summoned away, to accompany his father to Rome in the entourage of the new emperor Majorian, others had joined the group, and for the next twenty years Sophia was able to live out a penurious existence in the manner he had created for her. It was unusual, of course, but there were enough precedents in the past to go by. Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. And Sophia’s father had been one of her last pupils, and when she died had fled to Marseille, a city less under the sway of religion, for fear that the same punishment would be meted out to him.
For Sophia, Manlius’s efforts were a mixed blessing, as not all he summoned to her feet were moved solely by the love of philosophy. Many dressed ostentatiously, gave dinner parties modeled on the banquets of old, sneered at the vulgarity of Christians, the coarseness of the rabble unable to appreciate the delicacies of true thought. They stood around in the street, loudly talking of the nature of the divine. Her philosophy, so jealously protected and cradled within her, became their youthful defiance, spitting in the face of the world. She even had to reprimand them on occasion.
“I do not wish to become like Socrates or Hypatia. I do not wish to be accused of corrupting the morals of youth and be murdered because of my pupils’ behavior. I do not wish my teaching to be nothing more than a costly garment, to distinguish you from others. More decorum and modesty, if you please. There is no virtue that I know of in giving offense. And today, as a punishment, we will talk of the beauties of Christianity.”
And so she did, shaming them, cowing them with her arguments, awing them with the immensity of her knowledge, for she could see good even among absurdity, and wisdom among the dross. They all loved her, it was impossible not to do so; and she knew she took far too much pleasure in their reverence and punished herself with lengthy fasts and days of meditation.
AMONG BARNEUVE’S POSSESSIONS, sorted out by a cousin after his death, was a photograph discovered in a volume where it had been used, evidently, as a bookmark. It meant nothing to the cousin, who had scarcely known his relation and performed the task out of family duty. Barneuve’s goods passed to this man, who had little need for the vast number of books and papers Barneuve had accumulated during his life and which were stored in several rooms of his capacious apartment on the rue de la Petite Fusterie in Avignon. Some were offered to his university, which took what it needed; everything else he sorted through, selling what was valuable and throwing out the rest. This photograph fell into the latter category; a few hours after it was found it was put into the refuse bins in the courtyard, then taken away the next morning.
There was no reason not to throw the photograph away; there was nothing to identify the person shown and it could never have illuminated any dark corners of history. Only Barneuve himself could have said who it was, and even the careful observer could discover little from the image alone. It was square, in black and white but faded into those sepia tones that creep over old photographs with the passage of time. The subject, a woman of about twenty, leans against the rail of a ship in a conventional holiday-cruise pose, the sort of snapshot that must have been taken tens of thousands of times. Had the photographer moved a little to the left, the name of the ship might have been known, for there was a fraction of a life buoy to be seen on the rail. Beyond, in the background, was a port and what seemed to be a minaret—enough evidence to suggest the eastern Mediterranean.
Of the woman, still less could have been said. She was dressed in a light cotton dress, down to the mid-calf, a sun hat on her head, but didn’t seem to be in a holiday mood. She had her own beauty, but it was not a conventional appeal. It was the intensity of her expression, staring determinedly and unflinchingly at the camera, which caught the eye. She stood like someone issuing a challenge. The more fanciful—filling in the gaps with imagination when firm conclusions cannot be reached—might have detected an impatience. Look, she is thinking, why are we wasting time here when there are so many fascinating things to be seen and done on the shore?
More, she was alone. On a crowded ship, brimful of people, she stood alone, waiting. Perhaps she had difficulty making friends? Maybe she needed none? She had the expression of someone searching constantly, yet never finding it. She looked, indeed, just a little cautious, but determined that no one should suspect her weakness.
Nothing else could be gleaned from the photograph, ripped out of its context in such a brutal way, the book that contained it upturned and shaken, so that it fluttered down onto the old worn carpet where it rested until swept up with all the other debris. In this way, the vital connection was lost, for before Barneuve’s relation so rudely disturbed it, the photograph had rested in a small book on Provençal church decoration, tucked up on the page that contained a reproduction of what Julien had come to believe was a portrait of Olivier de Noyen’s true, unknown love.
Anyone who chanced to see both together—had they taken the trouble to look, if they knew both faces so well they were engraved in the mind as they were in Julien Barneuve’s—would have had to agree that the resemblance was extraordinary.
ONCE HE HAD turned away—in his heart, if not yet openly—from the career of a lawyer, Olivier de Noyen for many years assumed that he would become a priest, despite his evident lack of capacity for the life, and accommodated the idea in his mind so completely and with so little thought that he never truly gave it up. It would have been more surprising if this notion had not occurred to him. He was, after all, surrounded by priests, living in a clerical household, knowing mainly priests or others destined for the church in one form or another. The priesthood was the most certain route of patronage as well—stay within the fold and he could count on the support of Ceccani and others within his circle who would willingly advance a personable, if wayward, young man of intelligence who would bring credit on them in return. And Olivier would have risen high indeed—Ceccani held immense resources in his gift. Even though Olivier could scarcely expect great advancement, for the necessary instincts of a politician were as strange to him as they were fundamental to his master—he would undoubtedly have come to a position of some power within the curia, and servants are often more influential than the masters they serve.
A life of plenty, power, and obscurity. How many names of papal bureaucrats are known to us today? How many engage the attentions of a Julien Barneuve? The Romans (before they became Christian, and probably thereafter as well) held Renown to be a god, and sought out her harsh attentions, even though her blessing might be bought at the price of death and disgrace. Some part of Olivier was attracted to that same altar in a way a man like Julien could never understand. And if (as the Romans also held, although they contradicted themselves often on this point) immortality is conferred by the continuous memory others hold of us when we are dead, then Olivier was the only one to win everlasting life.
Not that he ever thought all this through, weighed the pros and cons of the various options open to him, then made up his mind. Had he proceeded in this way—had he been more reasonable—a priest he would have become, for he did not know he sought fame nor did he ever understand why he sought it.
Rather, his life developed on the surface in the way necessary to indulge his passion for the old learning. Once his father had left him and his tears had dried up, the first thing he did was to go to his master’s scriptorium, take pen and ink and sand, and copy out the now destroyed manuscript. Word for word, with no errors. He had read it so often—and indeed had the gift of phenomenal memory, so that a text, once read, stayed with him forever— that it was not even a difficult task. And then he had a small inspiration. The hatred of his father, which he did not allow himself to feel—such things were unnatural and could not be admitted—he transformed instead into admiration and regard for Ceccani. And to express this admiration, he decided to make his patron a gift.
